Bringing Falun Gong to Estonia

A Western practitioner from Canada

In response to an invitation from President Lennart Meri, through the Foreign Affairs Department, a Falun Gong practitioner from Canada, along with practitioners from Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Russia went to visit Estonia in September 2001. The purpose of the trip was to share the benefits that Falun Gong can bring to the people of Estonia as well as to raise awareness of the plight of Falun Gong practitioners in China where the practice is being brutally persecuted.

(September 12, 2001) This morning we demonstrated the Falun Gong exercises on Estonian State TV's Breakfast Television! It went very well - I explained the exercises as two practitioners from Sweden and one from Finland went through the movements. The interviewer was a lovely person. I was able also to explain that the teachings of living according to Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance are more important than the exercises and that everything aims to transform a person from the inside to the outside.

A little later in the programme, they interviewed a teacher of religious studies. They showed some of our videotape of practitioners being brutally arrested and thrown into police vans in Tiananmen Square. He was very sympathetic and explained how it was the Chinese regime that did not agree with the practice and how Falun Dafa is not an organization of any kind but a spiritual movement.

In another hour, a different TV station will film us doing and teaching the exercises in one of the main downtown parks. It will be an item on the most popular prime time news magazine for TV3. Then we move on to Latvia for a press conference in Riga tomorrow.

Yesterday, one practitioner and I met with the lady who is in charge of the conference centre at the National Library. She has studied yoga for the last three years and is very interested to know more about Falun Dafa. I presented the Library with copies of Zhuan Falun, Falun Gong, and the CD of the music on behalf of Canadian practitioners. She accepted very gratefully and agreed that many people in Estonia will be very interested to learn.