Ireland: “We Will Wake Up People with Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.”

On October 17th 2007, the Human Rights Torch Relay (HRTR) held by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, reached Dublin, which is the 24th city in the 19th country that the relay has visited.

David Norris, a member of the Irish Senate said: “We will wake up the people with Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.”

In downtown Dublin, the capital of Ireland, a ceremony and rally for the arrival of the Human Rights Torch were held. The purpose of the torch relay is to call upon the international society to pay attention to the human rights violations and the persecution of Falun Gong in China, and to ask them to boycott the 2008 Olympics if they are held by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Many human right activists and politicians came to the rally to express their support. In his speech, Senator Joe O’Toole said that the persecution of Falun Gong is worse than the Nazi’s concentration camps. He pointed out that the worst part of the persecution is the organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners, which is genocide and must be stopped. Senator O’Toole said that the CCP is the worst dictatorship in the world, and the international society should not ignore the persecution of Falun Gong launched by the CCP. He called upon the Irish Government to cooperate with the European Union to investigate the persecution and condemn the human right violations in China. He expressed that people should not go the Olympics, because a lot of human rights abuses are behind it. He said that the purpose of the rally and torch relay is to let everybody in the world know about the persecution.

Senator David Norris in his speech expressed that the organ harvesting is a new form of evil yet to be seen on this planet. He asked what kind of government persecutes people who believe in “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance” and what kind of government jails its own people just because they practise Falun Gong.

Senator Norris also expressed that he was glad to see support for the torch relay from different political parties. At the end of his speech, he said “We will wake up people with Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.”