(Clearwisdom.net) Essen is one of the major cities in the Ruhr Industrial Region of Germany, with a population of about 650,000. At the beginning of the New Year, Falun Gong practitioners chose Essen as the site of their first Falun Dafa Information Day in 2005.

On Saturday January 22nd, Falun Gong practitioners from different German cities met in the Essen city center. According to the Clearwisdom website, more than 1,300 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death in China, and in December alone, the death cases numbered over fifty. In order to rescue fellow Falun Gong practitioners who are still imprisoned and tortured in China, and to end this inhuman persecution as soon as possible, the practitioners gathered in Essen to continue raising awareness of the human rights violations in China and to ask people to add their voices to the worldwide call to bring to justice those responsible for the genocidal campaign against Falun Gong.

Falun Gong information table

Clarifying the truth

Group practice

Clarifying the truth

Originally the weather forecast said it would be a rainy day. In the morning it was very cloudy, and rain was expected at any moment. The practitioners were not put off by the weather: some demonstrated the Falun Gong exercises, some sent righteous thoughts and others talked to passers-by. Around 11 o'clock, the sun came out and the dark clouds scattered. The sky was no longer dark and turbid, and more and more people came out.

Ten of the practitioners positioned themselves on different street corners to reach a wider range of people. A Chinese woman passed by with her western husband. This woman thought that what the communist regime in China says about practitioners was true and that practitioners were doing something like political propaganda. She was just turning to walk away when a practitioner told her what Falun Gong is, how many countries it is practiced in and all about the persecution in China. After understanding the truth, the woman said: "I'm still patriotic even though I've lived abroad for many years; however, I'm against the Chinese Government's way of forbidding people from practicing the exercises and even arresting them." The interesting thing was that although her husband didn't understand the Chinese conversation, he could tell what was happening from his wife's facial expressions. He accepted a leaflet and signed a petition calling for an end to the persecution. After taking leaflets, both of them thanked us sincerely and left happily.

Since 2001, Falun Gong practitioners have been able to freely utilize an activity room in the Essen Eastern Civil Activity Center once a week. The Western practitioner who is responsible for this exercise site received dozens of activity program booklets of the center's schedule last week. The booklets contain a picture of five practitioners meditating together beneath a write-up of information on the free Falun Gong exercise site. At 2 p.m., more than fifty program booklets were distributed to people who were interested in learning the exercises. There were several tourists from cities far away asking how to contact the Falun Gong practitioners in their respective cities.

A middle-age woman saw the Falun Gong information desk and hurried over, asking: "Who can speak good German? I have questions to ask." She had been reading Zhuan Falun and while reading she had some questions she hoped to have clarified. This woman had also learned the exercises in the activity center. Practitioners talked with her and encouraged her to continue practicing the exercises.

By 5 p.m., it was already quite dark but there were still many pedestrians. Several Western practitioners thus stayed at the information table to clarify the truth to more people.

Source http://clearharmony.net/articles/200502/24704.html