Issued by Clearwisdom Net

Falun Gong practitioners in Slovakia celebrated New Year with a peaceful protest at the Chinese Embassy in the capital city of Bratislava. Although the night was cold, the practitioners were not perturbed by this as their hearts were warm with the desire to let the world's people know about the human rights abuses against their fellow practitioners in China.

All of the Slovak practitioners have benefited greatly from their Falun Gong practice and now enjoy healthy bodies and minds. They live their lives by following Falun Gong principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance; this has changed their entire outlook on life and they have learned to become good people. These great changes left them all the more determined to let people know that Falun Gong is innocent and is being wrongly persecuted by the Communist regime in China.

As the New Year bells rang, the practitioners looked back on the last six years of human rights abuses against Falun Gong, which began in July 1999. During this time, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has committed countless crimes against Falun Gong practitioners, including:

• Millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been illegally arrested, detained and/or abused by Chinese police;
• Between 200,000 and 1 million have been illegally sent to forced labour camps without trials;
• Human rights workers have documented over 38,000 specific cases of torture or severe abuse;
• More than 1,000 healthy individuals have been incarcerated in mental hospitals and tortured there, an act condemned by World Psychiatric Association;
• More than 500 have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 18 years;
• At least 2804 deaths through police abuse and torture have been confirmed, with government sources inside China indicating that the actual number could be has high as 7,000 or more.

The Slovak practitioners hoped that 2006 will be the year when these figures stop rising and the instigators of the human rights crimes against Falun Gong are finally brought to justice. Since July 1999, more and more of the world's people have stepped forward and voiced their concern and sympathy for Falun Gong practitioners. Many of them have heard how the CCP has continually oppressed the Chinese people since it took power over half a century ago, resulting in over 80 million natural deaths. No group has ever been able to withstand the CCP's persecutory means before. But Falun Gong practitioners have done this; their steadfast belief in Truthfulness, Compassion Forbearance has not been tarnished by the horrifying abuses carried out against them by the CCP. People the world over have come to respect and admire this and have joined practitioners in their call for all oppression of Falun Gong practitioners to end immediately.