(Clearwisdom.net) On the evening of October 1, 2004, Falun Gong practitioners from Los Angeles gathered in front of the Chinese Consulate. They sent forth righteous thoughts together and held a candlelight vigil to protest Beijing police's violent arrests of Falun Gong practitioners on Tiananmen Square on October 1. The practitioners called for an immediate end to the brutal persecution of Falun Gong.

In front of the Chinese Consulate, Falun Gong practitioners from Los Angeles protest Beijing Police's violence on Tiananmen Square

According to a report from Clearwisdom.net, on October 1, China's National Day, the Beijing authorities closed Tiananmen Square and implemented a temporary traffic embargo. At noon, witnesses saw that a Falun Gong practitioner who was already beaten, lying curled up on the ground, while a police officer stood nearby with a banner that the practitioner had just unfurled wrapped around his hand. Armed police pushed onlookers to a distance away from the site and confiscated tourists' cameras or film. They even arrested some tourists who took photos of the incident and pushed them into a police van. Many people present talked about the incident. A number of people said, "I finally see with my own eyes how the police treat Falun Gong practitioners."

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Ye Ke said, since more than five years ago when Jiang Zemin's group started suppressing Falun Gong, at least 1,060 practitioners' deaths as a consequence of the persecution have been exposed through different channels to break the Chinese authorities' strict information blockade. Currently, there are still countless practitioners imprisoned in China's prisons, labor camps, brainwashing centers, and psychiatric hospitals where they are subjected to various tortures in an attempt to force them to renounce Falun Dafa. The authorities try to cover up their crimes of slaughtering innocent people. The outside world has no idea of the extent of the bloody persecution experienced by Falun Gong practitioners. Kind-hearted people could not even imagine how brutal the persecution has been.

Mr. Ye said that over the past more than five years, Falun Gong practitioners have continuously appealed for their fundamental rights, granted under the Chinese Constitution. Unfortunately, there is no place for them to speak for themselves. Under such a situation, they risk their lives to go to the Tiananmen Square to call upon the world's people to pay attention to this unreasonable oppression of law-abiding people.

Ye continued, Falun Gong practitioners also have their families, relatives and friends. Who would not want to be reunited with their families during the holiday? Don't they understand the risk of going to Tiananmen Square? The reason that they did so was not for the sake of themselves, even less so to oppose anyone or to cause trouble for anyone; instead, they wish to use their lives to awaken the entire nation's conscience, because only when the entire society realizes how evil the persecution is, can the persecution that threatens the future of the Chinese people be stopped!