About 5,000 Falun Gong practitioners yesterday rallied in front of the Presidential Office Building to mark the 19th anniversary of a peaceful demonstration in Beijing that led to a series of crackdowns on the group.
Before the rally, the practitioners marched from Taipei City Hall to Ketagalan Boulevard, holding banners that read: “Dissolve the Chinese Communist Party [CCP],” “Put persecutor [former Chinese president] Jiang Zemin (江澤民) on trial” and “Falun Dafa is good.”
“The event aims to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the peaceful demonstration on April 25, 1999, and to celebrate the number of Chinese people who have quit the CCP,” Taiwan Falun Dafa Association president Chang Chin-hwa (張錦華) said.
The CPP has been cracking down on spiritual practices for 19 years, she said.
Despite China’s booming international trade over the past 30 years, its human rights conditions have only worsened, with less freedom of speech and fewer religions than before, she said.
Following an article published on the Epoch Times’ Web site in November 2004 accusing the CCP of cruelty, the number of Chinese people declaring on the Web site that they have left the party has steadily risen, she said, adding that the number exceeded 300 million last month.
“This is not about fighting for political participation or taking power from the government. It is a moral movement where people are realizing how inhumane the CCP is and decide to no longer be a part of that,” she said.
Falun Gong practitioners have been the most persecuted group under the CCP regime, Taiwan Falun Gong spokeswoman and attorney Theresa Chu (朱婉琪) said.
Crackdowns on the group began on July 20, 1999, under Jiang’s orders.
As an important democracy in the Chinese-speaking world, Taiwan should support the Chinese people who have quit the CCP and share its “Taiwanese values” with China, she said.
“We must put more effort into helping Chinese people quit the CCP, dissolving the party in a peaceful manner and ending the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners,” she said.
Although the Chinese constitution clearly stipulates that basic human rights should be protected, in reality this is rarely enforced, Hsinchu City Councilor Tseng Tzu-cheng (曾資程) said.
Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) and Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) were imprisoned in China for advocating democracy, he added.
“We must stand in solidarity with Falung Gong practitioners,” Tseng said.
Hopefully one day, Falun Gong practitioners can freely study their philosophy of “truthfulness, compassion and forbearance” without having to worry about persecution, he added.
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