(Minghui.org) Rosemary and Kasha, two college students in London, were impressed by the peaceful Falun Gong demonstration at Martin Place on April 25, 2015.

“Your event is really great,” Kasha said, “A lot of people are attracted to your demonstration. They all want to know what's going on. The noisy street protests, however, often drive people away, because violence always follows violence.”

Rosemary and Kasha learned about the persecution of Falun Gong at an event on April 25. They both signed the petition condemning the brutality.

In London's Chinatown, Jones, a physical therapist, had the same feeling about the Falun Gong event that day. Jones and her high-school daughter, Millen, had not previously heard about the state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China.

Jones kept saying that she was shocked. “Illegal arresting and jailing are serious crimes. And organ harvesting? I am going to cry!”

“Your peaceful protest is very powerful,” Jones said to Falun Gong practitioners, “We have too much violence in this world. But your behavior is purely peaceful, and no violence. It has strong power. It helps people to learn this important and educational information. All of those who don't know about the persecution should come to learn.”

Millen signs the petition to support Falun Gong's peaceful resistance.

What these ladies saw in London were part of activities that Falun Gong practitioners around the world held to commemorate the 16th Anniversary of the April 25 Peaceful Protest in Beijing.

Peacefulness is the spirit that Falun Gong practitioners manifested 16 years ago during the protest in Beijing, through which many people first heard about this ancient cultivation practice, and is the spirit seen in thousands of Falun Gong activities held around the world ever since.

One attendee of the April 25 Peaceful Protest described it this way:

“When I got there in the morning, there were many policemen and police cars. Fellow practitioners were told to stand on the sidewalk ways in a few lines. To avoid blocking the traffic, we kept the pedestrian path open. Policemen were standing in the middle of the street. Every 30 yards, there was a policeman facing us.”

“From 9:00 a.m. To 9:00 p.m., the whole protest was peaceful. Most practitioners were reading the book Zhuan Falun. Every now and then a few fellow practitioners walked along the lines holding plastic bags to collect trash. Nobody made noise. The environment was peaceful and full of compassion. In the whole day, everybody was quietly waiting for the results of the meeting with government officials.”

“At around 8:00 p.m., the meeting was over. We learned that the fellow practitioners who were arrested in Tianjin were already released. So, we dismissed quietly. Before we left, we cleaned the street. Not even a piece of paper crumb was left. We even picked up the cigarette butts tossed by the policemen. I heard one policeman saying to another, “See, this is virtue.'”

The April 25th Protest was fundamentally different from other large-scale demonstrations in China, and the difference lies in its peacefulness. What Falun Gong practitioners wanted to do was to tell the government what Falun Gong really was, and request the release of the wrongly-jailed fellow practitioners.

During the protest, police cars came and went, and somebody tried to make practitioners leave. But there was no riot, no arguments, and no fights. The protest genuinely showed the entire world what Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is—the teaching of Falun Gong.

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