Practitioners of Different Nationalities Share Experiences at the 2003 European Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference

The 2003 European Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference was successfully held in the beautiful city of Geneva, Switzerland on March 16. Over one thousand Dafa practitioners representing over 40 countries gathered in Geneva to share their experiences in cultivating Falun Dafa and expose the Jiang regime’s persecution of Falun Gong.

Martin from Poland	Iranian practitioner Ms. Gulli	Spanish practitioner Mr. Carlos Iglesias

In their opening remarks, Falun Gong practitioners reviewed the progress since the first European Fa-conference in 1998 and experiences gained through the last three and a half years of activities to appeal against the persecution. They also expressed their wholehearted thanks to those people, government officials and human rights organisations around the world that have supported Falun Gong.

The first practitioner that came to the stage to give a paper was Martin from Poland. After he saw someone revealing that Falun Gong was a good cultivation way in an internet voice chatroom, he downloaded Zhuan Falun [the main text of Falun Dafa] from the internet and start practising Falun Gong. Through his personal experience he felt that exposing Jiang regime’s lies is extremely important and he has been positively participating in various activities opposing the persecution.

The second speech was given by Israel's Tanya, who is originally from Russia. Before she started practising Falun Gong, she had cancer and many of her organs had to be removed. When she was critically ill, a nurse introduced Falun Gong to her. She felt it was as if she had found a treasure. After she started practising Falun Gong, her cancer was cured. Tanya had been to Beijing's Tiananmen Square by herself to appeal against the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners who just follow the principle of “Truth-Compassion-Tolerance” and tell people Falun Gong is good. She said, "Nobody can stop me." She introduced Falun Dafa to a small town in Israel. Many Chinese she met there soon understood that Falun Gong is truly good.

Ms. Gulli was born in Iran. She had a rough life before she began practising Falun Gong. She was abandoned when she was 13 by her parents so she left Iran for Sweden. She felt Falun Gong was wonderful so she translated the books Zhuan Falun and Falun Gong [introductory text of Falun Gong] into Iranian. The books are distributed all over Iran with authorisation of the Iranian government. She stayed in Iran for half a year to voluntarily teach Falun Gong and established practice sites in many parks. Now many areas in Iran have people practising Falun Gong.

Carlos Iglesias is a young lawyer from Spain who just started practising Falun Gong two months ago. He was very weak before he practised Falun Gong and had had two serious operations. Two months ago he learned about Falun Gong at a health expo. Falun Gong answered many of his lifelong questions. He could not understand how such a wonderful cultivation practice could be persecuted by the Chinese government and appealed to the international society to help stop the suppression.

Dana from Romania also shared her experiences. Dana began to practise Falun Dafa in July 2001. She narrated how she overcame many difficulties to appeal for Falun Gong by herself in front of the Chinese Embassy in Romania.

Zhao Rong from Germany told how he eliminated attachments to fame and fortune during a busy period of writing a scientific paper and finally graduated with outstanding grades.

Katherine from Switzerland shared her experience in making phone calls to China to clarify the truth with compassion. She overcame language barriers and asked practitioners to translate her letter to Chinese people into Chinese and then personally transcribed the letter with sincerity and sent it to Chinese people. She spent 11 days writing this letter. She also talked about how to adjust her relationship with her husband and son to make her family more happy and peaceful.

Ms. Wang Xianghe from Holland held her brother's photograph and told a vivid testimony of the persecution several of her family members had suffered. Jane Dai who had testified at a forum on persecuted women during last March’s UN World Human Rights Convention once again came to Geneva with her daughter. She will tell more people the experience of brutal persecution her family has suffered and her husband’s death due to the Chinese police’s brutality.

In order to appeal to China to stop the persecution, every year since 2000 practitioners from all corners of the world gather in Geneva to appeal to the United Nations and various countries' governments and non-governmental organisations. This year is the fourth year. Every series of appeals in front of UN start with a daylong experience sharing conference.