(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioners in upstate New York held an outdoor fair in Mount Hope to celebrate the annual Mid-Autumn Festival. The organizers introduced the traditional Chinese holiday as well as Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that follows the principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. The mayor of Mount Hope and a state senator attended the event.

Falun Gong was taught to the public in China in 1992. Today, millions of people in over 100 countries practice Falun Gong. However, the Chinese communist regime launched a brutal campaign against Falun Gong in 1999; since then, thousands of practitioners have been tortured to death, and many more have been killed for their organs by the Chinese regime.

A practitioner hands a Falun Gong literature to a passerby.

Practitioners demonstrate the five Falun Gong exercises.

The practitioners decorated the local park with a moon, lanterns, flags and balloons. A retiree from Middletown said that he was impressed by the lion dances and music.

Practitioners taught the Falun Gong exercises at the fair for free. Many participants were given information about the practice and the ongoing persecution in China.

Marigold Festival in Illinois

The weekend before the Mid-Autumn Festival, on September 10 and 11, Falun Gong practitioners in Pekin, Illinois joined the celebrations at the annual Marigold Festival.

The city's largest event of the year attracted tens of thousands. The practitioners set up a booth and distributed handouts about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Nearly two hundred festival-goers signed a petition demanding that the Chinese regime stop harvesting organs from practitioners incarcerated for their faith.

Falun Gong practitioners at the annual Marigold Festival in Pekin, Illinois

Related article in Chinese: 伊州中部菊花节-民众签名反活摘(图)