To threaten dissidents and retaliate against opponents, Falun Gong frequently lodges accusations and files lawsuits outside Mainland China.

 

On January 20, 2003, Falun Gong established a special organization called "World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong" or WOIPFG, scraped together a handful of professional litigants and engaged in systematical false accusations and abusive lawsuits.

 

According to Falun Gong, people from all walks of life both in and outside China, regardless of their social status or what’s ever, may turn into the accused so long as they harm the interest of Falun Gong or speak ill of the cultic organization.

 

Falun Gong exercises public opinion "hegemony," attacks the media that hold different views from it, such as the Canadian newspaper La Presse Chinoise (Chinese Press), and the Australian newspaper Chinese Daily.

 

On November 3, 2001, the Canadian newspaper Chinese Press published an article criticizing Falun Gong, and initiated a seven-year long litigation. At last, the newspaper won the case.

 

In December 2003, the Australian newspaper Chinese Daily published a statement issued by the Chinese Embassy to Australia, denouncing Falun Gong. As a result, the newspaper was accused of libeling by Falun Gong, and was forced to change name because the newspaper could not afford the legal expense. On April 5, 2006, Falun Gong was sentenced to pay a compensation of 30,000 Australian Dollars. To avoid the punishment, Falun Gong shamelessly declared that, its two prosecutors, "New South Wales Falun Dafa Association" and "New Tang Dynasty TV Australia Ltd.," went bankrupt.

 

In retaliation, Falun Gong has filed abusive lawsuits against people and organizations which expose and denounce it.

 

These include: the Association for Cultic Studies of Dnipropetrovsk of Ukraine; the Ottawa Chinese Newcomers Senior; Guo Chuanjie, deputy secretary of the Party Group of Chinese Academy of Sciences; Wang Yusheng, vice chairman of the China Association for Cultic Studies; and Zhao Zhizhen, former director of Wuhan Television Station in Hubei Province.

 

In 1999, the Wuhan TV Station, under the leadership of Zhao Zhizhen, produced a documentary named Li Hongzhi: the Man, His Deeds and Fabrications, revealed the facts of how Li Hongzhi blasphemed science and took people in. On July 14, 2004, Falun Gong filed a lawsuit to US Federal Court in Connecticut against Zhao Zhizhen, who was then on a private trip to the USA.

 

In the summer of 2005, the International Cultic Studies Association was planning to hold a meeting in Spain on the issue of Falun Gong. Under the litigation threat of Falun Gong, the association was forced to cancel the speech of Mr. Samuel Luo, a famous cultic study expert in San Francisco. "Any action that validates, supports, or gives credence to the (Chinese Communist Party's) propaganda, lies, and defamation about the practice of Falun Gong is in itself collaborating in the genocide and tortures," wrote attorney Carlos Iglesias Jimenez, who speaking on behalf of Falun Gong in a letter to the association.

 

Due to its strong political overtones, Falun Gong has been frequently banned from celebration activities by other social groups. Falun Gong also has pestered them by filing lawsuits.

 

Since 2006, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, one Chinese group in San Francisco, USA, consecutively for three years rejected Falun Gong practitioners to participate in the Chinese Lunar New Year Parade on ground that Falun Gong "concealed political motives"; Falun Gong brought an accusation against the chamber before the court, but the court ruled in favor of the chamber’s decision.

 

Because Falun Gong practitioners distributed "savage torture" pictures to tourists in the Christmas Parade at earlier times, they were rejected of marching in the parade for eight consecutive years by the organizing committee of Auckland, New Zealand. Falun Gong filed lawsuits against the organizer – Auckland Children's Christmas Parade Trust. Michael Barnett, chairman of the trust, who had to hire security when Falun Gong picketed his office in 2007 in response to his banning the group's 70-piece marching band from the parade.

 

Some authoritative departments or governmental officials outside China have been also sued by Falun Gong for "offending" it. For instance, the Falun Gong group filed a suit against the Department of Justice of Moldova for rejecting Falun Gong’s registration application; against Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew for his open criticism; against former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for issuing the order to prohibit Falun Gong from stirring up troubles before the Embassy, etc.

 

According to incomplete statistics, Falun Gong has filed over 100 lawsuits since 2001 at countries such as the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Spain, South Korea, Greece, Australia, Bolivia and Netherlands, but seldom won.