NEW YORK—Drums and flutes sounded as the band warmed up. Dressed in blue and white, the Divine Land Marching Band led more than 4,000 people in a parade in Manhattan on Saturday.
The participants came from more than 70 countries to call for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
“We came here to support human rights. We can’t just be silent,” said Miatra Miraftabi, a middle-aged woman who is visiting New York from Iran.
Falun Gong practitioners are thought to account for 66 percent of the torture victims in the prisons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to a 2007 report from the U.N. The U.S. Department of State also said in a 2007 annual report that foreign observers estimate Falun Gong practitioners constitute at least half of the known prisoners in the Chinese regime’s forced labor camps.
Other reports and witnesses have shown evidence that in addition to using torture and forced labor on Falun Gong practitioners, the CCP also uses them as living sources for organ transplants.
“This is the most brutal human rights abuse through history until now and it must end,” Mriaftabi said.
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