World News | NYC March Spotlights Communist China’s War on Faith

New York [US]ANI April 26: 24 years ago, thousands of Chinese citizens gathered at Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party in central Beijing.

They are Falun Gong practitioners who are there to peacefully call on the communist regime to stop harassment and repression of their peers by local authorities. Less than three months later, the CCP launched a comprehensive persecution of practitioners.

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This Sunday in Flushing, New York, more than 3,000 people participated in a parade to commemorate Zhongnanhai’s historic appeal and call for an end to the CCP’s ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.

On April 25, 1999, around 7 or 8 a.m. local time, crowds and more poured in, chatting softly and forming long lines on the sidewalk, careful not to step on the road or block transportation. Most people stood still in silence. Some people sit and meditate or read. Some pass around plastic bags to collect trash.

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By the end of the day, April 25, 1999, some 10,000 people from across the country had called for an environment where they could freely practice Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that many believe improves physical and mental health. It would be the largest peaceful demonstration in China since the regime deployed tanks and guns to clear pro-democracy protesters from nearby Tiananmen Square a decade ago.

News soon spread that then-Premier Zhu Rongji had met Falun Gong representatives and assured them of his support.

But a nationwide persecution three months later showed that the regime’s promises were empty words.

Falun Gong, featuring the core principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, as well as the meditation practice, gained popularity in the 1990s. By 1999, an estimated 13 out of 13 people in China’s then 1.3 billion population had embraced the practice, the year the atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) labeled this group the state’s newest enemy .

In the months and years leading up to the persecution, Falun Gong practitioners felt their freedoms were increasingly restricted. A few days before the Zhongnanhai visit, authorities beat and arrested dozens of Falun Gong practitioners in the major city of Tianjin and told other Falun Gong practitioners to go to Beijing to petition if they wanted to be released.

State-owned television and newspapers aired content that denigrated the faith.

Since July 1999, the regime has spared no effort to uproot the faith, subjecting believers to arbitrary detention, torture, heavy fines, slave labor and social discrimination. Countless people have fallen victim to state-sanctioned killings for their organs, known as forced organ harvesting.

Even believers who have taken refuge in the United States still fear for the safety of their loved ones in communist China. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)