France: Human Rights Organisations held a Public Seminar on Falun Gong

Recently, people in France, including some human rights organisations, have all been demonstrating a deep concern for the human rights of people in China. For this, “La League Francaise des Droits de l'Homme” held a series of seminars with the topic “Persecution in China”. The host invited Falun Gong practitioners and Sinologists to discuss Falun Gong in the third seminar held on June 25, entitled “Falun Gong and Chinese society”.

Falun Gong practitioners began their talk to the seminar attendees by comprehensively introducing the spread of Falun Gong from China, Falun Gong’s features, the cruel methods of persecution used by Jiang’s regime over the last 4 years, Falun Gong practitioners’ peaceful and rational resistance, the worldwide spread of Falun Gong, and the countless voices of support from around the world.

Next, a Sinologist talked about her understanding of ancient Chinese culture. She emphasised that the magical thing about Falun Gong is its ability to enable practitioners to be good to people who treat them badly, and to achieve a purified body through practice. Falun Gong has helped millions of people become peaceful and rational, and has even changed the minds of many policemen who persecuted practitioners in the 4-year crackdown. She thinks that Falun Gong is significant to the future of Chinese society, given the distressing condition of morality in contemporary China and the concept that money is the most important thing.

This Sinologist also brought up an interesting question: A lot of dynasties in Chinese history were overthrown by some activities of a religious nature. Is it true that the Chinese government adopts unreasonable methods out of anxiety? One practitioner expressed his personal opinion about this. He said, “Reviewing Chinese history, almost all activities like this started with a clear purpose: to overthrow a government when social crises appeared in a dynasty after a certain stage of development. Falun Gong, however, has a root difference from those activities. Falun Gong is a genuine cultivation method, which teaches people to cultivate the heart and to be good, to look at fame and self-interest lightly. Falun Gong does not get involved in politics. There is no political position or ulterior objectives and this was well known to those who cracked down on Falun Gong at that time. It also states that Jiang’s persecution of Falun Gong is utterly unjustifiable.

After the opening speech was made, Falun Gong practitioners answered attendee’s questions, including media questions as to whether or not Falun Gong is a religion, the truth behind the Government-staged self-immolation incident in Tiananmen and the issue of taking medicine.

Translated from Chinese at http://yuanming.net/articles/200307/22174.html