Macedonian People Learn of Falun Gong

Between January 2nd, 2002 and January 6, 2002, several of us practitioners, hailing from Canada, Sweden and Austria, spent time in the snow-covered city of Skopje in Macedonia to introduce Falun Dafa to the local people and inform them of the brutal persecution in China. Macedonia is a country on the southern Balkan peninsula.

We used all the opportunities at our disposal to tell the truth about Falun Dafa and to hand out flyers – to anyone we met, taxi drivers, police officers, store clerks or passers-by.

After we had handed out information packages to the government, we also wanted to let the Macedonian media know about Falun Gong. The first three newspaper offices were closed because of a Macedonian holiday. That did not deter us, though. We placed the information packages at their doors.

As we were pondering what our next steps ought to be, another practitioner handed out flyers at the main city square. One of the recipients happened to be a photographer for a weekly newspaper. When we showed him the persecution pictures and photos of the peaceful protests, he agreed immediately that this would be of interest to his readers and needed to be written about. He interviewed and took photos of the Canadian woman practitioner who had already been to ten countries on her SOS marches in Southern Europe. The photographer also inquired for further detailled information.

Encouraged by this turn of events we drove to two television stations. The state-run TV station representatives showed little interest in the persecution videos and other information. The editor at the largest privately held TV station, however, showed great interest and received us cordially. We explained the truth thoroughly to the relevant editor in charge of this type of information. He expressed his gratitude and wished us well in our further activities. While we had been waiting to see him, scores of people passed us, even in the outer waiting hall. There seemed to be an internal celebration in progress. We handed everyone a flyer. That way many people found out the truth about Falun Dafa.

Wherever we walked we handed out flyers and even demonstrated the exercises at the main city square. Several people wanted to learn the exercises. We invited all those to our apartments, showed them the exercise movements and viewed a Falun Dafa video. One woman commented that she had cancelled all appointments for this day because she needed a day to recuperate at home. But then a friend told her about our training session and she arrived immediately. Someone else had already learned the movements through the Internet. Another woman explained that she could strongly feel the energy. At the conclusion of this session we gave the assembled guests the exercise cassettes and books, so that they could proceed on their own.

On our last day in Skopje we went to a Chinese restaurant. The Canadian practitioner handed the Chinese waiter a Falun Dafa brochure and told him that she had learned to know and appreciate Chinese culture through Falun Gong. He was surprised to hear that and accepted the brochure. Then the restaurant owner appeared, looked at the flyer and said,” Those three words [Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance] are the most important writing on the whole flyer. If you don’t have those, you have nothing.” He went on to say that “people need to hear these principles.” Then he suggested for us to give him several of the flyers, because many employees of the Chinese Embassy come to eat at this restaurant.

On our way back to Vienna/Austria we had a two-three hour stop-over at the Budapest/Hungary airport. We used this time to perform the exercises. When we had finished, several people approached us. They came from Montenegro and it was the first time for them to see a demonstration of the Falun Gong exercises. These people were ecstatic at the serenity and steadiness of the movements and wanted to know more about Falun Dafa.
We spoke for a long time, surrounded by seven or so people who listened attentively.