Poland: Practitioners Participate in 3 Human Rights Film Festivals and Witness the Importance and Magnificence of Fa Study

In December 2002, an international human rights organization - the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights - organized a film festival on the theme “Human Rights in Film”. One of the feature films was Danny Schechter’s documentary “Falun Gong’s Challenge to China”, which is a telling exposé of the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution practitioners face in China. In addition to running an information stand, practitioners were invited to give a brief talk to the audience and personally introduce the film. The festival was a great success. Since then, the film festival has been held in 3 other Polish cities (Toruñ, Czêstochowa and Kielce). Practitioners were invited to take part in all of them and distributed materials, talked to the media and explained the facts to members of the audience.

At all 3 festivals, practitioners were allotted a period of time after the film to hold a panel discussion and take questions from the audience. In each case, the discussion lasted approximately 1 hour. The film about Falun Gong was always well-attended, the interaction with the audience was animated and the support and sympathy exhibited towards Dafa was touching.

On June 4, in the City of Kielce, we were joined by special guests for the panel discussion – Australian practitioner Jane Dai and her 3-year-old daughter Fadu. Jane talked about the persecution she and her family faced in China for practising Falun Gong and, as she is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Jiang Zemin in the US and Switzerland, she talked about the lawsuit, its importance and its implications. Jane and one of the Polish practitioners were interviewed at length by a major local radio station and information about the persecution was carried in the printed media as well. Furthermore, when the festival organizer was interviewed on live radio and asked to give details of the festival program, he briefly introduced the guests and the films, and the remaining time he devoted to the issue of the persecution of Falun Gong and expressed his strong support for the cause.

Jane stayed in Poland for 3 weeks and in that time she met with the media, government officials and organized numerous peaceful appeals in front of the Chinese embassy in Warsaw, both to clarify the facts about the persecution and to support the lawsuit against Jiang. For the first peaceful appeal only two media came. One, however, was Poland's largest newspaper. The article was prominent, positive and the picture exuded the determination of practitioners facing history’s most brutal persecution.

Practitioners felt that the media turnout at the first appeal was not satisfactory, so we reflected and shared, concluding that we hadn't done well enough overall. We thus decided to double our efforts in sending forth righteous thoughts, diligently studying the Fa, sharing experiences, truly collaborating together to improve our performance as one body, and continuing to contact the media and government officials with persistence.

Eventually, our determination not to lose this precious opportunity paid off - after we studied the Fa [teachings of Falun Dafa] together we would discuss the plans for the following day, and thanks to Fa study our wisdom ebbed forth and we became clear on how we should proceed. Our harmony together improved too thanks to our study. For example, it became natural that as one practitioner would talk to the media, the others would send forth righteous thoughts for support, and the results got better and better.

Overall, the following are some of what was accomplished thanks to our focusing on Fa study and always holding ourselves to the standard of the Fa: a good article in Gazeta Wyborcza, the biggest national newspaper in Poland and a follow up article in their weekend magazine; a spot on the evening news (it ran twice) on one of the most-watched television stations, Polsat; a picture and caption in Metropol, Warsaw's best-read newspaper; a lengthy in-depth interview on Poland's main public radio station, Polskie Radio; an article in Warsaw Voice, a weekly English-language magazine; an article on the PAP (Polish Press Agency) news service website; an interview on Radio Eska; an article and published interview on the O.S.K.A. website (a women's issues NGO); and finally, a long letter from the practitioners to the people of Skierniewice published in Glos Skierniewic, the biggest newspaper in the city of Skierniewice.

We realize that time is very precious. Opportunities, once gone, may never come again. The opportunity to step out and safeguard the Fa is a great honor, which we must take seriously and do our utmost to fully meet the standard both in personal cultivation and Fa-rectification.