Practitioners gathered on Zagreb's main square, handed out flyers and demonstrated the exercises. This peaceful gathering drew a lot of media attention. Most people had never heard about Falun Gong and were shocked to see the images of practitioners being tortured in China. The question on everyone's lips was, "Why are these people tortured?"

Ms. Xiang Maohua, 65, is a Falun Gong practitioner who lived in Sichuan Province. During the past ten years, the police pursued and later arrested and detained her five times. She recounts: "The fourth time I was arrested, police slapped me in the face and grabbed my hair and knocked my head against a wall. They also forced me to stand for long periods of time. For twelve days in a row, they subjected me to various tortures, non-stop. My blood pressure suddenly shot up to 180 over 220 and I spat out blood... I was in grave danger."

Mr. Xiong Wende was persecuted many times while in prison and in a mental hospital over the past few years. In October 2007, police arrested Xiong Wende. They took him to the Tangxunhu Brainwashing Centre in Wuhan City. Because Mr. Xiong refused to sell out his fellow practitioners, a director named Gong got very angry, grabbed Mr. Xiong's collar, and pulled him off his chair. He slapped him with both hands. In July 2008, police picked the lock on Xiong Wende's home. For about two hours they searched all over, confiscating many of his private belongings. Mr. Xiong was then arrested by the Public Security Bureau. He escaped after two days and is still unable to go home.

I work for a famous Dutch travel agency as a tour leader and have guided tourists in China for 18 years. In the second half of April 2009, while leading a tour group in China, I was arrested and interrogated by officers with Beijing's National Security force. On May 11th, after I took a tourist group to the airport, I went back to my hotel. At about 3 p.m., someone knocked on my door. It was hotel security. They told me that the police wanted to ask me some questions. I tried to close the door immediately, but they pushed their way in and arrested me.

Mr. Xie Deqing was a healthy and energetic person. After twenty days of detention in the Xinjin Brainwashing Facility at the Chengdu Law Study Centre, how did he become only skin and bones? He became incontinent and was not able to eat or drink. He also had serious symptoms of angina pectoris and was unconscious much of the time. What happened at the brainwashing facility? What kind of persecution had Mr. Xie been subjected to? Before Mr. Xie passed away on May 29th, he told his family with great difficulty, "At the Xinjin Brainwashing Facility when I was taken to a hospital for a physical examination, I was injected with unknown drugs. I was barely able to eat or drink anything for the next ten days."

Even though my grandson was only six years-old at the time, he made banners that read, "Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good!" After he wrote the characters, he painted them and then cut them out. He then pasted the characters on the viscose paper and wrote on the bottom of the banner,

One day, I read an article on the Clearwisdom website about an older practitioner whose living conditions were very bad, yet he donated 100 yuan that he had saved for more than six months to the materials production site, hoping that practitioners would make more materials to save sentient beings.

On June 27th, at 11:30 a.m., the Divine Land Marching Band marched through the main stage of the Montville Independence Day Parade as the MC gave the above introduction.