Italy: Exposing the CCP's Human Rights Abuses in Chinatown, Prato

The city of Prato, Italy, hosts one of the largest Chinese communities in Europe. A city council survey counted about 20,000 people of Chinese ethnicity. Only London and Paris have greater numbers. After talking to local officials, Falun Gong practitioners discovered that most of the Chinese immigrants come from the province of Zhejiang, particularly the city of Wenzhou.

For nearly two years local practitioners have gone to the same spot to hold truth-clarification activities, so Chinese residents have had a chance to learn about the beauty of Falun Dafa as well as the terrible persecution that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is carrying out against such good people.

In the summertime practitioners assemble in the park on Colombo Street, where Chinese people often gather for social activities. Practitioners display a Falun Gong banner, hand out materials, and practice the five exercises: the music can be heard throughout the park. On May 13th, local practitioners gathered in the park to celebrate “World Falun Dafa Day.”

The overall situation in the public square in Chinatown where practitioners go regularly to explain the facts about the persecution has improved a great deal. Chinese people are now friendly and gratefully accept Falun Gong material. Hundreds of them have agreed to withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations, joining a movement in which over 100 million people all around the world have severed their connections with the CCP. The movement started after the newspaper The Epoch Times published the editorial Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party in 2004.

Practitioners also take care of the area, cleaning and reviving a little flower bed nearby, planting flowers that blossom and attract the public. Practitioners have also clarified the truth to the shop owners around the area. The Italian owner of one shop showed great sympathy, allowing practitioners to use his electricity to run a TV and a DVD player.

Practitioners are now showing different movies about the persecution in China, the peaceful resistance worldwide, and other information about Falun Gong. When the video series of the Nine Commentaries was shown, a big crowd of people came to watch, and many of them quit the CCP on the spot.