| Published: Friday 6th January 2006 |
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Many local people learned about Falun Gong at Jyväskylä Country Fair on September 17th. Practitioners demonstrated the five Falun Gong exercises to traditional-style Chinese music, which attracted a great deal of attention. Some people knew already a little about the persecution of Falun Gong in China, but they wanted to learn more about how and why this is still continuing.
Six years ago, in July 1999, the former chairman Jiang Zemin launched a brutal persecution against Falun Gong in China. He realised that Falun Gong attracted more Chinese people than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Some experts in the field of China, believe that the reasons to launch such a large scale persecution must have something to do with his own fear of losing his power and control over the Chinese people.
As people know, the CCP is officially atheist, so anything of a spiritual nature is discouraged and often outlawed because it is not in keeping with Communist ideology. For us in nations with democratically elected governments, freedom of belief is considered to be one of the most basic universal rights, but in China, such fundamental human rights are rarely protected.
To date, there are more than 2800 documented cases of otherwise healthy practitioners being beaten and tortured to death while in detention.
During the fair practitioners also handed out hand folded lotus flowers which were gladly accepted by locals. Some even asked to learn how to fold them.
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Originally published in Finnish at: http://fi.clearharmony.net/articles/200510/3338.html
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