While the spiritual practice of Falun Gong has been banned in communist China, it is legal in the special administrative region of Hong Kong. Falun Gong practitioners make use of the freedoms they hold in Hong Kong to tell others about their practice and the persecution it suffers just across the border.
At heavily trafficked sites throughout Hong Kong, Falun Gong practitioners have for eleven years set up booths at which they distribute literature and display pictures, posters, and banners. They also staff tables at which they urge Chinese tourists who stop by to quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These Falun Gong venues often draw great interest from Chinese tour groups from the mainland. They have been known to anger CCP officials.
The children, said to number more than 30, wore the distinctive red scarves of the Young Pioneers, a communist organization for children ages 6-14. Witnesses guessed the ages of this group to be from 7 to 12. The group traveled on a tour bus that took them around to four sites where Falun Gong practitioners have their booths and tables.
According to Falun Gong practitioners at the Hung Hom subway station, the vandalism was clearly planned in advance. The students were well supplied with colored markers, adhesive labels, and stickers that they used to deface the practitioners’ banners and displays.
The Falun Gong practitioners say the students also acted in concert during the incident, showing that they had been previously instructed in what to do.
At the Lok Ma Chau Station, the group arrived at around 10 a.m. and witnesses say that 4 or 5 adults accompanied the students. As the children defaced the Falun Gong materials, one student was heard to say that this is what their teacher wanted done. An eyewitness also saw a man and a woman taking pictures of the incident from a short distance away.
Ms. Zeng was present. She said, “This happened for no reason at all and must have been planned. Seeing what they were doing, I ran up and warned them to stop. This scared them a bit and they did stop, so I questioned them as to whether the CCP was responsible. But a male teacher, speaking Mandarin Chinese [Cantonese Chinese is the dialect most widely used in Hong Kong], ran up and told them not to speak to Falun Gong people.”
Falun Gong practitioners reported the incident to police on patrol.
At the Western Harbor Crossing, an eyewitness said that the bus arrived just before 11 a.m. and the youngsters were directed to deface the placards and banners by several adults. A Falun Gong practitioner was able to summon a policeman, who took one of the adults into the station’s police sub-bureau. Meanwhile, the other adult leaders hastily gathered the students onto the bus and it drove away.
Later in the afternoon, around 4 p.m., a Falun Gong member went to the police station to give an account of the incident. Two teachers were seen under arrest and a policeman commented that the whole affair must have been organized.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that involves doing 5 sets of meditative exercises and living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. After the then-paramount leader of the Chinese communist regime, Jiang Zemin, grew frightened of the number of people practicing Falun Gong in China, he gave orders in 1999 that the practice be “eradicated.”
Read the original Chinese article. [http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/11/6/2/n3274367.htm ]
