A court ruling Thursday ordered the long-standing Falun Gong appeal site structures outside the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver to be dismantled within seven days.
Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein issued a 37-page ruling upholding the City of Vancouver’s application seeking the removal of a hut and signs that have been part of the Falun Gong 24/7 protest since 2001.
As news of the ruling filtered through the Vancouver Falun Gong community, more than 40 practitioners gathered outside the consulate on Thursday night, marking day 2717 of the protest.
Joe Arvay, the lawyer representing the Falun Gong practitioners who have maintained the vigil in protest of the Chinese regime’s ongoing persecution of their counterparts in China, has urged the group to appeal.
“We are very disappointed with this court ruling and we are seriously considering an appeal,” says Falun Dafa Association of Canada (FDAC) spokesperson Sue Zhang.
“Our fellow practitioners in China don’t have any voice, and we are here trying to be their voice, trying to stop the persecution, nothing else. We are here not for ourselves, not for any other gain or whatever, just to stop the brutal persecution.”
To raise awareness about what they say is a genocide, Falun Gong practitioners erected a wall of posters and photographs of their persecuted counterparts in China along the consulate fence in 2001.
