Ottawa, Canada: Falun Dafa Practitioners Mark Anniversary of April 25 Appeal

(Minghui.org) Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) practitioners held an event in front of the Chinese Embassy at noon on April 24, 2020 to mark the anniversary of the April 25 appeal in China and to call for an end to the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) persecution of the spiritual discipline.

Falun Dafa practitioners gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa on April 24 to mark the April 25 appeal and to call for an end of the persecution.

Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Judy Sgro, Co-Chair of the Friends of Falun Gong parliamentary group, accepted an online interview and sent a letter in support of the event.

MP: Falun Dafa Practitioners Safeguard Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance

MP Sgro said in her interview that many parliament members had participated in practitioners’ events throughout the years. She again stressed that the CCP’s deprivation of basic rights and live organ harvesting was unacceptable.

Liberal MP Judy Sgro spoke on May 13, 2019 in front of the Parliament building.

“As one of the Co-Chairs of the Falun Gong Parliamentary Friendship Group I stand in solidarity with the Canadian Falun Gong practitioners on the occasion of 4.25,” MP Sgro stated in her letter.

“I am disheartened that during such a difficult time that persecution continues to occur when the COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping across the world.” 

“In Canada, Falun Gong practitioners have the right to practice their faith in safety and peace. Unfortunately, these rights do not exist everywhere. Tragically, too many nonviolent, steadfast practitioners [in China] continue to live in darkness under the threat of persecution and even death.”

She said Canadians must help bring about the changes needed to stop the persecution.

According to Minghui, the first three months of 2020 recorded 1,477 cases of Falun Gong practitioners arrested or harassed for their faith, as well as 17 practitioner deaths. After the coronavirus broke out, many police officers and guards at prisons and detention centers in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, got infected. The communist regime dispatched police forces from other provinces to Wuhan to watch detained practitioners.

The peaceful appeal that took place on April 25, 1999, demonstrated the rationality, conscience, courage, and dignity of Falun Gong practitioners in their request to end the illegal persecution. Practitioners have been subjected to torture, forced organ harvesting, killing, and slanderous propaganda since the persecution began in 1999, yet they have never resorted to violence of any kind. Such peaceful and rational resistance to persecution is unprecedented.

“I commend the Falun Gong practitioners for their unwavering commitment to safeguard the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance,” she said.