Why is the Evil Regime so Afraid of Zhang Cuiying's Painting Exhibition?

Ms. Zhang Cuiying is an Australian citizen, an artist and a Falun Gong practitioner, who went through various kinds of torture in four Chinese prisons over an eight-month period. With the Australian government’s help, she was released in 2000 and since then she has travelled to more than one hundred cities in some forty countries around the world. Through holding painting exhibitions, she has explained to various government agencies and people from all walks of life about her experience of being incarcerated and tortured in China after she had tried to encourage the Chinese government to stop persecuting Falun Gong. She has urgently called on the international society to help stop China’s Jiang regime from persecuting Falun Gong. Her deeds have been highly acclaimed and supported by all levels of our global society. In particular, it has been of grave concern to international legal circles. With great support from the world-renowned lawyer and human rights campaigner Geoffrey Robertson, she is to file an individual lawsuit against Jiang Zemin, who is the chief culprit behind the persecution of Falun Gong.

Zhang Cuiying’s art exhibition has long promoted the principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance”, as well as exposing the evil nature of Jiang’s dictatorship. As a result, she has become a thorn in the side of the evil regime that persecutes Falun Gong.

Two years ago, Zhang Cuiying came to Europe with her paintings. Travelling from city to city, and from country to country, she has visited almost all of the capitals in Europe and has held many exhibitions. She was received by numerous government officials and interviewed by media worldwide. Her story has become more and more well-known by people, and the Jiang regime’s suppression has been condemned by more and more people as well. During this time she has also been continuously monitored and interfered with by the Chinese embassies.

Last year Zhang Cuiying successfully held her first painting exhibition in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. Some major media ran positive reports on her works and her suffering in China. Last March when Zhang Cuiying held her second painting exhibition in Kiev, the Chinese embassy sent its staff to obstruct the exhibition and put pressure on the government agency concerned. As a result, the exhibition was cancelled prior to the opening ceremony. Several days later, local practitioners successfully held an exhibition in another art gallery and told the media all about the interference from the Chinese embassy.

Following the exhibition in Ukraine, the next one was to be held in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. The day before the opening of the exhibition, the Chinese embassy phoned a local practitioner and attempted to coerce him into cancelling the activity. However the practitioner sternly rejected their attempts. In the meantime, the embassy exerted pressure on the gallery, but to no avail. And on top of that, during the opening of the exhibition itself, the Chinese embassy staff went to the gallery to mess up the activity and threatened to drive the guests away. They even displayed a copy of the so-called Sino-Romanian agreement, alleging that the two countries had signed a pact to curb Falun Gong activities. The exhibition was then forced to close. However, a reporter at the scene found that the agreement was only signed by the Chinese side. When local practitioners consulted the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it turned out that there is no such agreement whatsoever. This brought about vehement criticism among the local media. The Romanian government has received a lot of letters from various places around the world, including from members of the European parliament and government officials from other countries, condemning the Chinese embassy’s illegal acts. The Chinese embassy’s efforts only succeeded in exposing their vicious nature.

Zhang Cuiying’s art exhibition moved on to visit Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechoslovakia and Poland. With the support from these governments and various organisations, the event was very successful.

However the evil group would not give up. It attempted to take every possible opportunity to interfere with the art exhibition. On October the 6th this year, when Zhang Cuiying’s art exhibition was held in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, for a second time, the Chinese embassy was very nervous, since this exhibition was held with the support of the parliamentarians and would be held at the Parliament Hall. They tried their best to stop the activity from taking place, and went to the Parliament Hall to distribute fabricated information attacking Falun Gong and place tremendous pressure on the chief of the parliament’s administrative department. Because of this, the administrative department rashly decided to cancel the inauguration ceremony of the exhibition, as well as a press conference arranged for October the 8th.

In a speech that she planned to deliver at a press conference, a parliamentarian who strongly supported the exhibition said: “Ms. Zhang used to suffer from serious rheumatoid arthritis, and was almost paralysed. She once had to give up painting. But, a miracle occurred after she started to cultivate an ancient qigong practice of mind, body and spirit, based on the universal principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance.” Regardless of how harsh the persecution is, she has never stopped telling people the facts of the persecution nor has she ever given up her belief. All of this has influenced her work.”

It is easy to learn how serious the consequences would be after the cancellation of the art exhibition. The Chinese embassy’s rude interference with another country’s internal affairs has resulted in strong reactions from all angles, especially from the media. Local Falun Gong practitioners and those from other countries have successfully held a press conference in Sofia on October the 10th. The Bulgarian Financial and Business News Daily, which has the largest circulation in the country, incisively pointed out that the cancellation of the art exhibition was a big mistake, and that “It is easy to know what would happen next. Bulgaria would immediately become infamous for becoming the first country to cancel an art exhibition because of a Chinese diplomatic pressure...The most serious matter is that the general public would question why a foreign diplomat was able to decide what should be displayed on the walls of our parliament.” Many other media ran positive reports about Falun Gong.

It is beyond the evil group’s comprehension and imagination that whenever it attempts to block an art exhibition, more and more people from all walks of life come to know the fact about Falun Gong.

Translated from Chinese at http://www.yuanming.net/articles/200310/25125.html