The Divine Land Marching Band was invited to participate in parades and other activities celebrating the New Year in London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and through many wonderful performances has brought Falun Dafa's magnificence and New Year's greetings to people around the world. One of the marching band's best performances was in London.

Falun Dafa practitioner Mr. Tang Jiuli, who is in his seventies, was a doctor living in Sichuan Province. On December 26th, 2007, police arrested Mr. Tang Jiuli and two other practitioners: Mr. Chen Zhixue (in his fifties) and Mr. Yang Jinzhong (in his fifties). They ransacked the three practitioners' homes and took them into custody at the Xinglong Town Police Station for several hours. Mr. Tang Jiuli died the next day at home.

There are currently more then 40 Falun Gong practitioners still being detained in Xindian Women's Forced Labour Camp in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province. Most of them are in their 50s. For those practitioners who were steadfast and refused to be "reformed," the No. 3 Division separated them from the rest of the practitioners and ordered criminal inmates to monitor them. They set times for practitioners to go the toilet and bathe. If there was anything that they were unhappy with, they verbally abused the practitioners. The practitioners were not allowed to speak to one another. The second one practitioner spoke to another, she was beaten and berated. At night, practitioners were forbidden to sleep.

51-year-old Ms. Zhu Guoying, a Falun Gong practitioner, was taken from her home by local police on December 2nd, 2007. Without showing any ID, they only claimed that someone had reported Ms. Zhu for speaking about the facts of the persecution of Falun Gong, and they said they had received orders from upper management to arrest her. In fact, this was just an excuse. The truth is that, with the year end approaching, they wanted to extort some money. Accompanied by relatives, her mother went to appeal but was threatened by official personnel.

Ms. Liu Shuying, a Falun Dafa practitioner detained in Hebei Province Women's Prison, was tortured in the brainwashing centre in the prison by guards of the Eighth Ward on August 12th, 2007. Inmate, Li Fengqin kicked and beat Ms. Liu over a hundred times. Ms. Liu was kicked so severely that there were wounds over her entire body. Some of the wounds took days to heal. This prisoner kicked and beat Ms. Liu and slandered Falun Gong and cursed its founder to try and intimidate her. Ms. Liu talked to Han, the deputy head of the prison, about what was going on, but he did not pay any attention to her. After being tortured for over 70 days, Ms. Liu became so mentally disoriented that she gave in to the brainwashing.

Ms. Li Weina, the vice director of Divine Performing Arts, expressed the company's appreciation for the proclamations. She said that the purpose of the show is to bring pure, traditional Chinese culture, unpolluted by the communist party, to a wide audience.

Experience one of the largest celebration of Chinese culture in the world when the Chinese New Year Spectacular kicks off its international tour with five shows at the Merriam Theater this Friday through Sunday.