SYDNEY, Australia—Three prominent Chinese democracy advocates were among the hundreds of supporters of the Falun Gong spiritual moment who rallied in Sydney on Sunday July 19 to commemorate the movement’s tenth year of persecution in China.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) instigated the crackdown on Falun Gong, a popular Buddha school exercise and mediation practice, on July 20 1999. Since that time there have been over 3000 confirmed deaths in custody while tens of thousand have been tortured, held in detention centres or re-education through labour camps and prisons.
Prior to a rally held near Sydney’s Chinatown hundreds of supporters of Falun Gong and the ‘Tuidang’ quit the CCP campaign to assist mass withdrawals from the Chinese Communist Party paraded through the centre of the city.
Organisers of the Tuidang campaign say that total numbers of Chinese who have quit the CCP are over 57 million and increasing.
“Falun Gong practitioners have lost their civil rights as described in the so-called ‘constitution’. Falun Gong practitioners and their families have suffered constant surveillance, arrest, interrogation, torture and even organ harvesting,” he said.
“This cruel depravation of a righteous faith has turned China into one huge concentration camp,” said Mr Yuan.
Chen Yonglin, the former first secretary of the Sydney Chinese Consulate General who defected to Australia in 2005, told the rally that Falun Gong practitioners had in the past ten years paid a high cost.
“The spirit and the courage—the three Falun Gong principles truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, are what the Chinese mostly need,” said Mr Chen.
Speaking with The Epoch Times following his speech Mr Chen said that the non-violent campaign led by Falun Gong practitioners to encourage Chinese people to quit the CCP has exposed all of the crimes of the Chinese regime and
“It is a spiritual movement that can recover the nation’s spirit and soul,” he said.
“In the last 60 years the Chinese Communist Party has killed millions of Chinese people and has continued to do so including the massacre at Tiananmen and later with the crackdown on Falun Gong and Tibet and Xingjian. The Communist regime responds to the Chinese people’s requests for human rights and democracy with slaughter and persecution.”
After Mr Chen had left his post at the Chinese consulate in 2005—he also withdrew his membership from the Party through the ‘Tuidang’ campaign.
Pan Qing, chairman of the China Freedom and Democracy Party, told the rally that in contemporary China, the ruling party’s harsh suppression of the population maintains a false sense of harmony.
He later went to say that any Chinese with conscience can no longer be apathetic to the situation experienced in Chinese society. “Numerous times have shown that to beg and to have hope in the Chinese Communist Party can only deepen the suffering of the Chinese people,” he said.
Speaking at the rally John Deller from the NSW Falun Dafa Association implored the Australian government and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to face the Communist Party of China without fear, and nobly speak up for an end of the persecution.
“The Australian people do not deserve to be subservient to, and manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Mr Deller. “And they especially do not deserve to be cast as compliant and complicit in the hidden holocaust that is the persecution of Falun Gong.”
