(Clearwisdom.net) On Sunday April 24, 2005, Falun Gong practitioners in the United Kingdom gathered opposite the Chinese Embassy in London to hold a press conference calling for the end of the persecution against Falun Gong that was initiated by the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin.

On April 25, 1999, 10,000 Chinese Falun Gong practitioners went to peacefully appeal at the Chinese Government's State Appeals Office because of a serious incident of slander and abuse of Falun Gong and Falun Gong practitioners in the city of Tianjin. The State Appeals Office is the place where Chinese people are supposed to go to appeal if they have been treated unfairly. When they arrived in Beijing, the practitioners were directed by the police to wait on the sidewalk near the government headquarters - the Zhongnanhai government compound in central Beijing, just down the street from the appeals office. Because of the large number of practitioners arriving to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong, the group ended up quietly standing on the sidewalks that encircled Zongnanhai. Jiang Zemin was jealous of the number of people practicing Falun Gong, which was 100 million, more than the membership of the Communist Party, so he immediately used the peaceful appeal as an opportunity to deceive the Chinese people and create lies about Falun Gong. Jiang's call to persecute the peaceful practice after this so-called "siege" was unpopular among other members of the government, but, due to the tyrannical nature of the communist system in China, they were forced to follow along.

The speakers at the London press conference included the chairman of the UK Falun Gong Association and the vice-chairman of the non-governmental organization, European Friends of Falun Gong. They spoke of the recent massive increase in illegal arrests of Falun Gong practitioners and the declaration of martial law in parts of China that has occurred in the week leading up to the April 25 anniversary. (For more information, see http://clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2005/4/22/59968.html.)

On the same day, practitioners held a demonstration of the Falun Gong exercises in London's Chinatown. The practitioners showed a video about the persecution, and people stopped to watch in detail. An elderly man sat down on the ground to try the sitting meditation exercise. People gathered to watch the practitioners and to read the posters about the exercises, as well as the information exposing the methods of torture used against Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Source: http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/200504/26158.html