Czech Republic: Nine Years After the April 25 Appeal, Falun Dafa Practitioners Protest at the Prague Chinese Embassy

Czech practitioners of Falun Gong protested in front of the Chinese Embassy in Prague to peacefully call for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of their fellow practitioners. The date was set to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the April 25 Appeal and also to draw attention to escalation of the persecution in China during the run-up to the Olympics.

The April 25th appeal in 1999 was notable not only for its size, but also because it was remarkably peaceful and orderly. Some 10,000 practitioners gathered in central Beijing that day, peacefully protesting for their civil rights. The CCP propaganda machine, however, in its quest to crush Falun Gong at the bidding of then Party Chairman Jiang Zemin, twisted the facts to serve its own motives. To this day, CCP propaganda accuses Falun Gong of "laying seige to the Zhongnanhai Central Government Compound" on April 25, 1999, falsely alleging that the 10,000 gathered posed a violent threat to the nation and its leaders.

Since the beginning of 2007, there have been 171 documented cases of Falun Gong practitioners being killed in the CCP’s persecution, and almost 2,000 arrests have happened so far this year. Since former Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang has been quoted as saying that the country must "strike hard at hostile forces at home and abroad, such as ethnic separatists, religious extremists, violent terrorists and … the Falun Gong" in order to ensure the success of the Olympics, it seems perfectly clear that the last wave of persecution is actually part of the Olympic “preparations”.

“We hope that rising pressure of public opinion and better insight in facts about the persecution by governments and, more importantly, by the Chinese public, will help end the persecution as soon as possible,” noted one participant at the Prague’s event.