Germany: High School Students Happy to Learn Falun Gong

The peaceful Falun Gong exercise music made the high school students from Carl-Fridrich-Gauss (CFG) relaxed. More than seventy students and teachers tried to practise the first set of Falun Gong exercises, ‘Buddha stretching a thousand hands’, during breaktime in a class about human rights in China.

Students are absorbed in listening to the China human rights report

This was the first spiritual lesson at the CFG high school. The teacher invited Mr Roemer from the International Human Rights Organisation and Falun Gong practitioner Ms Teng-Schwaegerl to discuss human rights abuses in China, focussing on the Tibetan issue and the persecution against Falun Gong.

Mr Roemer summarised why it is important for youngsters to pay attention to China’s human rights situation in the first place, and he warned everybody that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was a possible threat to the whole world. Meanwhile, being as the CFG is twinned with a school in Shanghai, Mr Roemer pointed out clearly that the CCP does not represent China: Chinese people are very diligent and kind-hearted, China has a long and glorious culture and beautiful landscape but the Communist Party is destroying these.

Teachers presented fresh flowers to Mr Roemer and Ms Teng-Schwaegerl to express their thanks

Ms Teng-Schwaegerl briefly introduced to students how she learned about Falun Gong and her experience since she started to raise awareness about the persecution against the practice. A film called False Fire helped her to understand the truth of Falun Gong so she brought this film to the classroom to let more people see through the CCP’s propaganda and defamation of Falun Gong practitioners. After showing the film, Ms Teng-Schwaegerl also added, "Falun Gong practitioners in China have succeeded in showing this film on Chinese TV [by intercepting the official broadcasts], but some Falun Gong practitioners, such as Chengjun Liu, were killed because of this."

In the end Ms Teng, the teachers and students shared their experiences of how to behave at home after learning Falun Gong and following the practice's guiding principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance.