Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Oblivious to cars whizzing past an arm's length away, practitioners of Falun Gong held a curbside rally Tuesday in the name of protecting human rights.

The gathering of Falun Gong practitioners across the street from the Chinese Consulate in Calgary was to launch the Calgary to Thunder Bay leg of the cross-Canada SOS Rescue Walk.

Two people from Montreal and an Edmonton woman later hit the highway to raise awareness of human rights abuses against practitioners of Falun Gongin China.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a form of qigong, the practice of refining the body and mind through special exercises and meditation.

China considers it a [Jiang Zemin government's slanderous term omitted] and has arrested and allegedly killed practitioners.

"We think that crackdown is accelerating," said Kai Lui, a spokesman for the Calgary group.

The three trekkers will walk 2,500 kilometres to Thunder Bay, Ont., where another team will pick up the next leg of the journey to St. John's, Nfld.

The walk to Thunder Bay is expected to take two to three months, through the middle of a prairie winter.

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