Finland: Member of European Parliament Calls for Support for Falun Gong

The 12th World Village Festival in Helsinki was held on May 28 and 29. Local Falun Gong practitioners have participated in this event every year to raise awareness. This year, Ms. Heidi Hautala, a Member of European Parliament (MEP) and the chair of its Subcommittee on Human Rights, was invited by the organiser to give a speech, in which she called for support for Falun Gong practitioners who are being persecuted in China.

Tens of thousands people come to the World Village Festival every year. It is one of the largest community events in Finland. Falun Gong practitioners demonstrated the exercises, prompting many tourists to stop and ask for information about learning Falun Gong.

Demonstrating the exercises	People stopping for information at the Falun Gong booth	Signing a petition calling for an end to the persecution

Ms. Heidi Hautala interviews Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Lu Shiping during her talk

Ms. Hautala and the audience learn the Falun Gong exercises

The invited speaker, Ms. Heidi Hautala, interviewed Falun Gong practitioner, Ms. Lu Shiping, on the stage.

Ms. Lu briefly introduced Falun Gong, and told her story of being tortured in China. She was arrested four times because she refused to renounce Falun Gong. She was jailed in Wanjia Labour Camp in Harbin, where she was badly tortured. “I was hung up onto a window frame, and was beaten with electric batons. I was jailed in a 4.5' by 7.5' small cell without a window for three months,” said Ms. Lu.

Ms. Hautala said in her speech that Falun Gong is the largest group among all the groups that have been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party. She said the European Parliament should hold special hearings on Falun Gong issues, because the communist party has been persecuting them systematically while maliciously slandering the practice and labelling practitioners as “public enemies.” She said that the European Parliament must speak out for Falun Gong practitioners, and that they are beneficial to Chinese society.

After her speech, Ms. Heidi Hautala learned to do the Falun Gong exercises along with the audience.