Australia: Explaining the Truth about Falun Gong and the Persecution in China to a Western Diplomat Who Works in Beijing

A golden opportunity to tell the truth to a Westerner who works in an Embassy in China presented itself last night while we were handing out information to Mainland Chinese tourists, at a spot where busloads of visitors come to walk on the beach.

The lady approached me asking why we keep trying to give the Mainland Chinese information, and what information we were giving to them. She stated, "You people are everywhere doing this round the world. I see you in Germany just the same as here. Why do you do this"? She said that even she receives materials from us via her email and she didn't understand why.

I told her about the immense scale of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China and how the propaganda in China deceives many Mainland Chinese, and that all we are doing is telling people the facts. We voluntarily come here to give Chinese tourists an opportunity to understand the reality of the horrific torture of practitioners who merely practise exercises and try to become better people in the community by incorporating "Truth, Compassion and Forbearance" into their lives.

I also shared Australian citizen Nancy Chen's recent experience of being followed and then kidnapped while visiting her parents and friends in China. It was only through the intervention of the Australian Government and its Embassy in China that procured Nancy's release. I also shared the experience of the Mainland practitioner tortured with 13 deep burns to his legs, who escaped into Hong Kong and quickly became a stowaway on a ship to the USA, where he was found in ill health on the streets and was immediately rescued and taken for treatment to a hospital.

I shared with her my own experiences with Falun Gong, the changes in my health and wellbeing with no need to visit acupuncturists or massage therapists anymore. Also the large-scale health surveys in China showing how nearly all practitioners had dramatic improvements in their health.

Another statement she made was, "But it's political, for the Chinese in China anyway. They break into the TV stations and disrupt broadcasts. You are a big organization. You quickly have people here, there, everywhere. A group even came to Tiananmen Square from overseas." She mentioned "Your big organization" several times and how all this material is expensive.

I shared that we do not have any organization as such and that we communicate via our emails round the world, while the materials we hand out are paid for by individual practitioners with the resources available to them to do so. She listened very intently to details of the so-called self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square, which she remembered. I was able to show her photos and explain how it was staged like a movie production, which is very clear on the deconstruction video.

She now understands that we are not political inside or outside of China and that governments and even local Councillors are supporting Falun Gong in efforts to have practitioners released from China, especially family members of practitioners round the world.

This lady tried to access our website in China and only managed to type in 'Falun' before her Internet connection was shut down for the next few hours. She carefully folded our flyer and put it into her handbag and said she will look up the website when she is next in Germany. As I talked with this lady, some of the Mainland Chinese she was on tour with hovered round listening to every word. When it was time to go, she thanked me profusely, departing with a very different perception of Falun Gong than when she arrived. She now understood better why we are everywhere around the world handing information to the Mainland Chinese.

This whole experience, for me, made it crystal clear how enormous the propaganda in Mainland China is. For a Westerner to work for a number of years in an Embassy in China but still be blind to the persecution of millions of people who live there is a statement in itself. It is not difficult to imagine how many people need us to tell them the truth. So, let's "hurry up the tell them" [This is the name of an article from the founder of Falun Gong, Master Li Hongzhi].