Press Conference in Gothenburg

On Friday 23 November a press conference was held with four Falun Gong practitioners in Gothenburg. Those four practitioners (Pirjo Svensson, Yvonne Kleberg, Roland Odar and Martin Larsson) from Sweden participated in the peaceful manifestation in Tiananmen Square, on Tuesday. Also present were a journalist from a news agency and a Finnish freelance journalist, as well as two photographers. Several Falun Gong practitioners from Gothenburg were there to welcome home the four practitioners.

The four practitioners sat in front on a stage beside a big, recently-developed photo of the manifestation which was taken only minutes before the police arrived. On the stage there was also a big poster of Zhao Ming, an exchange student who was arrested when he travelled to China and who is still being detained under terrible conditions.

A practitioner from the Falun Gong Information Center in Sweden began the conference by welcoming everybody and then handed over to another practitioner who then read out a statement from the Nordic Falun Dafa Association. It was then the four practitioners’ turn. The atmosphere was open and the practitioners spoke from their hearts about their experiences in China. They told those present why they had gone there and spoke about the brutal way in which the police had treated them.

Pirjo said that many people had seen them meditating in the square before the police came in their minibuses which they parked to form a wall around them to prevent people from seeing them. Thereafter the police violently arrested them, one by one, and took them into the buses. Finally Pijo was also dragged into a bus. Inside the bus one of the policemen pressed her neck down and leaned the upper part of his body against it during the trip to the police station. Pirjo said that it felt like her neck was going to break.

Roland added that it was like the most horrifying horror film; he thought he would be beaten to death by the policemen in the bus. He explained how the policemen had stamped on his head and how they had beaten him with their fists in his face and on his body. The policemen were totally brainwashed and totally lacked respect for other people. One of the policemen said that Falun Gong practitioners are not worth anything.

Furthermore, Martin spoke about the way in which several policemen had assaulted him when he was alone with them in a room. They tried, amongst other things, to take photos of him and to force him to sign a document in which everything was in Chinese. They beat him and held him in a stranglehold when he disobeyed them. The practitioners said that the police tried to take photos of several of them but that they had resisted and refused to let them do so. They knew that the pictures would probably be used as propaganda against Falun Gong.

In answer to the question of how they planned proceed in the future, Yvonne answered that the importance of exposing the truth about what is happening in China had become even clearer to her. She said she would do all she could to expose the evil. The others added that the role of politicians and the media in this matter is important. Yvonne also said that she wanted to address an urgent request to the Swedish media to be careful about what they wrote. That what they wrote had a direct effect on the Falun Gong practitioners in China. One of the photographers wondered if there was material in the form of, for example, photos of those who had been killed during the persecution. A practitioner said that the persecution was well documented on the Clear Wisdom web site.

In addition, a practitioner spoke about Friends of Falun Gong, a non-political organization in support of the Falun Gong practitioners in China. After the conference the reporters interviewed the four practitioners and the photographers took pictures of them together with the photo from Tiananmen Square.