We are nine practitioners from San Diego who participated in the Western American Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference in San Francisco. On the morning of October 22, we went to China Garden Park to practice the exercises.
At about 9:50am, when most of the practitioners were doing the sitting meditation and a few practitioners were distributing Dafa newspapers and materials to pedestrians, a gang of 40 to 50 people advanced towards us. Some of them began saying abusive words towards practitioners and grabbed our newspapers. They even began beating practitioners who would not let them take the newspapers. A female practitioner took out her camera to take pictures of the scene and other practitioners called the police. Fearing that their evil deeds would be disclosed, the gangsters rushed forward to grab the camera and mobile phone, and threw them to the ground forcefully. When another practitioner took out a camera, a gangster even chased this practitioner into the practice group. At the same time, four to five gangsters surrounded a practitioner. They cursed this practitioner in Cantonese dialect, pulled him towards them while beating and kicking him. At this time, two or three practitioners went forward to talk to the gangsters. One of the practitioners was beaten and suffered a bloodied mouth. Other practitioners tried hard to separate the gangsters from our practitioner. By this time, the practitioner's glasses were completely broken, his clothes were torn up and his upper body was almost naked. There were several groups of three to four people attacking one practitioner.
During the whole situation, most of the practitioners had finished the exercises and remained sitting and were observing the situation. Some practitioners tried to communicate with these gangsters. As these gangsters spoke Cantonese, it was very difficult to communicate with them. None of the practitioners retaliated verbally or physically.
After 10 minutes, the first police car arrived. With the help from a female Western practitioner, police arrested the first gangster and ferreted out the damaged camera of one practitioner. Other leading gangsters fled away when more policemen arrived.
When these gangsters were assaulting our practitioners, we saw that the righteous force was always dominant. Among the hired 40 to 50 people, only about 20 people beat and cursed. The others just stood by. Upon seeing the commotion, a young woman with a 1-year-old baby came by to ask what was happening and whether Falun Gong is good or not. Our practitioner spread Dafa to her and shared his own experience. This woman gladly took all kinds of Dafa materials and expressed her gratitude after that.
A female Western practitioner who has just begun cultivation witnessed the whole incident. She kept weeping even after going back to the hotel. She could not imagine someone would assault such peaceful people. We told her that crimes many times crueler than this are happening in China every minute.
These troublemakers had been harassing practitioners since last Friday. When being interrogated, they said, "We do it for whoever pays us. If you pay us, we can do it for you." We found out later that this incident had something to do with the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco. Obviously, this is also the result of "Strengthen the overseas efforts against Falun Gong," dictated by Jiang Zemin. We believe we will surely find proof of this if we trace it back to the end.
We left for San Diego shortly afterwards, while the rest of the practitioners continued to do the exercises.
Practitioners from San Diego
Oct. 25, 2000
