“We are here today to commemorate the events of April 25, to set the record straight about what happened that day, and to protest the persecution of Falun Gong,” said Ms. Liu Yi, one of the organizers of the event.
On April 25, 1999 thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, in an event that made headlines around the world, gathered in Beijing outside the national Appeals Office and the leadership compound of the Chinese Communist Party, which is called Zhongnanhai.
The practitioners in Beijing had come to appeal for the release of 42 fellow practitioners who had been arrested that week in the town of Tianjin, to ask the regime to give Falun Gong practitioners a safe and legal environment in which to practice, and to remove the ban on publishing Falun Gong materials.
This event was later interpreted by the world’s press as what precipitated the severe crackdown on Falun Gong that began a few month’s later, on July 20.
At Saturday’s rally, four speakers recalled the events of that day, and another spoke about the persecution of her family members that is still going on today.
China’s state-run media reported that 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners took part in the events of April 25, and the world’s media have repeated this number ever since.
The speakers at the rally agreed that 10,000 drastically understates the numbers of those present.
According to Mr. Huang Kui, who was a Ph.D. student at Beijing’s Tsinghua University (often described as “China’s M.I.T.”) at the time, when he asked a policeman how many practitioners were present outside Zhongnanhai, the policeman answered “80,000.”
Other estimates of the crowd outside Zhongnanhi were of over 100,000.
According to Mr. Xu Yin, who was an associate professor at Tsinghua University, the police had obstructed movement in Beijing that day. He believes that in Beijing there were a total of over 300,000 practitioners who had come intending to appeal, but a majority of them could not make it to the vicinity of the national Appeals Office.
Fuyou Street
The speakers at Saturday’s rally also claimed that the China’s state-run media and the world’s media, who apparently followed the lead of the state-run media’s account, mischaracterized what happened that day.
The evening of April 25, state-run t.v. referred to Falun Gong practitioners “attacking” and “threatening” Zhongnanhai. The world’s press have often referred to practitioners “encircling” or “surrounding” Zhongnanhai.
All of the speakers agreed that the practitioners who showed up that morning in Beijing intended to go to the Appeals Office, not to Zhongnanhai. However, very close to the Appeals Office, on Fuyou Street, is Zhongnanhai.
Xu arrived at the Appeals Office early that morning. He said that the street to the Appeals Office was blocked by police. But, after practitioners started to assemble, the policemen opened Fuyou Street and waved the practitioners in, assembling them around Zhongnanhai.
“Fuyou Street was a heavily restricted area. When the police opened the street up and told us to go in, we were all concerned.”
Mr. Yang Qing, who worked at Tsinghua University, recalled how after the practitioners had assembled on the sidewalks outside Zhongnanhai, Mr. He Zuoxiu showed up. Mr. He had authored a magazine article that repeated charges against Falun Gong that had previously been shown to be false. That article sparked the protest in Tianjin at which the practitioners were arrested, leading to the appeal on April 25.
According to Yang, “He Zuoxiu swaggered around up and down the street. He looked a little nervous and his being there was very provocative. But not a single practitioner stepped out to argue with him. If practitioners had approached He Zuoxiu, events that day might have been very different.”
The Spirit of April 25
Yang believes that if the practitioners had responded to He Zuoxiu by approaching him, the police would have used that as an excuse to attack the practitioners. But practitioners remained orderly and peaceful the whole day, Yang said.
According to Liu, the spirit the practitioners exhibited that day needs to be remembered. “When the practitioners in China were faced with acts of persecution in Tianjin, they responded rationally and peacefully. They insisted on their legal rights but acted in a way that showed consideration for others,” Liu said.
Ms. Cui Zijing, a participant in the April 25 events who was a professor at Tsinghua, spoke at the rally. “Alongside the wall, avoiding the street, all the practitioners were peacefully standing. Although a huge number of people gathered there—there were at least tens of thousands of practitioners there that day—nothing was disrupted a bit. The traffic went smoothly; all neighborhood activities went on as usual.
“People all consciously put their garbage in plastic bags. There were volunteer practitioners who came and collected the garbage bags. The surrounding area was all kept clean,” Cui said.
Huang recalls how, when the practitioners left at the end of the day, the policemen highly praised how the practitioners had acted that day.
Xu believes that the exemplary discipline shown by the practitioners helped excite the jealousy of Jiang Zemin, at that time China’s dictator. “When Jiang saw the mentality of the practitioners, he knew his own army could never act in such a way.”
Persecution
According to Liu, “The spirit shown on April 25 has been visible in everything the practitioners have done since then to oppose the persecution.”
The speakers at the rally on Saturday recalled their experience of that persecution.
Ms. Pang Jin, who is now a graduate student at Missouri State University, was 15 years old in 1999. In the following years she saw her mother arrested several times, and her family members harassed, because of the practice of Falun Gong.
Prior to the summer Olympics, her mother was arrested again, one of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners arrested in the months leading up to the Olympics. She has since been held in the Qingzhou detention center. Pang’s aunt was also arrested at that time, and, although in bad health, has since been held in Shouguang detention center.
Huang was held in prison for five years, because he had worked on The Epoch Times Web site.
He describes how each single of the 1,826 days that he was held was “a nightmare” and recounted some of the tortures he suffered.
Xu, whom the Public Security Bureau identified as a “leader” of Falun Gong practitioners, also served time in prison and suffered torture. Among those tortures, he was forced for eight months to be in a “small room,” a room whose size is such that the victim can neither stand nor sit.
He also recalls being forced to make the gift boxes that were given to v.i.p.s at the summer Olympics. Xu says that for the Chinese regime to give those boxes made by slave labor to the v.i.p.s “was truly an insult to the international community.”
The appearance at the rally on Saturday was a kind of reunion for Cui, Huang, Yang, and Xu, who all had practiced Falun Gong at Tsinghua University together in the years before the persecution.
Yang wistfully reflected, “Before the persecution there were hundreds of practitioners at Tsinghua. Today, because of the persecution, I can only get in touch with just a handful of them.”
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