Shen Yun 2025 Performance in Atlanta Threatened With Mass Shooting

(Minghui.org) Shen Yun Performing Arts’ tour is scheduled to hold its first show in 2025 at the Atlanta Symphony Hall in Georgia. The local host, the Falun Dafa Association in Atlanta, received an email threat on December 11, 2024m that there would be a mass shooting if the show took place.

Threat May Be Linked to Pro-China Agent

The email was sent at 7:25 a.m. and titled: “Shooting will occur when Shen Yun plays in Atlanta Symphony Hall.” The email said, “If Atlanta Symphony Hall allows Shen Yun to perform, we will break into the venue during the show and shoot everyone!”

A photo that was embedded in the email shows a hand gun, dozens of bullets, and two bullet magazines. The name of the sender is in Tibetan, which translates into “the fourteenth generation lama,” and the email address is “[e-mail].”

According to Internet data, the email address belongs to a Chinese-speaking person who goes by the name “guan zhong quan.” The same email account was also used to threaten theaters that played the documentary “State Organs,” which exposes the state-operated illegal organ harvesting system in China. The person is suspected to be either an Internet commentator paid by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a pro-CCP activist, or a Chinese agent.

Atlanta Symphony Hall, the venue that will hold Shen Yun Performing Arts’ first show in 2025, was recently threatened with a mass shooting. The photo is a screenshot of the email. (Photo courtesy Atlanta Falun Dafa Association)

The owner of the email account “[e-mail]” is a Chinese-speaking person who goes by the name “guan zhong quan.”

Not an Isolated Incident

Mr. Sun Dakun, president of the Atlanta Falun Dafa Association, said that the practitioners in Atlanta plan to report this threat to government officials, telling them what the CCP is doing, and ask the U.S. government launch an investigation to stop the threats against, and the persecution of, a righteous faith. Mr. Sun said the threat and a recent lawsuit against Shen Yun are part of the CCP’s efforts to suppress overseas Falun Gong practitioners, which is shocking and unacceptable.

The Association officially reported the alleged crime to the Atlanta Police Department and the FBI. Officials at the FBI told Mr. Sun that they take such threats very seriously and have launched an investigation.

Shen Yun’s performances showcase China’s 5,000-year-long traditional culture through Chinese classical dance, original music that combines orthodox Eastern and Western music, and lifelike backdrops. The performances also expose the CCP’s 25-year-long persecution of Falun Dafa in China. The outstanding performances are embraced by people from all walks of life. Many audience members say they are impressed by the values conveyed by the shows and the artists’ outstanding skills.

There has recently been a sudden surge of posts on social media slandering Shen Yun and Falun Dafa since this summer. At the same time, The New York Times also released several articles smearing Shen Yun and Falun Dafa. The CCP is behind this transnational persecution.

An insider from the CCP’s Public Security Bureau told the Epoch Times that the head of China’s Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, recently intensified the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners outside of China in order to expand his political capital. The tactics used are similar to those used in China when the persecution started in July 1999. The CCP controls its foreign agents to threaten practitioners with physical harm, file lawsuits against them in order to exert financial pressure on them, and defame them through media and social platforms.

Previous Attempts to Sabotage Shen Yun

Judge Nelson S. Román for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced John Chen (aka “Chen Jun”), a 70-year-old U.S. citizen from China, to 20 months in prison on November 19 of this year. His accomplice Lin Feng, a 43-year-old Chinese citizen residing in Los Angeles, was sentenced to 16 months on September 26. The two were arrested in May 2023 for participating in a CCP scheme to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in the U.S.

“John Chen and Lin Feng allegedly waged a campaign at the behest of the Government of the People’s Republic of China to influence a U.S. Government official in order to further the PRC Government’s repression of practitioners of Falun Gong,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York.

Chen and Lin targeted Shen Yun with the aim of stripping its tax-exempt status “through bribery and deceit” and manipulation of the IRS Whistleblower Program, according to the court filings.

A leaked document from China’s Henan Province Commission in 2017 shows that the officials ordered its agents to target Shen Yun’s headquarters in New York. When it came to Falun Gong, the order was to “Closely monitor overseas core persons, headquarters, and foreign politicians, and initiate strategies to attack and divide them.”

There were previous attempts to stop Shen Yun from performing. The CCP sent its agents to threaten the theaters where Shen Yun performed with explosive devices. These agents also slashed the tires of Shen Yun’s tour buses. The family members of the artists in China were threatened or detained.

Shen Yun Will Perform as Scheduled

Mr. Sun said that Shen Yun’s 2025 debut in Atlanta will go on as planned. Ticket sales and preparations are moving forward.

Educating American Students on the Harm and Historical Impact of Communism

The CCP’s continued attempts to disrupt Shen Yun performances shows that it has not been deterred by the prosecution of its agents and that it has established a network of agents in the U.S. From a broader perspective, the events of the last few decades have forced some countries to see communism for what it is and to start taking action to counter its influence.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Crucial Communism Teaching Act on December 6, 2024 by a vote of 327 to 62. Introduced by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar from Florida, the Act “directs the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to develop a civic education curriculum and oral history resources for high school students to promote understanding of certain political ideologies (e.g., communism and totalitarianism) that conflict with principles of U.S. democracy.”

Following the bill's passage in the House, Rep. Salazar wrote on X, “My bill ensures future generations will learn about the horrors of the communist ideology and what it brings for its victims: misery, oppression, and exile.”

Rep. Salazar was born in Florida, and her parents are Cuban exiles. Shortly after Cuba gained independence in 1902, communist and anarchist organizations began to take root. The Cuban Communist Party was founded in 1925 as part of the Communist International and under the leadership of Moscow in the Soviet Union. It would later change its name to the Popular Socialist Party and become part of the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which would later reorganize as the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965.

After the Cuban Revolution ended in 1959, the Popular Socialist Party was legalized. In 1969, Cuba had only 55,000 Communist Party members, or 0.7% of the country's population. This made the Communist Party of Cuba one of the smallest ruling communist parties in the world. However, its membership had increased to 430,000 by 1980 and 520,000 by 1985. Growing instability in the Soviet Union then led the Cuban government to declare a “special period in the time of peace” starting in August 1990. A year later, the 1991 Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba reaffirmed the path of socialism and the leadership of the party.

It is rather telling that Chinese Communist Party members and followers of Marxism-Leninism choose to immigrate to capitalist countries like the United States and live with “American imperialists” instead of migrating to other communist countries. While living in the U.S., some of them continue to carry out the CCP’s goals by taking advantage of a free, democratic society and its social communication outlets and other facets of daily life.