Radio Free Asia: Practitioners Invited to Demonstrate Falun Gong Exercises at Berlin Gymnastics Festival

From the 14th to the 20th of May 2005, the Berlin Gymnastics Festival invited Falun Gong practitioners to participate in a performance of 120,000 people. In the meantime, Ms. Xiong Wei, who had been imprisoned for two years by the Chinese Communist Party because she practised Falun Gong, was interviewed. The following is a report by Radio Free Asia correspondent, Tian Yi.

The six-day Berlin Gymnastics Festival, which has just been held in the capital of Germany with 120,000 participants, has a history of one hundred and forty-five years. Its goal is to improve the physical and mental health of children and adults. Four German words represent its motto: originality, piety, happiness, and freedom. Under the principle of this motto, the Berlin Gymnastics Festival invited Falun Gong practitioners in Germany to participate in the performance. Ms. Xiong Wei, who had been detained in China for two years because she practised Falun Gong and returned to Germany last year with the help of the German people, was also invited to participate in this festival She shared her experience of the festival of the gymnastics festival with our reporter:

”The festival has attracted hundreds of thousands of people from all parts of Germany. When I saw the big crowds here, I felt I was back in China. Falun Gong practitioners, including a lot of local Germans, demonstrated the exercises, performed Chinese dances and distributed various kinds of material for two consecutive days at the gymnastics festival.

“A German practitioner, Rick Nagar, presided over a seminar on the five exercises. He has been fond of martial art since childhood and began to practise Falun Gong after he learned about it. Then he found that big changes happened to his body, which did not happen when he practised martial art in the past. In fact, there are many people like him in Germany.

“I saw at the festival that westerners can go and learn and inquire about any exercise in front of any demonstration they like and leave if they do not like it. They may not understand how precious this liberty is. I have deep feelings about this kind of freedom. I was locked up in the labour “Re-education” camp for women in Beijing. During these two years, I did not have the freedom to choose which way to turn my head, let alone the freedom to practise exercises.

"I was deeply touched when I saw westerners liking Falun Gong at this gymnastics festival. It is human's yearning for health, kindness and freedom from suppression."

Therefore, in Ms. Xiong Wei's view, Falun Gong’s virtues of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance opened a window to the East for the motto of "originality, piety, happiness, freedom" at the festival.