Falun Gong practitioners yesterday staged a mass sit-in in front of Taipei City Hall to mark the 21st anniversary of the start of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of the group’s members, calling on the world to recognize the CCP’s crime.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the CCP’s arbitrary passage of national security legislation for Hong Kong and its violation of press freedom by banning reports of excessive water levels along the Yangtze River, which caused flooding in 27 Chinese provinces, the world has woken up to the CCP’s true evil nature, Taiwan Falun Dafa Association president Chang Chin-hwa (張錦華) told a news conference.
Dubbing this year “the year of awakening,” Chang said Falun Gong has gathered signatures from 550 lawmakers from 27 nations for a joint statement to condemn the CCP’s brutal infringement of human rights and to recognize the efforts of Falun Gong.
Of the 550 politicians, 34 are Taiwanese legislators from various parties, which places the nation fourth in terms of the number of signatures gathered, she said.
Hopefully, the world will realize that now is the time to choose virtue and justice, to eliminate the malicious party that is the CCP and to liberate the more than 1 billion Chinese, she said.
“The Qing Dynasty 120 years ago waged a war against other nations and was obliterated. Today, China is also waging a war against other nations with viruses and its reign of terror,” New School For Democracy chairman Tseng Chien-yuan (曾建元) said.
With the pandemic, Beijing’s suppression of pro-democracy Hong Kong demonstrators and the severe flooding throughout China, he believes that the CCP’s days are numbered, he said.
The US administration is mulling barring CCP members and their families from entering the US, Tseng added.
The US House of Representatives in May passed a measure that seeks to punish Chinese officials for detaining more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, he said.
Tseng said he is glad that the US fired the first salvo against the CCP’s wrongdoings and human rights atrocities, and hopes the rest of the world will join in the sanctions against the CCP.
Falun Gong has long been collating information on former CCP members, some of whom did not request anonymity when they revealed the party’s vices to Falun Gong, he said.
This information is invaluable and hopefully will offer the international community a clearer roadmap in its efforts to sanction the CCP, he said.
After the guests made speeches, Falun Gong practitioners lit candles and mourned in silence the estimated more than 4,500 fellow practitioners who have reportedly been killed by the CCP.
Before the sit-in, about 1,000 Falun Gong members marched in the city’s Xinyi District (信義) to raise awareness of their cause.
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