On July 18th, to honor the more than 20 Falun Dafa practitioners who had already been illegally tortured to death by the Chinese governments public security officers, the Bay Area practitioners in California gathered in front of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco for a candlelight vigil.
When I arrived at the San Francisco Chinese (PRC) Consulate, there were already practitioners there preparing the candles and banners. One of the practitioners showed me an English flyer entitled: Falun Gong is a Cult.
That practitioner told me that everyone who comes to the consulate for their visa or other business is forced to take one of these flyers.
The flyer is full of libel and fabrications. For example, it distorts and even makes up out of nowhere things that were supposedly said by Li Chang, the former person in charge of the Falun Dafa Research Society, along with three others [who were sentenced last year to long jail terms in a show trial]. The flyer has them saying that the Chinese governments so-called "trial" against them was a "great victory" for the senseless persecution against Falun Gong and a "great salvation" for Falun Gong practitioners.
Its hard to imagine that the PRC Consulate would dare to abuse their official power in such a way, using the overseas Chinese communitys reliance on the consulate to spread their rumors and lies. By doing so, they are only shooting themselves in the foot -- this is not Mainland China where freedom of speech does not exist. The Chinese people here in the United States are able to read and hear the very voices that the Chinese government has silenced. As for these tactics of fabrication and slander, the overseas Chinese community is already all too familiar with them.
At present, there are just a few people who have ulterior motives within the Chinese government who, in order to suppress Falun Gong, have developed a whole series of schemes and damaging activities. It is hoped that all kindhearted people will help to reveal these schemes and will not allow this evil to permeate throughout the world just because it seems that this matter is not relevant to them or out of apathy. Its like environmental pollution -- no person living on this Earth can avoid the negative consequences of environmental damage.
All people of goodwill, please take action to let this Earth become clean and allow justice to return to the world.
A Practitioner in California
7/22/2000