Although it was close to Chinese New Year, we kept going the the lectures every day. The assistant extended the lecture series two extra days just for us. We learned all five exercises. I said to my son, "We are practitioners now. Let's not take that useless medicine anymore. Let's get rid of it." My son happily threw them all in the trash. He was so relieved.

Huang Jiefu, Vice-Minister of Health, has frequently appeared on Chinese television recently to promote the ethics of new regulations to control organ transplantation in China. In fact, each organ Huang Jiefu transplanted in his role as an organ transplant surgeon came from a CCP-controlled organ depository. The source of the organs is a deeply held secret. Huang Jiefu has been lying for years to cover up organ harvesting atrocities. Death row prisoners and Falun Gong practitioners held in concentration camps are routinely secreted away for organ harvesting.

Despite the CCP's effort to alienate and destroy traditional culture, it is still deeply rooted in Chinese people's minds. It clings tenaciously even though much has been eliminated by the Communist regime. People still choose auspicious dates based on age-old practices for marriages and burials. People still have the fengshui checked when building houses. In the 1970s and 1980s, the popularity of Qigong played a significant role in reviving Chinese traditional culture.

Before I started to cultivate I suffered from many different diseases, such as serious rheumatoid arthritis which made my legs rigid and very painful. I was also suffering from a pain and pressure in my chest and thyroid gland hyperplasia, all of which miraculously disappeared once I started the practice. Seeing all the great changes in both my mind and body I was determined to carry on practising.

During the past month and a half, Ola has made great changes in his ways of thinking and behaviour. His parents and friends have all noticed. People around him have noticed that he is becoming compassionate and peaceful. His mother also noticed because Ola even began to help her with the housework. Now Ola treats everything that happens in his life as a test on his cultivation path. When a conflict occurs, Ola does not get annoyed anymore, but instead treats it as a good opportunity for cultivation.

I am a woman farmer living in the countryside and I am currently 50 years old. In early 2005, I was diagnosed with hepatitis B. Later, I was diagnosed with late-stage gastric cancer. The doctor recommended immediate surgery, which would cost about 20,000 yuan. I was told that, without the medical treatment, I could only live up to six more months. With the medical treatment, I could live three to five more years. However, even with the treatment, the cancer could still migrate to other places.

This film is categorised as "secret" and is produced by the CCP 29th Olympics Security Information Centre, the propaganda department of the State Security Ministry, and the Tianjin City State Security Bureau. Currently, the Party is organising people from each region to see the film, to poison their minds and fabricate excuses to continue to tread on human rights. The evil party is fanning nationalism, trying to make more excuses to persecute Falun Gong.

After listening to her story, I felt truly happy for her and her friends. All along, when people refused to quit the CCP or said that they would think about it when I urged them to quit, my husband and daughter were always by my side to help persuade them. They would say, "Why don't you agree to quit? This can only do you good, and won't do you any harm

They discovered a completely different path for a person's life, which Dafa had displayed for them. They decided to practise Falun Gong. They quickly learned the five exercises and began to practise every day. Practitioners also told them that, as practitioners, they needed to critically examine themselves and needed to follow the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance". Whether in jail or in society in the future, they needed to be good. All three of them acknowledged this, and the paths of their lives changed completely.

Quite a number of people in the western world believed the CCP's promises, and thought the Olympic Games had put a pair of "golden handcuffs" on the regime. They hoped that the international community would supervise and push the regime to improve its human rights record in the name of the Olympic Games. In the seven years since 2001, the facts show that the regime has failed to improve human rights as promised, and actually done the opposite, cracking down on all voices the CCP deems as "threats," and doing do in the name of "preparing" for the Olympics.

An important sign of a modern civilised society is "the rule of law." That means that the law is greater than power. Recently because of the Olympic torch relay, some Chinese people in Western society have held demonstrations and rallies in Western countries. However, the Western governments didn't repress this kind of "instability" because the law of the Western countries protects freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. "The rule of law" can be substantially implemented.

The purpose of the April 25 peaceful appeal was to make the most of Chinese citizens' fundamental rights and to give the CCP an opportunity to mend its ways and listen to the will of the people. However, Jiang Zemin and the CCP regime missed this opportunity, and instead used extreme actions to crush belief in "Truth, Compassion, Tolerance." This has now continued for nine years.

The peaceful resolution of the 10,000-strong Zhongnanhai appeal on April 25th, 1999 is mainly attributable to the sincerity, kindness and tolerance that practitioners have derived from their Falun Dafa cultivation. For the good of China and its people, with the best intentions to resolve problems peacefully, trusting the government and not seeing any other alternatives, we chose to appeal as a group to the government. Throughout the entire process, we maintained good order and did not incite a riot or uproar, we did not chant any slogans nor raise our voices.

A neighbour of ours who is a physician at a hospital in Beijing told us that the military police advised her hospital on April 25 to prepare for an unrevealed emergency. They were told to vacate all hospital wards and prepare a large medical supply for external injuries suffered during an emergency mission. Until the late afternoon of April 25, the Commando car teams of the military police kept Fuyou Street under continued surveillance. Apparently Jiang's rogue regime had planned to suppress our peaceful appeal with guns and violence.

On the surface, the April 25 appeal seemed to be triggered by the Tianjin arrests and an anti-Falun Gong article by He Zuoxiu. The underlying reason stemmed from the central authorities' anxiety about the unprecedented popularity of Falun Gong. Seven years after Mr. Li Hongzhi's first public lecture in 1992, there were about 70 to 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China. A full understanding of the incident is very complex, as it had both long term and short term causes, and was related to political struggles inside the Communist Party.

Nine years ago, on April 25, 1999, in order to appeal for justice for Falun Gong and its practitioners and to ask for an open cultivation environment, around 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners went to peacefully report and clarify the facts to the government in good faith, and requested the government to stop the unfair treatment of practitioners by those who had ulterior motives. This led to the "April 25" incident. I was a participant and a witness of the "April 25" incident. Although many practitioners have already reported about this incident objectively and truthfully, I still would like to write down my own experience and tell what I saw and heard at that time.

To commemorate the ninth anniversary of the April 25 Appeal, this is one of a series of republished articles from years past. The April 25th Appeal was notable not only for its size, but also because it was remarkably peaceful and orderly. Some 10,000 practitioners gathered in central Beijing that day, peacefully protesting for their civil rights. The CCP propaganda machine, however, in its quest to crush Falun Gong at the bidding of then Party Chairman Jiang Zemin, twisted the facts to serve its own motives.

On April 25, 1999, about ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners went to the Appeals Office of the State Council in Beijing, requesting the authorities to grant them a free and legitimate environment for their practice, which became the well-known "April 25th Mass Appeal". Many people believed that the persecution of Falun Gong would not have happened were it not for the April 25th Appeal. But actually that view does not hold.

I am a 50-year-old farmer in Cang County, Cangzhou City, Hebei Province. I would like to share how I physically benefited from Falun Gong. My wife started practising Falun Gong a few years ago and had her illnesses cured. At that time, I was very healthy and thought that I did not need to practise Falun Gong. After the CCP regime began persecuting Falun Gong in 1999, my wife went to Beijing to appeal for justice, and subsequently was sent to a forced labour camp.

Since Beijing has entered the count-down to the Olympics, criticism, protests, and threats of boycott from the international community against the Chinese Communist regime for its intensified human rights violations in the lead-up to the Olympics have been steadily on the rise. The Communist regime is now accusing others of "politicizing the Olympic Games" and trying to stifle criticism by saying they oppose such actions.

She told me that practising Falun Gong was known to have cured some incurable diseases and quoted a number of patients whose cancers went into remission after practicing Falun Gong. On hearing that, I was greatly encouraged--I wanted to live on. When my sister advised me to take up Falun Gong, I was hesitant at first, but on second thought, I realized I had nothing to lose, since the doctors could not find a cure.

British newspaper The Times and some U.S. Congressmen have equated the Beijing Olympics with the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Not surprisingly, the comparison triggered an immediate protest from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But what of the comparison? Let's go back and look at what occurred around the Berlin Olympics.

A few years ago he quit his job and went abroad to make a living. In western society, he came in contact with Falun Gong practitioners and became truly aware of the facts about Falun Gong. He learned that all practitioners are good people and that what he had been told in China about the practice were pure fabrications.

The speed with which Falun Gong adherents are being seized by police, abused, and turning up dead is alarming and reprehensible," says Falun Dafa Information Center spokesperson Ms. Gail Rachlin. "These are people who never should have been arrested in the first place. Arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial executions are no way to 'prepare' for the Olympics."

When other people ill-treat you, will you laugh it off or find a chance to take revenge? Recent research carried out by Harvard University has discovered that revenge not only doesn't bring any benefit to the person himself, but also does no good to the team or group, which also means that it is wise to forgive others.

The CCP loses face throughout the world because of its criminal practices and attempting to have others be part in the persecution of Falun Gong. To get their way, they violate diplomatic conventions, interfering in the internal affairs of democratic countries, using economic relations as a bargaining chip. They wish to deprive people from enjoying true Chinese culture; a culture that they systematically tried to eliminate and destroy with Mao's Great Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps for some, a convincing act of the Party's sinister intent is a mandatory liability pledge, which all of the regime's industry and commerce branches in Beijing were required to sign. The pledge listed Falun Gong as a "major target" for "strict discipline, strict prevention and strict control." It requires "intensified education and reform efforts. Those who cannot be resolved at the present, effective measures must be taken to solidly carry out administrative and control duties." "Reform" means forcing Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their beliefs.

During the process of human cultural development, some undesirable elements found their way into the process. This is only natural. The whole reflects both good and bad, beautiful and ugly. All must be represented to comprise the whole. Similarly there are people who believe in gods, and there are those who don't. To a certain extent, those who disbelieve in gods help to identify whether the others truly believe. The theory of mutual generation and mutual inhibition manifests in every aspect of our lives.

In Chinese traditional culture, harmony manifested not only from people's personal cultivation, but also from the the rule of the country. Harmony is a reflection of achieving a certain realm. It is the natural, interactive state that the people, society, nature, and universe tend toward. When the social atmosphere is pure, when people are steady and honest, when the government (the emperor or king) quietly rules the country and does not interfere with people's lives, when the policies, laws, rewards, and punishments are clearly followed, when the army is willing to defend the nation, the country is well-governed and in great harmony.

Tibetan monks recent protests of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) tyrannical rule have been bloodily suppressed. This tragedy has shocked the world, recalling the horrors of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. In the fifty years since the CCP came into power, its policies have directly or indirectly resulted in the untimely deaths of eighty million Chinese people. The CCP is a wolf in sheep's clothing that kills people without even blinking its eyes. Only by breaking away from, giving up, and completely disintegrating this evil Party, can all the ethnic groups in China regain their freedom.

According to Chinese traditional culture, every time a natural disaster occurred, besides praying for gods' blessings, the people would reexamine themselves to see where they had not done well. Even the emperors "proclaimed their own faults." History books recorded that when the Shang Dynasty's founding emperor, Cheng Tang, was in power, there was a long-lasting drought. As the emperor, he took a bath, fasted, and then piously prayed for rain in a mulberry tree forest. At the same he also deeply reexamined himself for his mistakes in governing the country. As a result, it started to pour.

Mankind has come to the present day after going through several thousand years of ups and downs and numerous tribulations. The cultures that mankind has created are complete and rich. I believe that in terms of a culture's essence, origin, manifestation, and impact, mankind's cultures can roughly be divided into two major categories of belief or disbelief in gods. Because Chinese traditional culture is imparted by gods, the realm of "gods" is naturally reflected in the culture, which has endowed Chinese traditional culture with the characteristics of profundity, an all-encompassing nature, etherealness, elegance, nobility, beauty and sacredness.