Germany: First Anti-Torture Exhibition in Heidelberg Demonstrates the Persecution Against Chinese Falun Gong Practitioners

Situated in southwest Germany, Heidelberg has over one thousand years of history and there are many churches scattered in nearby hillsides and valleys. On February the 5th 2005, the sky was blue and clear, and the winter sun was warm and bright. Falun Gong practitioners held a Falun Dafa Information Day activity and an anti-torture exhibition in Heidelberg. The exhibition vividly reproduced the methods of inhuman torture used by the Chinese communist regime to persecute Falun Gong practitioners who remain steadfast in their belief.

The pedestrian precinct in the city centre was crowded with local people as well as tourists from various countries. When people received flyers and asked for more detailed information, practitioners elaborated on the details about Falun Gong and the five-year campaign of genocide against the practice. Those who heard about the persecution asked how they can help the practitioners in China. Many people signed a petition calling for the instigator of the persecution, former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, to be brought to justice in a court of law for his crimes against humanity. Many people asked for information on the practice sites in different cities and where they can find the Falun Gong books.

Upon seeing realistic bruises and blood on the faces and bodies of the practitioners who re-enacted the torture, many people were shocked. They came to find out about the Chinese regime’s brutal atrocities, as well as the slanderous lies it has used to deceive the world. A lot of people took pictures of the exhibition with their mobile phones or cameras throughout the day.

A busker, who was singing on the opposite side of the street, decided to move further away, saying that he was afraid of disturbing the practitioners and that he would come back to see the exhibition after he had finished his singing.

A Member of Parliament from Baden-Wurttemberg State, who was taking a stroll with his young son, shook hands with a practitioner he knew and talked to him happily. As soon as he learned that one of the practitioners acting out the brutal torture in China was Ms. Xiong Wei, who just returned to Germany from a Chinese forced labour camp after tens of thousands of German people signed petitions to rescue her, he came over to talk. He said that it was his sincere hope that his efforts in the rescue campaign might have been of some help to her. He looked thankful when he learned that Ms. Xiong Wei had been rescued from further inhuman torture due to efforts from the international community.

This MP used to be deceived by the Chinese regime’s slanderous lies so seriously that he was reluctant to listen to practitioners’ explanations about Falun Gong. However, after he heard the truth he signed the petition and actively urged people at all levels to help rescue Xiong Wei. Now he supports Falun Gong practitioners’ human rights and freedom of belief. His experience was symbolic of the transition of numerous German people’s mindsets towards Falun Gong after they came to know the facts.