Part V: Together for justice

19-05-2006 What is Falun Gong?

"Coming for you"

On November 20th, 2001, at around 2 p.m., thirty-six Western practitioners from twelve countries gathered on Tiananmen Square. They sat in a meditation position, unfurled a large yellow banner emblazoned with the words "Truth-Benevolence-Forbearance," shut their eyes, and began their Falun Gong meditation exercise.

On November 20th, 2001, in an unprecedented appeal for the rights of the Chinese people, thirty-six Falun Gong practitioners from twelve countries raised a banner reading "Truth-Benevolence-Forbearance" and sat in a meditation pose on Tiananmen Square. They were arrested, beaten, and deported.

Within seconds, several police vans rushed over and surrounded the group, and officers began dragging, kicking, punching, and pushing the practitioners into the vans. In response, they started to shout in Chinese: "Falun Gong is good!"

These thirty-six foreigners were the first of many foreign practitioners who travelled to China to hold peaceful appeals. Like their fellow practitioners in China, they wanted to let the Chinese people know the truth. In their own countries, they often pass out flyers to Chinese tourists who are surprised to learn that, contrary to what the Chinese government had led them to believe, Falun Gong is not banned in other countries. Sometimes they engage Chinese tourists in conversation and discover just how misinformed they are about Falun Gong. To let more Chinese people know the truth, they decided to go to China.

To date, hundreds of practitioners from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the USA, and several other countries have travelled to China, as their song sings: "Facing violence and danger, again and again I come for you; I come with love for you…"

For their love of a traditional Chinese practice, for their benevolence to the Chinese people, they were arrested, mistreated, and deported; many were beaten, some severely. While most were arrested on Tiananmen Square, many were abducted while walking on the street or taken from their hotel rooms. While in detention, they were not allowed to contact their families or their embassies. They were interrogated and intimidated, and most had their valuable belongings robbed by the police. When they cited international standards for the treatment of foreign nationals, the police simply stated: "This is China."

If the Chinese policemen have no inhibition in beating these foreigners, knowing that they are to be deported within hours, what would they not do to Chinese Falun Gong practitioners, whom they can incarcerate indefinitely?

Falun Gong practitioners' quest for justice

When Jiang Zemin launched the persecution against Falun Gong, he was counting on a quick kill. The state-run media publicly announced that the government would "completely solve the Falun Gong problem" in three months, and Jiang himself confidently proclaimed: "I don't believe I cannot conquer Falun Gong."

Mr Joel Chipkar stands outside the Chinese Consul­ate in Toronto, Canada. In a landmark ruling, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that a Chinese consular official who attacked Mr Chipkar in a newspa­per acted outside of his official functions and is at fault for libel.

As the struggle between the truth and lies, love and hate, peace and violence unfolds, as it becomes more and more clear that Jiang will never succeed in his campaign to eradicate Falun Gong, the contrast between courage and cowardice also starts to show. In July 2001, during Jiang Zemin's visit to Malta, a Chinese woman walked up to him and asked him to stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. In April 2002, when Jiang visited Germany, a white male greeted him in Chinese, and then said "Falun Dafa is good" in Chinese. Fearing to see more protests from Falun Gong practitioners, Jiang demanded that his foreign hosts take drastic measures to ensure that he would see no more Falun Gong practitioners. As a result, in so many state visits, Jiang's motorcade dared not use the front gates of hotels or restaurants, but instead used back doors or underground tunnels.

Jiang, however, has more than protests to run from. With the help of many prominent human rights lawyers, Falun Gong practitioners around the world have filed dozens of lawsuits against Jiang and his accomplices for genocide, crimes against humanity, and torture, making Jiang the only dictator in history to be sued in over a dozen countries. As more and more shocking facts of the Jiang regime's hate incitement, state terrorism, violence, and cruelty are revealed, the day of a new Nuremberg trial of the regime's crimes against conscience is bound to come.

An appeal to all good people of the world

The persecution of Falun Gong is still ongoing in China. The sole objective of the persecution is to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their own conscience, and the coercive methods used are of the most heinous kind. It is not just another same old story of one race against another, one class of people against another, or even one faith against another. It is evil against goodness in its most pure form.

It is said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

In the hope that the world will intervene, we submit this book of real stories to you, the good people of the world, and ask you to be a voice for those without one, to do all within your power to stop the crime against conscience.

 

Source http://www.falunhr.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=390&Itemid=78

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