Canada: Montreal Falun Gong Practitioners Commemorate the 6th Anniversary of the April 25 Grand Appeal

Before the 6th anniversary of the "April 25" Grand Appeal, Canadian Falun Gong practitioners from Montreal held a commemorative activity in Zhongshan Park in Chinatown on the afternoon of April 16. Many practitioners used their own experiences to expose Jiang Zemin's and the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) brutal persecution of Falun Gong. The activity lasted about two hours.

A Falun Gong practitioner talks about her own experiences	Another practitioner talks about the background to the 6-year persecution	People read leaflets with interest

Before the activity began, an elderly man from China approached the host and said, "In this community, your Falun Gong does the best. You hold a lot of activities and the site is always clean and orderly."

A Western person worked hard helping to prepare for the activity, and later he sat among the Falun Gong practitioners. A practitioner recognised that he had sat among the Falun Gong practitioners last year. The man said, "I like to sit with Falun Gong practitioners."

Ms. Sun, who has practised Falun Dafa for ten years, is from Mainland China. She talked about her personal experiences from the time when Falun Dafa was first introduced to China and the Chinese government promoted Falun Dafa for its positive effect on people's morality and health. The book Zhuan Falun [the main text of Falun Dafa] was among the top ten bestsellers listed in Beijing Youth Newspaper. Starting from 1996, the government began to attack and suppress Falun Gong, including an editor's commentary in the Guangming Daily on June 17, 1996. Ms. Sun discussed the National Press and Publishing Bureau's July 24, 1996 document to all provinces issuing the order to stop printing Falun Gong books. After that, the Public Security Ministry started a nationwide investigation aiming to eradicate Falun Gong in early 1997 and then "Hooligan Scientist" He Zuoxiu's slandering of Falun Gong began on a Beijing TV station at the end of May 1998. On July 21, 1998, the First Department of Public Security Ministry sent out an order to all levels of the Public Security Department, specifying Falun Gong as a [slanderous word omitted] without any evidence. This caused many local public police departments to illegally arrest practitioners, and they used force to disrupt groups of people doing the exercises, ransacked many houses and took away practitioners' private property.

Ms. Sun said that from this series of events, it was clear that the CCP had planned for a long time to persecute Falun Gong, and it was not, as many people think, that the persecution was launched because of the April 25 grand appeal.

Ms. Hu from the Epoch Times Montreal office said, "After six years of continuous endeavours on the part of Falun Gong practitioners, people now have a certain knowledge of Falun Gong. But people don't recognise the true nature of the Communist Party. The Epoch Times published an editorial entitled "The Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party", which exposed the evil nature of the CCP. Anyone who reads the Nine Commentaries will understand that the persecution of Falun Gong originated from the evil nature of the Communist Party."

Another speaker, Mr. Wang, had come to Canada from Mainland China. He talked about his experience of being jailed in China because of his practise of Falun Gong. The police took his personal property, including a laptop computer. After Mr. Wang escaped from detention, the local police and his work unit spent about 200,000 yuan searching for him in Guangdong Province and finally arrested him and sent him to a year of forced labour without any trial. Later, the police extended the forced labour term by 280 days. The authorities brought his young daughter to him and had the little girl kneel down and tearfully ask him to give up his belief in Falun Dafa. The authorities who abused their power on the child then hypocritically blamed Mr. Wang for not caring about his little daughter.

Mr. Wang said, "Before I began practising Falun Dafa, I drank, gambled and did all kinds of bad deeds. After practising Dafa, I quit all those bad habits. The police want to "convert" me and make me renounce Falun Dafa; to what do they want to convert me?"

Mr. Wang's father died due to the enormous pressure of his son's persecution. His relatives and friends were brainwashed by the anti-Falun Gong propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party and blamed him for bringing trouble to his father. Mr. Wang said, "There is nothing wrong with being a good person in China. It was Jiang Zemin who killed my father."

Many Falun Gong practitioners went up on the stage and shared their own experiences. The elderly Mr. Tan spoke in Cantonese about the day he went to appeal for justice for Falun Gong to the central government on April 25, 1999. Many people listened quietly.

After the rally, a worker at a nearby restaurant in Chinatown talked to a Falun Gong practitioner, "You practitioners spoke very well today. Falun Gong is indeed good."

The host of the rally, Mr. Zhu, accepted an interview from minghui.ca. He said, "The people are awakening. In 2000, when we commemorated "April 25," many people were deceived by the Communist Party and looked at us with hatred. Now, it is very different. A lot of people naturally joined the rally and talked to us. Others looked at us with kindness. They have experienced the power of truth. We have been talking about the April 25 grand appeal every year. More and more people are recognising the efforts made by Falun Gong practitioners."