Thousands of Falun Gong Practitioners March in Prague to Showcase Hope and Resilience

Robert Lovlien and his family traveled 700 miles to join a parade in Prague on Sept. 19. It’s like a pilgrimage, but also a family holiday—one that he is happy to make by flying over from Norway.

Lovlien came across Falun Gong 10 years ago, while exploring spiritual disciplines during a difficult period. 

“I was struggling with drug addiction and problematic behaviors, and I was searching for something deeper. When I was exploring Eastern spiritual disciplines—Taoism and Buddhism—someone gave me information about [the practice],” he told The Epoch Times.

Through practicing the slow-moving meditative exercises and studying Falun Gong’s teachings, Lovlien said, he was able to overcome these bad habits. 

“It changed my life in many ways. I became a good person, a good citizen, a good family member, and eventually a good husband and father,” Lovlien said. 

Like Lovlien, Reymond Venga traveled from Paris to join the march in the Czech capital. 

“All these Falun Dafa practitioners have come here today to showcase the beauty of this practice from China,” Venga told The Epoch Times.

“We want to introduce this method to others because it is highly beneficial for health, body, and mind.”

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that features meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. 

Pawel Dumanowski, a participant from Poland, said he considers Falun Gong a way of life. He shared a similar journey of quitting bad habits through his faith a decade ago. 

“It has changed me a lot,” Dumanowski told The Epoch Times. 

“I think I’m a somewhat better person now. For instance, I’m the father of a little boy who’s like a ‘little hurricane,’ and Dafa helps me be more patient and handle this hurricane,” he said, with a laugh.

More than 2,000 people from across Europe joined the parade in the heart of the Czech Republic, the organizers told The Epoch Times.

The participants called for an end to the long-running persecution of Falun Gong in China, which has extended beyond its borders.

Such efforts were welcomed by Prague resident Milan Walter, who watched from the sidewalk as the parade passed by.  

“Anything independent, resisting the communist regime, is important. Of course, we support you,” Walter told The Epoch Times.  

Speaking of the parade itself, Walter said, “I feel happy to see [it]. And I’m surprised how many people [are] here. It’s unbelievable.”

In 1999, the Chinese communist regime ordered a brutal eradication campaign against the practice. Millions of practitioners have been subjected to arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture, and even death by forced organ harvesting.

In 2019, an independent tribunal concluded that the regime had been killing prisoners of conscience for their organs to supply the transplant market “on a significant scale” for years. The main victims, the tribunal said, were detained Falun Gong practitioners.

Ondřej Horecký and Li Haoyue contributed to this report.