France: Introducing Falun Dafa on Sainte-Lucie Island in the Caribbean

Sainte-Lucie is a small English-speaking island located to the south of Martinique Island on the Caribbean Sea. There are many Embassies and Consulates on the island, including a Chinese Embassy.

A few practitioners from Guadeloupe decided to visit Sainte-Lucie to introduce Falun Dafa to people there and also to expose the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Because we didn’t know any local practitioners, we prepared a lot of information materials to be given to government offices, Embassies and the media.

On the first day, we went to the Venezuelan Embassy and were warmly received by a female assistant. We introduced Falun Dafa to her. After she learned that there are Falun Dafa practitioners in Venezuela too, she immediately expressed her interest to practise Falun Gong and said to us, “As soon as I saw you, I had a feeling I wanted to try it out.”

After that we went to the centre of Castries, the capital of Sainte-Lucie, to look for the Jamaican Consulate. In fact the Consul is of Chinese descent but born in Jamaica. He very politely received us in his office. He did not seem to know Falun Gong, and listened to our introduction very carefully. Then he expressed his personal opinion, ”From my personal point of view, I don’t believe in religion and I have my own way of life. But if it doesn’t affect my freedom, I respect the belief of other people. I think China should not delay its real reform. China made some progress economically. But it should not leave it too late to make progress in respecting human rights.” We told him that Falun Gong practitioners follow the universal principle of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance. In the course of appealing to end the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, practitioners have always been peaceful. The Consul asked us to be courageous and wished us luck. At the same time, he also thanked us for visiting him and providing him with relevant materials.

In order to find out about the situations of different media, we went to the main library in the city. A lady in the reception kindly received us and provided us with the addresses of some local media. There was a bookcase behind her displaying magazines, including English editions of some Chinese magazines. It was very surprising. We asked her how come the library had so many Chinese magazines and newspapers. She said the Chinese Embassy sent them to the library every month. We asked her if we could leave some Falun Gong booklets on the library bookcase. We specifically described to her the persecution of Falun Gong in China. She happily agreed.

We went to a bookshop in Sainte-Lucie with the purpose of passing them the publication (ISBN) number of the English edition of Zhuan Falun [the main text of Falun Dafa] because when we were giving out leaflets quite a few people asked where they could find the book. The person in charge wrote down the publication number and said if people came to ask for it, she would order it.

We went to introduce Falun Gong to a female official in the city government. She also accepted a few booklets to be displayed in the reception area. We also left her a complete information package and asked her to pass it to the Mayor of the city.

On our way, we went to a clinic where there were many people. Everyone was happy to get a Falun Gong booklet. A little girl took quite a few copies and said she wanted to pass them to other people in the clinic. We gave her mother a Video-CD and the girl was so happy.

We observed that during this long day, whenever we were meant to introduce Falun Gong to an organisation and we didn’t notice it, it would start to rain. This would force us to stop and look around. This way, we visited many places.

On the second day, we called a taxi to take us to the Chinese Embassy because we wanted to know its whereabouts. At the beginning the weather was perfect. Suddenly the rain poured down heavily. This forced us to change our plan again.

We noticed that the Chinese Embassy is located in a very quiet place. The rain continued to pour down. We asked the taxi driver to wait for us and decided to try and talk to the Chinese Ambassador. Two of us went to the Chinese Embassy while another two sent forth righteous thoughts nearby.

One person came out to see us. We told him we wanted to see the Ambassador or make an appointment with him. He asked us where we were from. When we said we were from Guadeloupe, without asking our identification and our purpose of visit, this person started to shout violently, “We know some people from Guadeloupe who came to Sainte-Lucie. You are Falun Gong. Go away. Falun Gong is not welcomed here. Although it is the Embassy, nobody will help you. No press conference, nothing!”

We calmly stood there and told him with a compassionate heart that our coming to Sainte-Lucie was not to bring trouble to them. We only wanted to tell them to stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners in China. We also wanted to expose the persecution to governmental departments and people here. During the talk, another person came out and angrily asked us questions, “When you are really sick, do you go to the hospital?” We answered him calmly, “Yes. If we were sick, we would certainly go to the hospital.”

Another question was, “I am from Guangdong. There was a person there who opened his belly in order to see Falun rotate!” We replied that doing that was absolutely wrong. In any case, Falun is only energy which can’t be seen with the naked eye.

When he asked us questions, another two young people came out from the Embassy and very carefully listened to our conversation.

We said that it was our turn now and if we could ask him a question. He agreed. We asked, “In China, why do you arrest and torture Falun practitioners? Why do you break up their families? You know yourselves that you don’t respect human rights!” He didn’t answer us and became very nervous. He passed us some propaganda materials. He said repeatedly, “You are not welcome. We are not willing to see you. We don’t like you!” We replied that we liked them very much and we only wanted them to know the truth. A young Embassy official said, “You had better go now and get to know Falun Gong really well; we are Chinese and we know what we are talking about.” We looked at him kindly and said to him that we knew the facts and unfortunately they were cheated by their own government’s propaganda booklets. One of them said that we were wrong. We then asked, “So over sixty countries are wrong in this situation?!” They could not answer our question.

Because they gave us those terrible propaganda booklets, we passed them a few Falun Dafa materials. Some of them took the material and quickly ran away. The person who seemed to be in charge tried to take the material away from them and told them not to take it. He turned to us and said, “China and France are friends.” We told him that we were not against the relation between China and other countries; but China must respect human rights.

Over the whole course of the conversation, although they appeared to be harsh, we felt that they had eagerly been waiting for this conversation.

On the way back, we talked to the taxi driver about Falun Gong. He said, “They (the Embassy officials) hate you.” We said to him, ”Maybe so. But we don’t hate them. Because we cultivate Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, we only want them to know the real truth about the persecution. Because they are poisoned by the Jiang regime’s propaganda, we are worried for them and their family.” The driver replied that in China there is no freedom of belief and expression and there is only dictatorship.

After the Chinese Embassy encounter at Sainte-Lucie, we were more determined to clarify the truth about Falun Gong to the justice department, media and local citizens. We decided to take action immediately and deliver materials to governmental departments and media.

Unfortunately that day the parliament was holding a special meeting and department ministers were not in their offices. We passed a few information packages to the secretaries of the Education Minister, the Health Minister, the Minister for Public and Domestic Affairs and the Prime Minister. We also went to the office of the High Commissioner and left some material with his secretary. As we were doing this, the High Commissioner returned and arranged with his assistant to see us. We talked with him about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. We also asked him to pass a paper lotus flower to the Commissioner.

We then went to a local newspaper publisher. A journalist warmly received us. He was having his lunch at the time and he put it to one side to interview us immediately. By coincidence, he had stayed in China for a few days before and he could not move freely there. He was very sympathetic to the situation we introduced to him and wrote down many details. He said that as soon as this article about Falun Gong appeared in the newspaper, he would immediately send us a copy. When we told him our experience at the Chinese Embassy, he was very surprised and said he wanted to call them.

On the morning of our third day, we called the local radio and TV stations and informed them about our activity in Sainte-Lucie and told them about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. RCI and HTS TV stations interviewed us by phone and Sainte-Lucie Radio station made an appointment to see us.

At the beginning, all the recording rooms were occupied at Sainte-Lucie Radio station and they could not interview us that day. Because we were leaving Sainte-Lucie at 5:00pm that day, we suggested them to record our voices so that they could report it later. Then the head of current news department interviewed us in English and in Creole respectively. After listening to our interview, a second journalist came to interview us in Creole. When we were talking to the head of the current affairs department, we showed him an investigative report by WOIPFG (World Organisation to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong), he was very shocked by a picture of a practitioner who had been tortured.

When we mentioned to him our experience in the Chinese Embassy, he immediately wanted to call the Embassy while we were there. He found the telephone number and called them. When connected, he requested to talk to the Ambassador. The Ambassador was busy at that time so he asked the Ambassador to call him back. The embassy asked him what it was about. He told them that it was about Falun Gong.

After leaving the Sainte-Lucie Radio station, we decided to go back to the library again and leave some Falun Gong newspapers there because we found the Chinese Embassy had left a lot of Chinese magazines there. The lady at the reception asked us if the newspapers were free, we said yes.

On the beach near the Castries airport, we organised a demonstration of Falun Gong exercises. Many people came to see us practising.

During our stay in Sainte-Lucie, we distributed Falun Gong leaflets to taxi drivers, bus passengers, city government officials and policemen, passers-by and other government organisations. Many people came themselves to ask for the leaflets. We distributed over eight hundred.

Before leaving for Sainte-Lucie, we also sent a complete information package to the Chinese Embassy in Sainte-Lucie via the post office. We also made some paper lotus flowers and gave them to many ordinary people as well as VIPs. We explained to them that these lotus flowers symbolise the hope, peace and justice of Falun Gong practitioners. When the ship was leaving the Sainte-Lucie port, we all felt that we had planted a lotus flower in the heart of every person we met.