Epoch Times: Why Falun Gong is Still Appealing in New York (Photos)

A Falun Gong display on a busy street corner. (The Epoch Times)

NEW YORK - They came to the city a week before the Republican convention, and they have no plans for leaving anytime soon. Throughout Manhattan, from Ground Zero to 86th Street, from the Port Authority to the UN, they stand on street corners, holding banners, passing out newspapers, telling the passersby that friends, relatives, and fellow practitioners in China are being brutally persecuted for doing five simple exercises and for believing that "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance" are worthwhile values.

These are practitioners of Falun Gong, an exercise and meditation system practiced peacefully all around the world, except in China, the land of its origin.

In China, Falun Gong is a crime.

Jealous of Falun Gong's widespread popularity and frightened by the overwhelming number of practitioners, then-dictator Jiang Zemin outlawed the practice in 1999, setting into motion a violent campaign aimed at eradicating Falun Gong.

Plainclothes police pin a practitioner and press a handcuff against the practitioner's throat in Tiananmen Square.

Over the objection of many of his top ministers, Jiang ordered a round of midnight arrests, show trials, and long prison sentences-up to 18 years- for volunteer Falun Gong instructors throughout Beijing.

Although the government had looked favorably upon Falun Gong prior to this- citing Falun Gong's health benefits for easing the burden on China's crumbling public health system- on July 22, 1999, practicing Falun Gong became an illegal act in China, and 100 million Falun Gong practitioner became criminals.

Simultaneously, Jiang launched a worldwide propaganda campaign, telling governments around the world that Falun Gong practitioners were a threat to stability everywhere they went.

Chinese Embassy officials contacted mayors, governors, and even college presidents in America, claiming that international relations would be damaged if US government officials acknowledged that Falun Gong is good. Heads of state around the world were pressured by the Chinese government to prohibit Falun Gong appeals, threatened with economic retribution if Falun Gong practitioners were allowed to plead their case in those countries.

Meanwhile, in China, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were being rounded up, incarcerated in slave labor camps, and subjected to the most heinous tortures imaginable- from the medieval to the modern, from burning with hot irons to electrocution with cattle prods.

A military policeman in Tiananmen Square arrests practitioners for holding up banners inscribed "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance."

The Chinese government's objective is "transforming" and "reeducating" practitioners- abusing them until they agree to make anti-Falun Gong propaganda videos or sign statements renouncing the practice. Many practitioners, however, find the inner strength to hold to their values, endure the torture, and refuse to give in. Just as the Patrick Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death," Falun Gong practitioners are saying, "Without Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance, life is meaningless. We will not surrender."

Nor will they fight back. After five years of vicious persecution, there has not been a single report- even from the Chinese government- of Falun Gong practitioners using force or violence, even is self-defense.

In China, Falun Gong is on TV every day-in fabricated news reports slandering the practice and justifying the persecution. In America, Falun Gong rarely appears in the mainstream media; when it does, it is a page-three, local news report about a community event. Because China has a potentially huge media market- 300 million television sets in what is still, outside of the large cities, a very backward nation- the world media has been unwilling to challenge China's requirement of self-imposed censorship to report the truth about Falun Gong. The major media outlets remember that China shut down the BBC last year until the BBC agreed to comply with government content standards. Our supposedly "free" media actually costs a lot to operate, and financial concerns often outweigh principles of press freedom.

Falun Gong Practitioners displaying a banner and distributing information in Bryant Park in New York. (The Epoch Times)

That is why they are out there- those Falun Gong practitioners with the signs and banners, the pictures of torture victims, doing the five exercises, quietly meditating- they are bypassing the Chinese media blockade, spreading the truth one New Yorkers one at a time.

They come from all around the world, they stay as long as they can, they are replaced by others. They spend their free time and their vacation days telling New Yorkers that this persecution will end when enough people know about it, telling New Yorkers that they can help save lives.

These practitioners are not asking for anything but a bit of attention to their cause; they are only asking people to learn about the situation in China. These practitioners would like nothing more than to go back to their homes to practice in peace.

Until their fellow practitioners in China can do the same, expect to see them in New York.

Source: http://english.epochtimes.com/news/4-10-4/23570.html