Establishment
On 7 June 1999, Jiang Zemin convened a meeting of the Politburo to address the Falun Gong issue. In the meeting, Jiang described Falun Gong as a grave threat to Communist Party authority—“something unprecedented in the country since its founding 50 years ago”—and ordered the creation of a special leading group within the party’s Central Committee to “get fully prepared for the work of disintegrating .”
On 10 June, the 610 Office was formed to handle day-to-day coordination of the anti-Falun Gong campaign. Luo Gan was selected to helm of the office, whose mission at the time was described as studying, investigating, and developing a “unified approach…to resolve the Falun Gong problem.” The office was not created with any legislation, and there are no provisions describing its precise mandate. Nonetheless, it was authorized “to deal with central and local, party and state agencies, which were called upon to act in close coordination with that office,” according to UCLA professor James Tong.
On 17 June 1999, the 610 Office came under the newly created Central Leading Group for Dealing with Falun Gong, headed by Politburo Standing Committee member Li Lanqing. Four other deputy directors of the Central Leading Group also held high-level positions in the Communist Party, including minister of the propaganda department, Ding Guangen. The leaders of the 610 Office and CLGDF were “able to call on top government and party officials to work on the case and draw on their institutional resources,” and had personal access to the Communist Party General Secretary and the Premier.
Journalist Ian Johnson, whose coverage of the crackdown on Falun Gong earned him a Pulitzer Prize, wrote that the job of the 610 Office was “to mobilize the country's pliant social organizations. Under orders from the Public Security Bureau, churches, temples, mosques, newspapers, media, courts and police all quickly lined up behind the government's simple plan: to crush Falun Gong, no measures too excessive. Within days a wave of arrests swept China. By the end of 1999, Falun Gong adherents were dying in custody.”
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