Finland: Celebrating Falun Dafa Day in Helsinki

On the 10th May 2003, Finnish Dafa practitioners gathered together in Helsinki Central Park to celebrate World Falun Dafa Day. The weather was very sunny and many people were sitting in the park or passing by. Throughout the day, practitioners demonstrated the Falun Dafa exercises, and talked to people about their own experiences and benefits from practising it. Hearing about the brutal treatment of practitioners in Mainland China, people showed their support by wishing good luck to the practitioners and by signing our petition calling for an end to the persecution. Practitioners handed out flyers about the lawsuit against former Chinese leader Jiang, who is responsible for the persecution of Falun Gong since 1999, and about the SARS- epidemic, which shows clearly how the Chinese regime, under Jiang Zemin, has risked the lives of millions of innocent people worldwide by covering up the truth. This is similar in some ways to how the Jiang regime has covered up its persecution against Falun Gong over the past four years, blatantly lying to the world and endangering the lives of countless innocent people.

Between the exercise demonstrations, there was a short pause and some people responded to the pause by asking us to continue to practise and to play the exercise music again. With beautiful Chinese music echoing in the air, and practitioners performing the gentle, relaxing movements, it gave onlookers a chance to see the peaceful and compassionate nature of Falun Dafa. We also had many colourful Falun Dafa balloons for decoration, which said "Falun Dafa is good" on one side and "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance" on the other. One mother saw that her child was interested in the balloons and told her "Those words Truth, Compassion and Tolerance are wonderful things that we all need."

After the activities some practitioners went to the Chinese embassy to send forth righteous thoughts.