(Clearwisdom.net) “Your exercises are quite beautiful against the gently falling snowflakes. You are yourselves like the gentle snowflakes. You do no harm. You do only good. I am so much in solidarity with your efforts,” Green Party leader and MP Elizabeth May said in her speech at Canadian Falun Gong practitioners' appeal on Jan. 31, 2012. On the square in front of the federal Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, more than three hundred Falun Gong practitioners from Toronto, Montreal, Waterloo, and Ottawa held an appeal in the snow to remind the Canadian people to pay attention to the ongoing 12-year persecution of Falun Gong in China. They called on Canadian Prime Minister Harper, who is going to visit China, to put forward the matter of the persecution and to request the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to release all Falun Gong practitioners who are being persecuted in China, including eleven practitioners who have relatives in Canada.
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On hearing of Prime Minister Harper's upcoming visit to China, Canadian Falun Gong practitioners collected more than ten thousand signatures, postcards and appeal letters from the public in the past four months. Falun Gong practitioner Grace from Ottawa said, “All four MPs who came to show support were very touched. Some were moved to tears. They witnessed what we did and heard our stories.”
Along the path to the Parliament Buildings, Falun Gong practitioners placed more than 50 glass containers, each of which displayed evidence and stories of Falun Gong practitioners' experiences of persecution. Several of the displays told the stories of practitioners who have relatives in Canada.
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Jane is a Falun Gong practitioner from Toronto. She said, “This trip reminds me of many things, especially my appeals in Beijing with my fellow practitioners in China. Several of them have died from the brutal persecution. Some are still in prison. I'm the only one who is living in Canada, a country of freedom and democracy. Whenever I have a chance to tell my experience, I feel my fellow practitioners are standing behind me. They are together with me to expose the evil. My voice isn't just from myself, but from all of us.”
Dong Xin, former professor of Chinese who escaped China half a year ago, told her experience with the Chinese Communist Party's persecution. She has benefited from practicing Falun Gong since 1998. After the persecution was launched in 1999, she was detained three time and thrown into a forced labor camp for two years for appealing in Beijing. She was terribly tortured, forced to work as long as 18 hours a day, deprived of sleep, beaten, and shocked with electric batons until her body was swollen and festered. After she was released from the labor camp, she was still monitored at her home. Her phone calls, and even her family members' phone calls, were tapped. Her family was threatened. Dong said thousands and thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in China were still imprisoned and tortured.
Falun Gong practitioner Wang Jinju called for help to rescue her sister Wang Jinliang from Shandong Women's Prison. She wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Harper. The letter stated, “My sister Wang Jinliang was detained four times for practicing Falun Gong. My sister Wang Jinxiang was detained three times and injected with unknown drugs twice before she died. I call on the Prime Minister to help uphold justice by seriously asking the Chinese government to stop its persecution of Falun Gong and release all Falun Gong practitioners including my sister.
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MP Rob Anders came to the press conference and hugged the Falun Gong practitioners who suffered the persecution in China. After hearing the practitioners’ narration of suffering in China, he was moved to tears. He has paid great attention to the violation of human rights in China, attended many Falun Gong practitioners' rallies, and openly condemned the Chinese government for the brutal persecution of Falun Gong.
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