United KIngdom: People Express Appreciation for Falun Gong Practitioners’ Efforts to Raise Awareness in Central London

On Saturday July 4 2009, UK Falun Gong practitioners once again went to St Martin’s Square in central London to hold an activity and help more people learn about Falun Gong and the ten years of human rights abuses the Chinese Communist Party has waged against the practice.

As usual, Falun Gong practitioners who participated in the activity demonstrated the five sets of exercises, distributed leaflets, and collected petition signatures to condemn the persecution. As a rally was being held at Trafalgar Square nearby, there was a very big stream of people passing St Martin’s Square. Many people signed the petition calling for an end to the persecution.

Falun Gong practitioners hold an activity on St Martin’s Square in central London

People carefully reading Falun Gong poster displays

One after another, people signed the petition condemning the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP)

The demonstration of the Falun Gong exercises and the poster panels attracted the attention of people. People were solemn and concerned when they found out about the human rights atrocities Falun Gong practitioners in China have suffered. One after another, people came and signed the petition calling for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong. For several hours, the Falun Gong practitioners spoke to many people who were interested in Falun Gong. Some of them wanted to learn the exercises and asked for information about the Falun Gong practice sites. Some of them expressed their wish to visit the Falun Dafa website for more information.

Groups of secondary school students passed by the site of the activity. One group of them were not so polite in the beginning to the Falun Gong practitioners who were demonstrating the exercises. One of the Falun Gong practitioners came up and kindly told them: "Please be serious; in China, people are being killed just for practising these peaceful exercises." Having heard about this, the students became quiet immediately. One of the girls expressed her sincere apologies to the Falun Gong practitioner and said to her fellow students, “Have you heard this? In China, people who practise this peaceful exercise shall be persecuted.” Another boy signed his name in the petition form against the persecution.

Sharm is well aware of the evil nature of the CCP. He signed his name on the petition form condemning the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong

Sharm is a British youth of Indian descent. Seeing that he was still reading the Falun Gong poster displays after signing his name on the petition, the correspondent went up and asked him if he knew why Falun Gong was persecuted. This young man said confidently, “The CCP do not want people to have faith because they want to control people’s thinking. I imagine they are really scared because the world is changing and people will surely know what they should know. Just like the flowing of energy in one’s body, you cannot stop it even if you want to.” Having said this, Sharm told the correspondent that he was practising Qigong so he was very interested to learn about Falun Gong. He said he would visit the websites when he got home.

A young British man called Jonathan appreciated the efforts of Falun Gong practitioners to raise awareness of the persecution

A young British man called Jonathan carefully read the poster displays. When seeing this correspondent, he raised his head and said, “Harvesting living organs and selling them for profits! This is horrible!” Then he told the correspondent that he believed this because he has a cousin, an American working in China, who was illegally detained for a period of time for entering CCP’s controlled area not open to the public and none of his family members knew his whereabouts when he was detained. Jonathan also told the correspondent that he very much appreciated the efforts of Falun Gong practitioners to tell the truth to the public. Having said this, he went up to the information desk and signed the petition condemning the CCP’s persecution.

A young British man talked to a Falun Gong practitioner in pure Chinese Putonghuai. He said that he once lived in Taiwan for four or five years and read many books about Chinese history, so he knew very well why the CCP persecuted the peaceful Falun Gong practitioners. He hoped that many more British people could understand this like him.

There were many international tourists among the crowd of people in St Martin’s Square. An Asian girl attracted the attention of the correspondent. She was very seriously looking at the Falun Gong practitioners demonstrating the exercises and then started reading the leaflets at the site. She comes from Indonesia and her name is Fronica. She had been studying in the UK for a few months. She once saw Falun Gong in Indonesia but she did not pay attention to that because she was practising Yoga. She wanted to know more about it after she had seen Falun Gong here that day and she asked for the relevant information about the local Falun Gong practice sites in London.

One gentlemen came straight to the information desk, signed his name on the petition form and told the Falun Gong practitioner nearby that he came from USA and knew the truth about the persecution in China. “Do you know what day it is today? It is Independence Day in the USA. We uphold the independence of spirit and freedom of belief so I strongly support you.”