Sweden: People in Gothenburg Hope for an End to the Persecution

On the afternoon of the 20th of July, after peacefully appealing outside the Chinese Consulate in the morning, Falun Gong practitioners held an activity in a square called "Kungsportsplatsen" in the centre of Gothenburg. Kungsportsplatsen is a central point in the city where many pedestrians pass by every day. The Swedish practitioners told people about the six years of human rights abuses that have taken the lives of over 2,600 Falun Gong practitioners in China and have ruined the lives of thousands and thousands of others who have lost their jobs, homes and families because they refused to renounce their beliefs.

Falun Gong practitioners demonstrated the five sets of Falun Gong exercises, distributed leaflets and collected petition signatures. A statement about the persecution was read out loud. The information included some touching stories of victims of torture in China. One of these was the tragic story of how Gao Rongrong was murdered by the “6-10 Office”, an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

A big banner showed the 37-year-old Gao after she was brutally tortured for several hours with electric batons, which seriously deformed her face. She died on 16th of June, 2005 as a result of the persecution. Many people saw the picture, and when they got some more information, they immediately went to sign the petition to call for an end to the persecution in China. There was an elderly couple who signed the petition and told a practitioner that they had been offered a trip to China with their friends, but they declined. They said, “We don’t want to go to China when the government treat their own people so badly.”

One practitioner carried a poster that said, “Chinese Communist Party stop murdering!” on the way to the activity. People read the poster and some asked what it was all about. The practitioner told them about the persecution against Falun Gong and how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has murdered over 80 million people since taking power in 1949. One woman on the tram said, “It is good you are having the activity in front of the Chinese Consulate; the Chinese Government should know that the world is watching them!" A man said, “I received a flyer earlier, and I know about the persecution of Falun Gong. Good luck. I hope the persecution will end soon!”

Many passers-by wanted to know more about Falun Gong and why this method for improving body and mind is so brutally persecuted in China. During summertime, lots of tourists visit Gothenburg, so there were people from different countries like Scotland, England and Italy who learned the truth about the persecution. Falun Gong practitioners felt that this activity was successful as many people got to hear about the persecution and positioned themselves against the CCP’s human rights abuses.