LOS ANGELES—About 200 adherents of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong held a candlelight vigil in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on April 23 to mourn the deaths of practitioners subjected to brutal persecution in China.
“Today, every year, we will always remember,” Dr. Youfu Li, president of the U.S. Southwest Falun Dafa Association, said at the vigil.
This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the peaceful petition of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners on April 25, 1999.
On that day, practitioners lined the streets of the Central Appeals Office in Beijing to call on the Chinese communist regime to end its arrests and harassment of Falun Gong practitioners.
“Falun Gong practitioners used a peaceful and rational way that no one had ever seen at that time,” Li said.
The petition was in response to the arrests of Falun Gong practitioners in Tianjin—China’s fourth-largest city, located east of Beijing.
From April 18–24, 1999, some practitioners went to Tianjin’s government agencies to clarify the truth about a recent article published in a college paper slandering Falun Gong.
But during this time, the Public Security Bureau of Tianjin dispatched riot police to beat up the Falun Gong practitioners who had come to appeal, resulting in injuries to the practitioners and arrests of 45 people.
Calling for their release, supporters of the detained practitioners were told at Tianjin City Hall to go to Beijing to appeal, since the Public Security Bureau got involved.
Fangheng Ou had personally experienced what became known as the April 25 Incident.
“At that time, everyone went to Beijing voluntarily,” Ou told The Epoch Times. “My thinking was ‘I want to safeguard [Falun Dafa] and maintain the dignity of [Falun Dafa].’”
Ou, a former senior engineer from a city northeast of Beijing, Shenyang, said when he started to practice Falun Gong in April 1996, he thought “Falun Dafa is really good.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditation practice based on a moral philosophy of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Ou said that before going to Beijing to appeal, everyone was mentally prepared.
“There are two possibilities for this trip: one may be to arrest you, and the other may be to solve the problem. No matter what kind of situation, it can’t stop us from going to Beijing to petition,” he said.
Recalling the scene at that time, Ou said that when they arrived in Beijing on the morning of April 25, 1999, everyone was quiet.
“At this time, the roadside was full of people, so we went down and sat down in order, reading and meditating. If you were hungry at noon, everyone would buy something to eat in the small shop,” he said.
He said all Falun Gong practitioners at the scene were waiting quietly from the morning until night.
“Everyone is just waiting. What are they waiting for? Waiting for the national leaders to meet them,” he said.
During the peaceful petition, Falun Gong practitioners made three requests: release all Falun Gong practitioners arrested by Tianjin police, allow Falun Gong books to be published, and provide Falun Gong practitioners with a legal environment to practice.
At around 9 p.m., everyone heard that the matter had been resolved, Ou said.
“Everyone was very happy and said that they could go back,” he said, adding that everyone picked up trash and other garbage on the roadside on their way out.
Soon after, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fabricated the incident as a “siege” had taken place, but there was no such thing, Ou said.
“The armed police occasionally whispered to each other, and after a long time, they also felt that they didn’t need to watch when we sat there. There was no conflict. Everyone was calm,” he said.
Practitioners have been detained, tortured, forced into slave labor, and subjected to immense pressure and “reeducation” for refusing to give up their beliefs. An untold number of Falun Gong practitioners have died as a result of torture or forced organ harvesting.
“This is a heinous crime against humanity that must be stopped as soon as possible,” Dr. Dana Churchill, the U.S. West Coast delegate of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, said at the rally.
Two Decades of Peaceful Resistance
When night fell, Falun Gong practitioners in Los Angeles held up candles to silently mourn the Falun Gong practitioners who were brutally persecuted to death by the CCP.
Because the CCP strictly controls information regarding the Falun Gong persecution, this number is just the tip of the iceberg, said Michael Ye, adjunct associate professor in Economics at the University of Southern California and the host of the rally.
“Falun Gong practitioners’ defense of freedom of belief is also defending the freedom and belief of the Chinese people. Their adherence to ‘Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance’ is also adhering to the core values and spirit of the Chinese nation and even the world civilization,” Ye said.
Now nearly 400 million Chinese people have quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations, according to the New York-based Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party.
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