NEW YORK - A battered woman with large gashes in her leg crouches inside a small cage on the corner of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street. The woman's name is Nelly Au, and she is an import manager in Manhattan's fashion district. Nelly is also a practitioner of Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, a meditation practice that was outlawed in China in 1999. She is one of four people in an exhibit demonstrating the tortures used on practitioners of Falun Gong in China.
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| Nelly Au crouches inside a "small cell." (Evan Mantyk, The Epoch Times) |
According to the leaflets being handed out at the exhibit, Falun Gong "is best understood as a comprehensive self-cultivation practice with ancient roots." The practice includes meditation and slow-motion movements, as well as books for guidance. It became popular in the early 1990's when a Chinese man named Li Hongzhi started to spread the practice through a series of lectures.
Zhu Weiyong, a clinical researcher from New Jersey who helped coordinate the exhibit, said, "In 1999 the number of Falun Gong practitioners was huge, they outnumbered [registered members of] the Communist Party. In China, they don't allow different beliefs besides communism and they try to control people's minds."
As the four people made up with bloody faces and tattered clothing stood in the hot sun, a flood of tourists and New Yorkers gushed by, some trotting along busily with heads straight. Most couldn't help taking a peek at the gruesome scene.
Emily Loh demonstrates a typical method of torture in China. (Evan Mantyk, The Epoch Times)
John Mark of Rhode Island said, "It's nuts. They're killing people who meditate."
James Davis of Manhattan intently read the information boards at the exhibit and said, "We don't value life as much as we should."
During her break, torture victim Ms. Au said that she wasn't paid to be in the exhibit, and wanted to do it since she has benefited so much from Falun Gong. "My work is very stressful. Since I started practising, my stress level has decreased a lot. My colleagues said my temper changed."
Coordinator Zhu said they have come to Manhattan to reach more people with their message and that in the next several months there will be many more exhibitions.
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/4-8-9/22795.html
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