Article from the UK Fa Conference: Exposing the Persecution at Downing Street

Hello Master, hello fellow practitioners;

My name is Lin Lili, today; I want to share some of my understanding and thoughts that I had, during the time a few practitioners and I were conducting the activities on Downing Street to highlight the persecution, after the exposé of the organ harvesting incident.

After I heard about the incident, I had the thought of immediately proceeding to Downing Street. During those two months, although I couldn’t tell much difference on the surface I felt my character and level had improved dramatically. During that period of time, I’d gain many new understandings as each day passed. Some of the fellow practitioners said that it must be really hard to keep going to Downing Street every day, but I didn’t look at it that way. In fact it was quite the opposite, I felt extremely at ease and I was glad to be able to take part in the activities to expose the persecution and validate Falun Dafa.

In the process of cultivation everyone has their own path and understanding. At the time all the fellow practitioners had understood the Downing Street situation differently too. As I spent more time at Downing Street the more I realised the importance of holding our activities there.

Downing Street is the place where most of the British officials work, but as a Chinese Falun Gong practitioner, I wasn’t so clear about this and I only realised it’s significance after taking part in the activities there. Our petition place was directly opposite No. 10, the Prime Minister’s dwelling, therefore we hung our banners outside so that there was a higher chance of catching the Prime Ministers eye. Later, I realised that next door to the Prime Minister’s house is Parliament, which often holds many government officials who are coming and going daily. Also, there was a person who told me that this area gathers thousands of members of Parliament, ministers and high officials, therefore I hung about 20 more banners towards the direction of Parliament. It was a long display!

Due to the fact that we are situated in London, we need quite a few people to be involved in the activities; during the week, most of the practitioners needed to go to work, or college, and the availability of the people who could keep going to Downing Street was very limited. At the beginning, we sometimes only had two or three people who could go. One day the police didn’t put any railings up, so we couldn’t put any banners up, then we found out that it was because we didn't have enough people doing the petitions; we needed at least four or five people for them to put up the railings. I realised that Master was trying to tell us that Downing Street is different from China Town, where one person could do petitions alone. Downing Street is the heart of Great Britain, and so needs more attention and more power from Falun Dafa practitioners, no matter how you look at it, from other dimensions or from this human society’s surface. Once we had enlightened to this we made sure at least four people were present at all times. Normally we have a two Falun Gong practitioners who are a couple who would take turns every day; a western practitioner; a new practitioner and me with my daughter.

The practitioners who were a couple took turns outside the Chinese Embassy every Wednesday, and then went to Downing Street to take part in the activities there. There were a few days when a practitioner told me her legs were hurting very badly, but she knew that Downing Street is an extremely important place, like ZhongNanHai in China, so she made up her mind to get there, even if it meant she had to crawl. Such a selfless act really touched my heart.

When we first started our activities on Downing Street, all the officials who passed by seemed uninterested and many of them wouldn’t accept our leaflets. I thought although we were always doing things to expose the persecution, it obviously wasn’t enough. The Chinese Communist Party was also distributing slanderous information about the practice and so many people were still not clear what Falun Gong is. From this we could see that we needed to make greater efforts to present the facts whilst I also started to search inside with the thought that this was a chance to improve my character.

As we showed up day after day, alongside the improvement of our understandings according to the Falun Gong teachings, the changes on Downing Street were enormous. Master told us in Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital:

"People take actively doing things to be cultivation, and they take preserving religious formats to be cultivation. Actually, gods don't place any importance on those things. They only consider the improvement of people's minds important, for that is true improvement."

At the time, the practitioners who were there needed to remind each other that we were there to cultivate, not socialise, therefore we needed to act as cultivators at all times, maintaining a high standard of character. We all held common traits, such as initiative and a tacit understanding. One practitioner would be there very early every morning, and as soon as he got there, he started hanging the banners. Sometimes he would kindly bring water for everyone. Another female practitioner doesn’t speak English, but she was always handing out most of the leaflets to the passers by. One day she collected eight pages of signature, which amounts to hundreds in total. As for a new practitioner, he spent one day outside of the Chinese Embassy and then four days at Downing Street. At the beginning, he thought he didn’t know how to hang the banners, later if he’d got there quite early he’d start hanging the banners, gaining more and more initiative. Then I had realised that the reason we go to Downing Street wasn’t to ask them to do anything for us, but for our compassion. Although they are government officials, ordinary people aren’t capable of doing anything about this situation, so in reality we were saving them. I felt more and more compassionate. My daughter was being very good too; she was always well-behaved when we were at Downing Street, sometimes she wouldn't need any milk for more than four hours.

In that environment, the officials who passed by grew more and more friendly; wanting to accept our handouts, whilst the number of people who signed the petition was also increasing. They were not only just the staff in the buildings, but also lawyers, ground force officers, administrative staff and nobility. The interesting thing is I do not know many celebrities in Britain, but once a fellow practitioner told me that one of the quite famous ministers had accepted our handout.

It’s well known that the policemen who are on duty rarely sign anything, but on Downing Street we met at least seven or eight policemen who wanted to sign their name in support. One day, we were taking part in the activities in Downing Street, when towards the end of the day two new policemen came. One asked the other what Falun Gong is, to which he commented that Falun Gong is not good, whilst the other one disagreed with his stance telling him that Falun Gong is good. He remarked, “Look at their banners, it tells you to be truthful, compassionate and endure, so it’s good”. The first policeman took a good look at the banner and our practitioners, and then said, “Oh, Falun Gong is good”. With this we knew the policemen would be saved.

During the two months we were on Downing Street, we had a lot of contact with the policemen there; after a while, they began to know us as nice people, and trust us. At the beginning, they would come and check every now and again, and then they just left us to it. Once, there was a group of people doing a petition on Downing Street. I thought we could spare some space for them. I just started to loosen the banners, but a policeman came over and said, “No rush, let’s see first, they may not need much space.”

When the two months came to an end on Downing Street we still wanted to participate with the activities. However, the local police said that parliament was just about to break for their holiday, so it would be better for us to hold our activities of until after September when the holidays end. Also, during that period of time, we neglected taking care of our families, so it was necessary to readjust a little and so we stopped. I still have some thoughts I want to share with everybody about whether or we should continue in September.

As for Downing Street, I think if everyone thinks we should persist with our activities there then we should all support this decision with our righteous thoughts, in this way we are all taking part. Downing Street gathers about 1100 MPs, Ministers, and is almost the head and heart of the United Kingdom. As we know, if one MP supports us, this means all his supporters are saved! Britain has more than 600 MPs and some other areas only have about 100 where some of our practitioners are, so how to cover the others and tell them the truth has always been a tough problem. However, most of these 600 MPs work in Downing Street during the weekdays, and will return to their respective districts at the weekends. There are not only government officials who visit Downing Street as many reporters from the major media groups also visit Downing Street everyday to conduct interviews. With this been the case isn’t it of importance for us to pass on the relevant facts about the practice and the persecution to these people?

During this period of time, I think we still haven’t fully understood the importance of conducting petitions and activities to expose the persecution in Downing Street, or perhaps we haven’t had a deep enough discussion about this and shared as one-body. This is reflected by the lack of practitioners attending the activities there. Some practitioners would go for one or two days, but more often than not there would be just three old folks and me with my daughter. Despite this we still treasured the opportunity and environment which Master has given us to cultivate in, and we tried our best to do so. However, if we look at it from the official’s point of view in Downing Street, it looks like all we have is a few old people and women with children as Falun Gong practitioners. I think if more practitioners could join in and spare some time to support our project in Downing Street, even just sending righteous thoughts then the environment would improve tremendously.

I have a very limited ability of writing and expressing myself and so I didn’t go into details with many things, so if there’s anything lacking I hope I can be corrected.

Thank you everyone.