(Clearwisdom.net) On December 4, 2002, the Main Neues reported how a photo exhibition held in the city hall of Veitshchheim attracted people's attention to Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese meditation cultivation practice and raised people's awareness of the human rights persecution in China. The photo report would last until December 20. Mayor Mr. Rainer Kinzkofer said at the opening ceremony that he was very pleased to have approved a Falun Gong practitioner's request to hold this photo exhibition during the Advent.

Local Falun Gong practitioners demonstrate the five sets of exercises at the opening ceremony of the photo exhibition that will conclude on December 20.

According to the introduction given by a Falun Gong practitioner, Falun Gong is also called Falun Dafa. It is a traditional spiritual cultivation method. Over 100 million people in the world are practicing it. Falun Gong enables people to live a healthy, peaceful and harmonious life, and to be a good person guided by the principle of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance."

A survey conducted in 1999 showed that over 70 million Chinese citizens were practicing Falun Gong--just as it shows in the pictures--every morning hundreds and thousands of people practiced the exercises together in the squares and in the parks. The Chinese government launched a nationwide campaign to suppress Falun Gong. Since then, Falun Gong has been banned in China, over 50 thousand practitioners were arrested, over 10 thousand practitioners have been sent to forced labor camp. As it was estimated, over five hundred practitioners have been tortured to death.

In recognition of World Human Rights Day, December 10, local Falun Gong practitioners held this photo exhibition to inform people of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, which has been widely denounced by Amnesty International.