Austria: Practitioners Commemorate Six Years the Lives Lost in Six Years of Persecution

On July 20th 2005, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution against Falun Gong practitioners entered its seventh year. Austrian practitioners gathered in Vienna’s Stephansplatz ( Stephan’s square) to commemorate the victims of the brutal persecution and to let the Austrian people know about the human rights abuses that have been happening to Falun Gong practitioners in China every day since July 20th 1999.

An anti-torture exhibition showed two of the torture methods employed by Chinese Communist officials in their attempts to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their beliefs. When Jiang Zemin started the persecution against Falun Gong, he issued three key methods to persecute Falun Gong practitioners: destroy them physically, bankrupt them financially and ruin their reputations. As well as the first directive being fulfilled through torture and abuse, the Chinese Communist Party has carried out Jiang’s other directives over the last six years using the state-controlled media as a propaganda tool to turn the Chinese people against Falun Gong. This in turn made it difficult for practitioners to have jobs and live normal lives, leaving them with no money and in very difficult situations. The CCP has also extorted enormous sums of money from practitioners and their families.

Passersby ask about the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong in China...	...and sign the petition calling for an end to the persecution
Large displays depicted oil paintings of practitioners	Many people heard about the persecution in Vienna’s downtown

Practitioners show Falun Gong’s peaceful exercises

During the past six years, practitioners have followed Falun Gong’s principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance and have continued in their tireless campaigns of peaceful resistance in the face of the human rights atrocities inflicted upon them.

Here in the west, we have the right to religious freedom, freedom of expression and the right to bring injustice before the courts of a given country. Such freedom does not exist for the citizens of China. Therefore, many have filed lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, the initiator of the persecution, and his henchmen in many European countries, the Americas and in Australia.

The situation has turned for the better because of practitioners’ efforts worldwide, and the support by all levels of society. Such improvement is because the people of the world have seen through the lies of the CCP propaganda and are lifting their voices in unison to call for an end to the persecution. As long as this persecution has not come to an end, we will continue our efforts to make a difference to the victims in China and give voice to the practitioners held in prisons, slave labour camps or re-education camps.

Originally published in German at http://www.clearharmony.de/articles/200507/25391.html