Tuesday, December 25, 2001

Greek and Swedish practitioners attended the 4th annual World Congress for the "Council for Greeks Abroad" in Thessalonica, 9-12 December. As the Greek Foreign Ministry sponsors the event, the President of Greece and the Foreign Minister as well as the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church (equivalent to the Pope) attended the Congress and made speeches. Many other Ministers, Government Officials, Archbishops, VIPs and, of course, all the Greek media were there as well.

The practitioners took the opportunity to inform many people of the human rights violations against Falun Gong practitioners that are taking place in China. One practitioner was among the westerners who went to Tiananmen Square on 20th of November, so he could give first hand accounts of the persecution. Practitioners spoke with and were able to hand information to several officials.

Contacts were also made with national TV channels, newspapers, as well as a newswire. Practitioners could be seen wearing "I SUPPORT FALUN GONG" pins on TV. The Congress lasted for four days.

Later on, one of the largest TV Channels in Greece interviewed the Greek who had been to Tiananmen and another practitioner. They also received footage from the incident itself together with other footage exposing the human rights atrocities carried out by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his accomplices against the Chinese people. This channel's news can be seen by about 30 percent of the TV viewers in Greece. The practitioners spoke of the urgency of the matter and appealed to the Greek Government to take a stand against the persecution as most other Western countries already have.

The Greek people have started to hear the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution in China.