Painting Exhibition Draws Attention of Media and Society in Germany

Human Rights Organizations Actively Help Falun Gong

Zhang Cuiying

Through the hard work of European practitioners, European governments, media and human rights organizations all actively helped Falun Gong practitioners and condemned Jiang Zemin. During the painting exhibition in Switzerland, many TV and radio stations as well as newspapers interviewed me. On my way to Germany from Switzerland, another Swiss TV station interviewed me again. As soon as I arrived in Germany, I was interviewed by reporters. In order to expose Jiang's brutal persecution against Falun Gong and rescue the Falun Gong practitioners in China, practitioners in Germany held painting exhibitions in five cities within one week. The local governments, human rights organizations and more and more kind-hearted people were actively involved.

On April 4, Mr. Schmalzried from Amnesty International invited me to Göttingen in northeast Germany. He and local Falun Dafa practitioners did a lot of preparation for this exhibition. They contacted the mayor of Göttingen, professors from Göttingen University, local churches, radio and TV stations, newspapers, people in culture and art circles, and the general public. The press conference site was the old city hall built in 1866, where many big traditional events in Göttingen were held. At the press conference, Mayor Wilhelm Gerhardy made the first speech. He said that he did not know much about Falun Gong but he could not understand "what exactly made Chinese authority so afraid of that they had to launch such large scale persecution against it?" At the press conference, Schmalzried read the statement from Amnesty International. He said, "We know that since the Falun Gong TV programme broadcast the facts in Changchun, many practitioners have been illegally arrested. Up till today, there are over 350 Falun Gong practitioners that have died from persecution. The persecution is still escalating. Amnesty International is calling on all kind-hearted German people to support and help Falun gong. We hope to have everybody's signature." Schmalzried said he was going to present the appeal with signatures to the German Foreign Ministry before Jiang's visit to Germany and strongly requested the Foreign Minister to personally hand it to Jiang. He would also follow up with the Foreign Ministry about the results.

I was especially touched that Mr. Schmalzried from Amnesty International picked me up at the railway station and arranged the hotel for me and paid for it. We talked from 12:00pm noontime to 12:00am midnight. The next day he arranged radio interviews from 9:00am to 1:00pm. He said that our two days of conversation made him deeply realize the need to further study Falun Gong. The vicious Jiang slandered Falun Gong as [slanderous word omitted] and then persecuted it relentlessly. Many Germans were also deceived. In Germany, people were afraid of a [slanderous word omitted]. That prevented many people from acting to help Falun Gong practitioners. He also said: as human rights workers, we are very sympathetic to your situation and I will help you with all I have; I will write an article to systematically introduce Falun Gong as soon as possible to show the benefits of Falun Gong and eliminate the doubts of German people, so that people can truly understand Falun Gong and start helping persecuted Falun Gong practitioners.

The spokesperson for the Human Rights Organization for the Persecuted said, "Falun Gong does not pursue political power. They only ask for their right to practice. But they are still brutally persecuted in China. They want to hold a peaceful dialogue with the government, but the government does not want dialogue. The government only wants to crackdown on Falun Gong."

Then I talked in detail about my terrifying experience of being persecuted. Jiang is going to visit Germany in three days. I hope the German media and the government can help me to directly ask Jiang: why he wants to persecute Falun Gong? Why he wanted to brutally persecute me and illegally detain me for as long as eight months? My request is for the immediate release of all illegally detained Dafa practitioners.

Afterwards, many reporters and audience members asked questions.

We had two press conferences on one night. The later one was about the human rights situation in China, especially reports about Falun Gong issues. Amnesty International, Human Rights Organization for Persecuted People and I spoke at the conference. The guests asked questions for about two hours and finally understood the evil nature of the persecution.

A lady called Von Neree told me after the conference, "You are a person with values. I support Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance." She waved her fists to express her disgust with Jiang. She said, "As long as I am alive, I will fight for Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance."

A gentleman said, "Thank you for your courage of sacrificing as Christians did in history."

An old lady said, "Because you believe Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance and Jiang is not truthful at all, that is the why he is afraid of you and is relentlessly persecuting you."

In the end, we demonstrated the exercises to the guests.

Source: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/4/11/20862.html
http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/4/7/28019.html