France: Promoting Falun Gong in the City of St. Louis

St. Louis, located in France’s Alsace province, is a small city on the Swiss border. Several weeks ago, in order to help more people learn about Falun Gong and the serious human rights violations against practitioners in China, we decided to introduce Falun Gong to the people of St. Louis. Many people had already heard about the practice and were interested in finding out more.

One lady approached us towards the end of the activities and told us that she is concerned about the situation of Falun Gong practitioners in China, who have been suffering under cruel persecution for the last six years at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. The lady was also keen to learn the Falun Gong exercises. She is a member of a group that is interested in the relationship between humankind, health and the universe. When she saw us, she immediately felt that her group should learn about Falun Gong. In the following week, we had the opportunity to play a videotape of the five exercises and some information on the persecution to this group. They were very interested in Falun Gong and said that they would like to learn the exercises, so we organised a special class in a hotel conference hall.

We hoped that many people would take advantage of this opportunity. The lady who first approached us worked hard to help us distribute flyers and paste advertisements in shops and other public places, telling people there would be a chance to learn the Falun Gong exercises. Moreover, she personally wrote many letters inviting her friends to come to the exercise lesson.

Our opening session turned out to be a very successful evening. We began by explaining what Falun Gong is. We also talked about the practice’s history and the persecution happening in China. There were far more participants than we expected and people who came late could not even find enough space to practise the exercises.