(Clearwisdom.net) On the evening of April 25, 2010, practitioners from Washington D.C. and surrounding areas gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy and did the exercises in a large group. The gathering commemorated the April 25 peaceful appeal by more than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners eleven years ago at the State Council Appeals Office in Beijing.
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Banners reading "Falun Dafa is good," "The worlds needs Truth-Compassion-Forbearance" and "Bring Jiang Zemin to justice" were hung on the fences opposite the Chinese Embassy. More than a hundred practitioners peacefully demonstrated the exercises. The group consisted of people from different nationalities, professions and age groups. Some of them participated in the April 25 appeal in 1999 and some started the practice not long ago. They shared their cultivation experiences.
Ms. Gao is a professor in the Department of Finance at a university in the greater Washington area. She started the practice of Falun Gong one year ago. It was the first time that she has participated in the activity in memory of the April 25 appeal. Ms. Gao said that she had harbored negative views on Falun Gong because of the influence of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) propaganda, but she suffered from an illness because she practiced a sham qigong. Her mother, who is a Falun Gong practitioner, advised her to recite "Falun Dafa is good," but she did not want to do it at first. One night, she was so miserable that she recited "Falun Dafa is good" for more than two hours. Soon, the pain started to go away. The next morning when she got up, all the pain in her body had disappeared. At that moment, she said that she wanted to practice Falun Gong.
Ms. Gao said that reading Zhuan Falun helped her understand why we came to this world and her life now has a clear goal.
Ms. Chen, 74, started the practice of Falun Gong when she came to the U.S. in 2006. She said that when she was in China, she did not believe the lies about Falun Gong shown on TV, but she did not care for Falun Gong because she had been seriously influenced by the CCP's atheism. She read Zhuan Falun after she came to the U.S. to visit her relatives. She said, "I felt great after reading the book; my physical condition had greatly changed. I suffered from lower back and leg pain before, but they disappeared in two months. I felt light all over my body."
Ms. Zhong from Taiwan is computer system manager in the greater Washington area. She has been a Falun Gong practitioner for twelve years. She said, "The practice of Falun Gong has purified me both physically and spiritually. My family all witnessed my positive changes. I used to be timid, selfish, and overly sensitive."
When the CCP started the persecution of Falun Gong, she was worried that Falun Gong may get involved in politics. After several days thinking, she decided that it's not wrong to be a good person, and she did not believe what the CCP said about Falun Gong. She went to the Chinese Embassy to protest, telling people how she had benefited from Falun Dafa, and how Falun Dafa has changed her life. Her character and her way of looking at things also changed for the better. The practice of Falun Dafa made her open-hearted and upright, candid, and joyful.
Ms. Zhong continued to say that her children, husband, parents and sister have all benefited from Falun Dafa. Her father read Zhuan Falun and said, "No one teaches people to be as [good] as what your Master teaches you. Your Master is the only person in this world who asks nothing in return."
Ms. Wang Jinwei, who is in her 20s, came to the U.S. to study from Japan when the CCP started the persecution. Since earning her doctorate in film, she has lived and worked in Washington. Though she is very busy, she has continued to inform people about the persecution of Falun Gong.
She said, "Prisons are meant for criminals, but so many good Chinese citizens are being thrown in jail for believing in Truth-Compassion-Forbearance. I cannot stand by when such atrocities are happening in my country. So I started to tell the facts to more people."
She added that her classmate was deprived of the right to take the national college entrance examination. "A high school student with excellent grades was incarcerated in prison along with her mother," she said, "Such a thing should have not happened. I hope more kind people in the world can work together to help stop the brutal persecution taking place in China."
Background:
On April 25, 1999, over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in China gathered outside the State Council Appeals Office to request their basic right of freedom of belief and the immediate release of 45 fellow practitioners who had been unlawfully arrested. In response to the appeal the Chinese Communist regime promised to protect the practitioners' rights, and the arrested practitioners were released. Three months later however, the regime began a nationwide persecution to "eliminate Falun Gong." The brutal persecution has continued for nearly eleven years.
