August 4, 2005

This millenary oriental art of relaxation is being persecuted by the Chinese government

During the professional Finnish model's visit to Ferrol as the international spokesperson for a cosmetic brand, she took the opportunity to raise awareness about the situation of over 70 million Chinese people that are being persecuted in their country for practicing a discipline similar to yoga

Redacción / Ferrol

Three words summarize the philosophy of Falun Dafa or Falun Gong: Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance, principles that in some way synthesize the conceptual aspect of similar practices such as yoga, for example. Falun Dafa, a millenary practice that surged in China and started to become popular in the country in 1992 thanks to Master Li Hongzhi, who publicized one of the various self-cultivation disciplines of mind and body which just a few years ago started to come from the Orient and which are generically grouped under the name of qigong.

Something so healthy and inoffensive, established already in more than 70 countries around the world, was all of a sudden prohibited from one day to the next almost 6 years ago by the Chinese government, then presided by Jiang Zemin. The reasons for this persecution, according to organizations that defend this large collective, point to the harsh control that the dictatorship exerts over everything that does not follow the regime's principles. In barely six years, the number of people murdered, tortured to death, persecuted and incarcerated has not ceased to grow, a circumstance that has led the NGO Global Mission to Rescue to defend and call out for the rights of so many Chinese people.

One of its members is the ex-model Pia-Maria I. Sandas, international spokesperson for a cosmetic label, who in her visit to Ferrol also took the opportunity to make known the situation that these people are in, included among which is one of her good friends, Jane Dai, -on the photo - whose husband was murdered for committing the "terrible crime" of simply practicing an Art that relaxes.

Pia-Maria was in Ferrol on Tuesday to generate awareness about this situation. / L. Polo

The persecution has taken more than 2,000 lives. /GMR