"It's absolutely magical," said Armène Stakian, a professional violinist, who obtained a Premier Prix de Virtuosité from the Geneva Conservatory of Music followed by a Premier Prix and Diplôme Supérieur, from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. She was full of praise for the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts debut performance held Tuesday evening at the Théâtre du Léman in Geneva, September 29.

Mr. Eric Leyvraz, president of the Grand Council of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, attended the performance of the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts at Théâtre du Léman in Geneva on Tuesday along with his wife. Mr. Leyvraz said the show was so fantastic that they did not feel the passage of time. "The artists are first class, really it is fantastic," he said, adding that show is a "high quality" performance.

On July 21st, 2009, Swedish Daily, the third largest newspaper in Sweden, carried an article entitled “The Meditation Against Suppression” to cover the candlelight vigil at the Chinese Embassy organised by Swedish Falun Gong practitioners to commemorate the thousands of Falun Gong practitioners killed by the communist regime in China.

Danish practitioners toured eight major cities to introduce Falun Gong to more people across the country. Wherever they went they received the support of local people and media. This article features a report from the newspaper Herning Folkeblad.

"Falun Dafa Associations around the world have sent governments in 41 country an appeal to support "the most significant human rights issue of the 21st century”. The announcement from the Associations states that former Chinese state leader Jiang Zemin considered the large group of practitioners as a personal threat. Regardless of opposition from the Central Committee of the Communist Party, he decided to stop this large group of people."

In an article dated August 1, 2009, the established French newspaper Le Monde denounced the increasingly violent repression of lawyers in China who dare to defend Falun Gong practitioners and other victims of the Chinese regime's blind violence.

'Xiong Wei spent two years in a Chinese labour camp. In Prague for a July 20 exhibition and candlelight vigil commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the Chinese government's banning of Falun Gong, Xiong recounted her experiences that quickly took her from work in Germany to a daylight kidnapping on the streets of Beijing.'

A Streatham Common woman whose parents fled China after they were tortured for their religious beliefs is fighting to raise the profile of their struggle and that of millions of others. Youyan Li and her parents practise Falun Gong – a Buddhist practice acclaimed for its healing powers – followed by an estimated 70 million people in China and millions others across the globe.

In order to let more people know about the persecution and help stop the CCP's atrocities, Falun Gong practitioners in the Netherlands held a series of activities in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague. A popular newspaper published a large photo of Falun Gong practitioners doing the exercises at Dam Square.

An exhibition on the Falun Gong Chinese spiritual movement was opened in Prague centre on Wenceslas Square Saturday within a series of events marking the 10th anniversary of the Falun Gong persecution in China.

A PROTEST was held yesterday outside the Chinese embassy in Dublin by the Irish Falun Dafa Association to mark 10 years of a Chinese government ban on the Falun Gong spiritual movement... Yesterday's protest was preceded by a rally in Dublin city centre on Saturday and a candlelit vigil held outside the embassy on Sunday night.

Adherents are still being arrested, mistreated and sent to labour camps in large numbers. Ten years after China launched a brutal persecution of the Falun Gong religion, its followers are still being arrested, mistreated and sent to labour camps in large numbers.

The men from China's national security brigades came for Natalie Qiao's parents at 10pm on 8 June. Five young men in plain clothes bundled the elderly couple into an unmarked car. Ten years after the prohibition on Falun Gong was ordered by China's former leader Jiang Zemin, commencing a brutal crackdown on its adherents, believers such as Qiao's parents are still being pursued, despite international protests.

A Chinese woman has spoken of her horror after learning of her parents' arrest and possible torture because of their religious beliefs. "Nathalie", who has lived in England for nine years and in Watford for the past three years, discovered her parents' terrifying fate last week. She says the Chinese authorities are persecuting them because their belief in the Falun Gong religion, which has been banned in China for the last ten years.

Bratislava, June 19 (TASR) - Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) condemn the intervention by Slovak police during protests outside Presidential Palace and demand that police ensure the protection of Slovak citizens and the rule of law, TASR was told on Friday...The organisations added that supporters of the Chinese communist regime and law enforcement forces took complete control of what was going on at Hodza Square, while Slovak police acted only as onlookers of the violence perpetrated by the Chinese (pro-Government) forces.

Bratislava, June 19 (TASR) - According to Martin Pado and Pavol Kubovic from SDKU-DS, Interior Minister Robert Kalinak (Smer-SD) should take part in the extraordinary session of the Defence and Security Parliamentary Committee on Tuesday and talk about the police intervention against demonstrators during the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao in Bratislava on Thursday.

On January 12th, 2009, practitioners in the city of Kyyiv in Ukraine held a “Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance” Painting Exhibition. The exhibition attracted attention from local Ukrainian media. According to the report, if these paintings were publicly displayed in mainland China, the painters risked being killed. The exhibition, however, has been successfully held in some 40 countries and 200 venues. The 22 paintings tell the stories of Falun Gong practitioners who follow the principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance”.

From January 10th - 22nd, 2009, an exhibition entitled the Art of Truth, Compassion and Tolerance was held in Mersin, a city in southern Turkey. It was not only well received by visitors from all walks of life but also attracted attention from some major media. Many local newspapers, magazines and televisions reported on the event before and during the show.

Irish Falun Gong practitioners have written to all members of parliament and senators in Ireland requesting them to ask the Irish Premier to raise the issue of her detention with the Chinese leader Wen Jia Bao when they meet today and to ask for her release. Many MEPs and senators have raised the issue with the Irish premier before he left for his trip to China.

On August 22nd, Italy’s largest daily newspaper Corriere Della Sera published Nino Luca’s article entitled “Chinese free speech, NTDTV broadcast blocked, EU questions Eutelsat”. The article said that the NTDTV broadcast signal to Asia has been blocked since June 16th. For nearly three months, NTDTV's broadcast cannot be seen in the Asian region. It is believed that, through its Ambassador to Italy, the Chinese Communist regime places the pressure on Eutelsat and this resulted in NTDTV broadcast being blocked.

Nord Éclair is one of three major newspapers in Northern France Nord-Pas-De-Calais; it published an article entitled "Two Chinese Youths Petitioned in front of The Commercial Centre in the French City of Calais on August 3rd". The article makes the point that people really need to awaken their conscience. Ordinary Chinese people live a life without freedom of speech, the CCP harvests organs from live practitioners.

On July 9th, 2008, French newspaper "Eastern Republican People" published a series of articles related to Falun Gong being persecuted and tortured in China. It also published a report about the Chairman of the French Falun Gong Association. The full article is reproduced here.

On August 2nd, some two hundred Falun Gong practitioners from Germany and other European countries, along with The German International Human Rights Association held an open-air information day in Stuttgart to protest against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong.

This is the kind of news that the Chinese people can never see in Chinese state-run media. It is obvious that the CCP views NTDTV as a big threat. The CCP has a number of ways to force foreign satellite companies to cooperate with it and participate in its repressions. As Reporters Without Borders exposed, the CCP's CCTV has purchased more than 30 satellite channels, in fact six channels are enough for it to provide 99% coverage of its needs.

Reporters Without Borders calls on Giuliano Berretta, the CEO of the European satellite company Eutelsat, to quickly reverse its decision to suspend independent Chinese-language broadcaster NTDTV's use of Eutelsat's W5 satellite to broadcast to Asia. Eutelsat claims it was forced to suspend NTDTV (New Tang Dynasty Television) on 16 June because of a technical problem but a recorded conversation with an employee of Eutelsat show it was a premeditated, politically-motivated decision violating the free flow of information and the convention under which Eutelsat operates."

On June 9th, a Turkish newspaper published an article entitled “What is Falun Gong?” In this article, the reporter discussed several topics including “What is Falun Gong?” “the principles of truthfulness compassion forbearance”, the five Falun Gong exercises and the spread of Falun Gong around the world.

Loud criticism towards the conduct of the hosts of Olympics 2008 on human rights issues has not been created in a void but is an understandable reaction to unacceptable misuse of power. Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir (the Minister of Education and Sports in Iceland) has the authority to show our symbolic disapproval/denunciation in action by shunning the opening and closing ceramonies at the Olympic Games in Peking in August. For such a decision are valid reasons according to well argumented claims from large number of human rights organisations.

On June 3rd, 2008, Judge Dr. Iannolo of the Rome Criminal Court stated that the Chinese newspaper China Times libeled Falun Gong and that all defendants, including the China Times' director, sponsor and author of the article, committed crimes. Rome Criminal Court ruled that China Times slandered Falun Gong severely through media and committed the crime multiple times. The verdict will be read within sixty days.
The Italian Falun Dafa Association and Mr. Alfredo Fava, Director of the Association, won the case. It was the second case won in initial trial of similar cases for the Italian Falun Dafa Association.

Agency France Presse reported on June 5th that two American congressmen accused the CCP regime of prompting the attack on the New York Falun Gong practitioners. They also appealed to the American government to raise an objection to the CCP. The report says, last month when Falun Gong practitioners were holding a CCP condemnation gathering and distributing flyers they were attacked.Agency France Presse quoted the local police’s words reported by the New York Times newspaper, saying there were six people arrested, three charged with assault offences and others accused of disturbing social order.

With the interdiction in July 1999, the paradise is turned into hell. The 610 office set up by the authorities has one goal; eradicate all these dissidents in the country. “Our bookstore bankrupt, our home ransacked my parents in jail and tortured to death, my brother wanted, I have myself spent two years of forced labour in a place stained with blood”.

The article pointed out the main difficulties the CCP are facing is how to show that it can deal with the situation of the disaster, especially how to respond to the severe criticism of the disaster-stricken people. Decisions to save those in the disaster were made very slowly and areas far from the city only were rescued three days after the earthquake, especially the school buildings of inferior quality, which received much criticism.

China's "genocidal campaign of repression" against a popular religion should result in a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games, a prominent European politician believes. Edward McMillan-Scott, a Conservative MEP, says he believed the Chinese government was carrying out organ harvesting against those in its prisoners. He cites research by UN for special rapporteur Manfred Novak that three-quarters of China's seven million detainees are Falun Gong followers.

"Sixteen years ago, Mr Li Hongzhi spread Falun Gong in Changchun. Falun Gong is good for both body and mind and it is also named Falun Dafa. The Chinese Communist Party launched the large scale persecution of Falun Gong; it was afraid of the popularity of Falun Gong threatening its political power and feared the loss of control of the people’s thoughts and minds."

On May 9th, 2008, The Sound of Germany – according to news from the European Parliament in Brussels, criticised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime for human rights abuses. The report said, “An annual human rights report published by Brussels on Thursday raised concerns that the CCP regime has not kept its promise to improve human rights conditions. Members of the European Parliament cited continued censorship of freedom of speech, of freedom of belief, random arrests of dissidents and the high number of executions".

On May 4th, 2008, Radio France International reported that, "According to AFP (Agence France-Presse), on Saturday there were about 1500 people holding a parade and demonstration at the Chinese Embassy in Brussels to appeal to the CCP government to respect human rights. The parade which was organised by Amnesty International conveyed a message that human rights are not a game and appealed to the CCP government to fulfill the promise in respect of human rights, abolish the death penalty, stop harassing dissidents and stop the blockage of the Internet."

A French magazine called Stunned recently published a five page-long interview with a Falun Gong practitioner in its “Investigation” column. The Falun Gong practitioner interviewed was Ya June, who was tortured in China. Having escaped China on foot a year ago, she and her brother arrived in Paris and obtained asylum status with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Her brother is now living in New York.

The countdown to the Beijing Olympic Games has entered one hundred days and counting. Amnesty International, whose headquarters based in London are continuing an appeal for people to pay attention to China's human rights persecution. They have also started broadcasting an animation on the Internet revealing to those people, prisoners who are suffering from torture by Chinese policemen for their fight for China's human rights and broadcasting the extent of suffering from electric shocks.

The Royal Opera House of Denmark initially planned to stage during Easter a Chinese Spectacular, which is a traditional Chinese cultural show from the US. In December last year, however, under pressure from the Chinese Embassy to Denmark the Royal Opera House cancelled the show.On March 18th, 2008, the largest national TV Station in Denmark, DR, aired a four minute-long news piece at the peak hour of 9 pm entitled “Theatre under pressure from the CCP”, which took the news crew nearly a month to produce, interviewing over eighty people.

On the 26th and 27th of February, 2008, the Chinese Spectacular on tour from the USA successfully held three performances in two days in Antwerp, the second largest city in Belgium, which aroused a great sensation. Many people in Europe, including the European Union officials and celebrities, came and watched this show displaying the splendid culture of the Orient.

On March 1, Divine Performing Arts presented their second show at the grand Palais des Congrès in Paris. It seemed that the gloominess of the previous day had been cleared away by the first show the day before ... The performance elicited thunderous applause from the audience throughout the afternoon.

Targeted attacks with Trojans through e-mail are an important method to spy on political rivals and commercial competitors. The O1-Magazine “Matrix” demonstrated on Sunday, citing Falun Gong as an example, how such attacks take place and how one can protect oneself against them. Maarten Van Horenbeeck is a security consultant with a large IT-firm information technology. He was especially interested in the residual risk that leaves a footprint, although the network has the optimum protection against such attackers.

William Bennett specialises in Baroque music and the contrapuntal fugues of Bach. He drew a parallel between the interweaving patterns of dancers in the Spectacular, and the interwoven melodies of contrapuntal music. "I was very impressed earlier on when a whole lot of orange-robed monks came on slowly and the ladies came on at a completely different speed and they didn't seem to be moving. They were just gliding along, and it was the most wonderful piece of counterpoint."

LONDON—Mr. Li expressed gratitude to the organisers of the Chinese Spectacular, saying he was very moved after attending the show on Saturday night. Mr. Li is originally from China and settled in the United Kingdom only two years ago."Normally the shows in China now are all commercialized and very low level. This show is overall very interesting and is very superior."

Roaring applause filled the halls of one of Britain's premier cultural venues as the Chinese Spectacular opened to a packed audience. Almost every seat in London's Royal Festival Hall was taken as the Divine Performing Arts dance company began its UK leg of their tour. The show [...] will continue till Sunday after a matinee and evening performance on Saturday.

In Frankfurt, known as the European Manhattan, the local media Frankfurt Review, Bulici (Blitz) and Fulici (Frizz) all carried advertisements and detailed introductions in wide coverage about the Gala Spectacular three days before the opening of the performance by the touring company in Frankfurt. The report by Bulici says that the Spectacular leads the audience through the time and space of 5000 years of ancient Chinese culture.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is neglecting its responsibility. At least that’s what Dirk Pleiter, Amnesty International’s China Expert said. He asks that sports officials press China harder concerning adherence to human rights. "We could say that there were a few positive steps. But, overall, we have to say that the progress is very disappointing and still has to go a long way [...] Our concerns about China have barely changed over the past thirty years. Persecution due to political affiliation and religious reasons continues unabatedly. Unfair legal proceeding and the possibility that people face long term prison terms without any legal processes continue".

A month before Shen Yun’s New Year Spectacular in Paris (February 29th, March 1st and 2nd), the largest magazine in France, Femme Actuelle (over 1 million copies per week) devoted a full page and a half to the Shen Yun Spectacular. Emphasising the high artistic quality of the show, the journalist compliments the “astounding” beauty of the choreography, costumes and scenery.

A January 29 article published by Israel National News reported that Rabbi David Druckman, the Chief Rabbi of the northern city of Kiryat Motzkin, issued a recorded statement saying that the Jewish people "must take the lead in condemning China for its murder of prisoners of conscience in order to harvest their organs ... The atrocity is so great,' Rabbi Druckman says on a recently released video, 'that there are simply no words to express it. From a certain standpoint it is even worse than what the Nazis did... to cut organs from people under the cover of medical help for other people is simply astonishing and shocking from every human vantage point.'"

Before the illegal persecution against Falun Gong started in China on July 20th, 1999, Luo Gan, head of the Political and Judiciary Committee, and other officers, used their political power to persecute Falun Gong practitioners and to gain promotions or other benefits. Practitioners have compassionately, peacefully, and rationally tried many ways and many times to explain the facts about Falun Gong to the authorities. However, the persecution of Falun Gong has not stopped.