NEW YORK—About 350 Falun Gong practitioners from the New York and New Jersey area gathered outside the Chinese Consulate last Friday night to commemorate the peaceful protest that took place on that date in 1999, when 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners convened around a state appeals office near the Zhongnanhai government compound in Beijing, China.
The 10,000 practitioners in 1999 were but a mere fraction of the estimated 70-100 million estimated practitioners in China at that time. They stood in silent protest of the unlawful detention of 45 Falun Gong practitioners. Though the events of that day concluded peacefully, it was to be a pivotal day in the already escalating anti-Falun Gong rhetoric emanating from the Chinese Communist Party, and in particular from then Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
Shortly thereafter, Jiang, the chairman of the CCP, and also head of the military, launched a full scale propaganda assault on Falun Gong, followed by a systematic and three-pronged assault on Falun Gong practitioners in China—"defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically."
Jiang's genocidal policy has remained in effect for nine brutal years. Recent reports indicate that the persecution has escalated in the count down to the 2008 summer Olympic games in Beijing.
What the 10,000 practitioners demonstrated that day in Beijing was the principle of forbearance, a main tenant of the Falun Gong discipline. This was also reflected on an unusually calm night outside the Chinese Consulate last week, where the winds often become bitter on West 42nd Street. The night was warm and the practitioners, mostly Chinese, but also Caucasian, Middle Eastern, African American, South Asian, and Latino stood and sat in silent protest of the continuing genocide taking place in China. There was no screaming or shouting, no waving of signs or fists being raised.
Some sat with legs crossed and their palms raised in front of their chests. Others held banners and some made speeches detailing the atrocities of the past nine years.
A 79-year-old Falun Gong practitioner who preferred to be identified only as Gao, was in Beijing that day in 1999. "We had heard about some practitioners being detained and we weren't sure what they would do to them, so we went to Zhongnanhai.
"Everybody stood silently, it was very peaceful. The police wanted us to disperse so they started handing out propaganda, they were throwing it everywhere…they were trying to affect the practitioners but none of us reacted. At the time, the police were quite moved by us because we were so quiet," recalled Gao.
"The police drove up and down the street taking everyone's photo, some people later lost their jobs for having been identified as having been there."
When asked what he had come to say to the people in the Chinese Consulate on Friday, Gao replied, "Stop persecuting Falun Gong"
The Most Evil Regime
Dr. Damon Noto of New Jersey, 35, spoke of the horror of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China.
"How do you judge a regime?" asked Noto. "By how they treat their own people" he answered.
"Over the last 50 years that the CCP has been in power, how many millions of their own people have they killed? … I say the Chinese Communist Party is a most evil regime," said Noto.
Dr. Noto went on to describe a system of state-supported organ harvesting in China that is indeed a harrowing tale. Since the CCP began detaining Falun Gong practitioners in 1999 the number of organ transplants in China has skyrocketed. The average wait for an organ in the U.S. is 1. 3 years, in Europe it can be as long as 3 years, in China the wait for an organ match can be as short as two weeks.
The evidence that the enormous supply of organs for these transplants is being supplied by Falun Gong detainees has been supported by an extensive report by international human rights attorney David Matas and David Kilgour, a former Canadian Crown Prosecutor, member of Parliament, and Secretary of State. Their report, initiated in 2006 when the wife of a Chinese surgeon came forth about organ harvesting in China, has followed 51 evidentiary trails to conclude that this organ harvesting is real, and that it is happening in China today.
"People tell me that things are getting better in China—but I tell them it is just the opposite, what has improved? Freedom of belief? Freedom to a fair trial? Freedom of speech? No, No, and No," said Noto "The CCP has not improved but gotten worse, they were a wolf, now they are a wolf in sheep's clothing."
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