Polish Groups Give Olympics Alternative Opening Ceremony

Over 500 people, according to police estimates, gathered on Friday evening at an Alternative Opening to the Olympic Games event in front of the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw, Poland.

Corporal Ignacy Skowron, 95 year old survivor of the war said that it was worthwhile to fight and suffer to see the day of freedom. Maria Salzman/The Epoch Times

WARSAW—Over 500 people, according to police estimates, gathered on Friday evening at an Alternative Opening to the Olympic Games event in front of the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw, Poland.

The theme of the event was “China, Wake up!” bringing together a variety of different groups concerned that the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games would whitewash China human rights concerns.

“Chinese people, we love you,” said Tomasz Kowalski, President of the Falun Dafa Association of Poland, in Polish and Chinese. He explained that Falun Gong practitioners are in solidarity with the people of China, and certainly not against the Olympics.

Event organizers invited practitioners to demonstrate the Falun Gong exercises to the crowd as a stark contrast to contemporary Chinese reality, where doing the movements is likely to land a person in a ‘re-education’ center, labor camp, or prison. Thousands of practitioners have been tortured and killed while refusing to renounce Falun Gong while in detention.

The event was organized by The Other Space Foundation, Save Tibet, and the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR).