FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va.—Virginia state senators Mark J. Peake (R-Lynchburg) and Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) have written a joint letter asking President Joe Biden Biden to “tackle the crimes that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has dedicated together with the hazards that the occasion poses.”

Citing the Chinese language spy balloon flying over America for days earlier than the U.S. navy shot it down on Saturday, Peake instructed The Epoch Occasions, “It’s time for Joe Biden to get up and take a stand in opposition to the CCP and allow them to know the place America stands.”

Petersen’s father-in-law is from North Korea. The household was Christian and persecuted; the senator’s grandfather-in-law was executed by the communists.

“This challenge of spiritual persecution by communist governments is one thing that we find out about firsthand, and I’ll converse up,” the senator instructed The Epoch Occasions.

Within the letter dated Jan. 30, Sen. Peake enclosed a duplicate of the decision he sponsored throughout this yr’s Virginia legislative session.

“I help the decision as a result of no particular person ought to be persecuted for his or her non secular practices. However sadly, Falun Gong practitioners proceed to be persecuted for expressing their non secular beliefs,” he wrote within the doc.

“Due to this fact, taking my expressed considerations into consideration, I want to stress heavy emphasis and urgency in addressing the specter of the CCP,” he added.

Peake wrote the letter upon discovering out that he couldn’t introduce the decision to the Virginia Senate as a result of the Virginia Senate Guidelines Committee deemed the problem a federal matter and never throughout the state’s energy, although the Virginia Home handed an identical decision final yr.

The Epoch Occasions has contacted the White Home and State Division for remark.

Falun Gong, often known as Falun Dafa, a meditation self-discipline based mostly on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, was launched in Virginia in 1996. In three years, the CCP started a nationwide suppression of the peaceable self-discipline in China because the follow’s recognition had drawn an uncomfortably massive variety of adherents—estimated at over 70 million.

Over the previous 23 years, tens of millions of adherents to the ideas of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance have been held in labor camps, psychological asylums, drug rehabilitation facilities, unofficial black jails, or different detention services. The vilification, pressured slave labor, torture, and arranged killing by means of pressured organ harvesting arising from the persecution have led to an untold variety of deaths. Those that survived are left with accidents and monetary and psychological harms suffered from the continued abuses.

Amongst these atrocities, Peake’s decision highlighted pressured slave labor and compelled organ harvesting, and the significance of informing Virginia residents and the medical group of such crimes.

He stated that the CCP’s pressured organ harvesting on Uyghurs was well-known, “however I feel it’s necessary for Virginians to know that they [CCP] are doing it to the Falun Gong as nicely, along with the slave labor and the brutality that they’ve raked upon the Falun Gong.”

Within the decision, Peake additionally cited native help within the Commonwealth, “Regardless of little media protection of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, greater than 5,000 Virginia residents have signed petitions to their native governments, and greater than 20 Virginia localities have adopted associated resolutions condemning the CCP’s atrocities in opposition to Falun Gong practitioners in China, together with the usage of pressured organ harvesting and slave labor.”

Among the many supportive localities, the County of Fluvanna in Peake’s district handed a decision condemning the persecution (pdf) in November 2021. The Metropolis of Fairfax in Petersen’s district additionally handed an identical decision in June 2021.

Beforehand in 2020, each Peake and Petersen joined 47 different Virginia lawmakers in sending a letter to the then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging him to take “forceful, and sustained motion” to finish the “psychological and bodily torture” and “immoral follow of non-consenting organ harvesting by the CCP.”