NEW YORK—Nearly 10,000 people from 53 countries gathered near the United Nations at Dag Hammarskjold Park on May 13, in a rally supporting Tuidang, a large grassroots movement in which Chinese people renounce their affiliation or support with the Chinese Communist Party.
“China, without communism, is good for the stability of the Chinese society and the peace of the world,” said Yi Rong, organizer of the rally and president of the Tuidang Center, a non-profit organization that solicits and catalogues the renunciation statements. “This rally is to support those who have cut ties with the Chinese regime.”
In addition to Yi Rong, the rally featured speeches by Alan Adler, chair of Friends of Falun Gong, and Manyan Ng of the German International Human Rights Association. A Taiwanese human rights lawyer and the heads of the Falun Dafa Associations in both Taiwan and Hong Kong also spoke. Falun Dafa, most commonly known as Falun Gong, is a traditional Chinese practice of meditation; the Associations of the practice in various countries are voluntary groups that coordinate the public activities of practitioners.
The movement to quit, or renounce, the Chinese Communist Party, called ‘Tuidang’ in Chinese, began shortly after the Chinese-language Epoch Times published the editorial series “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.” The series aimed to shed light on the use of violence and propaganda as key tools of Party rule since the founding of the regime.
