(Clearwisdom.net) Montreal Falun Gong practitioners rallied in Chinatown on April 22, 2011, to mark the twelfth anniversary of the April 25, 1999 appeal in Beijing, China.

Group practice before Montreal rally

Ms. Guizhi Chen narrated her personal experience with the April 25, 1999 appeal

People learn about the event and facts of the persecution

Before the rally, the practitioners practiced Falun Gong exercises for one hour, which attracted many spectators. Many people posed in front of the practice group for photos. Some learned the exercises, and some asked questions about the practice and the persecution.

Practitioner Guizhi Chen participated in the April 25 appeal in person 12 years ago, and she narrated what she witnessed at the Montreal rally. “Practitioners from Beijing and many other areas went to appeal at the Central Appeals Office when we heard that dozens of practitioners in Tianjin had been arrested unlawfully... The appeal was very peaceful and we left the site orderly after the arrested practitioners were released. While the government also promised that it would never persecute Falun Gong, it started a brutal persecution three months later. In the past 12 years, countless practitioners have faced arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, torture, and killing… I was arrested and detained in labor camps in 2002 and 2006, respectively.”

Mr. Hong learned about Falun Gong because of the appeal. He said, “I was working in Singapore, and heard about the appeal from my colleagues at lunch. As 80% of Singapore residents are Chinese, happenings in China are often reported immediately in Singapore by quoting government-run media outlets in China. My first reaction was that I didn’t believe the government-controlled newspaper. This was because I knew how the media misled people during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. So I asked a colleague who practices Falun Gong. This colleague gave me a full spectrum of explanation, and I then decided to try the practice. That was when I started practicing Falun Gong.”

When the rally was about to end, at around 6:00 p.m., a young girl came and read the photo displays with interest. She also had many questions about the details. She told a practitioner that she was a Vietnamese international student at the Center for East Asian Research, University of Montreal. She said that Falun Gong is one of their major research topics, and she wanted to collect more info for her professor.