Slovakia: 'Million Signatures' Petition Receives Media Attention in Western and Middle Slovakia

From Monday July 21st to Saturday July 26th, a 'million signatures' petition campaign took place in western and middle Slovakia, with the goal of informing more people about persecution of Falun Gong in China and about the recent activity to stop it. These signatures will be used by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) to address the IOC and various NGOs to raise awareness about persecution of Falun Gong in China and bring it to an end.

We visited six middle-sized cities: Trnava, Nitra, Prievidza, Martin, Zilina, Kysucke Nove Mesto. With the exception of Martin, in all of the cities a local TV reporter or a reporter from the local newspaper inquired about our tour. Some people told us that they know about the petition from the news.

An interesting case happened in the city of Martin. A woman with her daughter went by and the mother, after learning the facts, signed the petition. Then she walked away with her child. However, after a few minutes they returned and the small child eight years old requested to sign the petition. We asked her if she knows what is it about and she said she knows it very clearly, as her mother explained it to her. So she signed our petition in big letters she was not experienced in writing yet.

In Zilina a woman and her teenage daughter went around our petition desk. We asked her to sign our petition in support of Falun Gong. She said she is willing to support us, as she visited the Gala performance earlier this year and there were scenes of the persecution in the performance, which she remembers well. In one day in Zilina, more then 500 signatures were added to our petition. A reporter from a local newspaper said she remembers us from previous years.

More then 2000 people signed the petition in one week, which makes altogether about 2960 signatures on the million signatures campaign from Slovakia. There were many signatures from people over seventy years old and also quite many from youngsters. Their occupations were varying, from students, workers, reporters, soldiers, waiters, teachers, businessmen, managers, sales women, coaches, to managers and a lot of other professions. Many people carried a gift from our petition tour, a small paper lotus flower, which was made by practitioners in Taiwan and Slovak practitioners received them shortly before the tour.