On April 13, 2024, some Falun Gong practitioners gathered alongside Bellaire Boulevard in Houston’s Chinatown to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the peaceful appeal by over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners at Zhongnanhai in Beijing on April 25, 1999.
Twenty-five years ago, Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing fearlessly appealed peacefully, upholding their belief in “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance” and their basic human rights. Subsequently, they faced over two decades of frenzied repression and brutal persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Since then, Falun Dafa has spread from China to over 100 countries, garnering more than 4,000 awards.
For the past 25 years, Falun Gong practitioners in Houston have held annual events to commemorate this day, aiming to help more people understand the truth of the persecution faced by Falun Gong and urging more Chinese people to “quit the CCP”, dissociating from the CCP. At the same time, they are calling on all sectors of society to collectively stop the persecution by the CCP.
During the gathering, Falun Gong practitioner Sean Yang stated, “The CCP is on the verge of collapse. Falun Gong practitioners are holding this April 25th commemoration event here, once again urging mainland Chinese who have not yet quit to seize the opportunity, understand the truth, and quitting any Party organization of the CCP is a matter of life and death.”
Yang mentioned that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the peaceful appeal by Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing and also the 20th anniversary of the publication of “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” by The Epoch Times. The “Nine Commentaries” thoroughly exposed the evil nature of the CCP.
He introduced that the “Nine Commentaries” have been published for 20 years, with over 420 million Chinese people recognizing the evil nature of the CCP, announcing their withdrawal from the Communist Party organizations, and breaking free from the control of the communist specter, choosing a bright future for themselves.
He said, “As long as a person can still discern between good and evil, just look at the path that communism has taken over the past hundred years, it’s easy to understand that it is a path of destruction for humanity. Communism has brought endless disasters and destruction to the Chinese people and the world.”
Mr. Yang also quoted Master Li, the founder of Falun Gong, in his article “Rationality” published in 2020, reminding the world, “The current ‘CCP virus’ (Wuhan pneumonia) was deliberately and purposefully unleashed. It is targeting members of the evil Party and those who align with the communist evil Party. Just look at it, the most severely affected countries currently are those closely aligned with the evil Party, and the people are the same. So what to do? Stay away from the CCP, do not stand with the evil Party, because behind it is a red devil, behaving like a gangster and causing all kinds of evil. God is about to eliminate it, and those who stand with it will be eliminated. Just wait and see.”
Falun Gong practitioner David Hong recalled his personal experience of participating in the April 25th peaceful appeal at Zhongnanhai, revealing the truth of the so-called “4.25” surrounding incident at Zhongnanhai. He pointed out that the CCP’s open persecution of Falun Gong was based on the pretext of the “4.25” appeal, which was a deliberate trap set by the CCP against Falun Gong practitioners.
He said, “As a direct witness to the participation of Falun Gong practitioners in the peaceful appeal at Zhongnanhai on April 25th, I want to tell everyone the truth.”
At the time, he was a graduate student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. On the morning of April 25th, he and twenty-some students took the subway Line 1 to near Zhongnanhai and saw practitioners from various places around them. “When we got to the intersection of Fuyou Street and Chang’an Street, which is the southwest corner of Zhongnanhai, we couldn’t move forward anymore. We asked people around why we couldn’t proceed, and they said, ‘The police won’t let us go… after waiting for about half an hour, not knowing what instructions the police received, they began directing practitioners to move forward, letting us walk north along Fuyou Street.”
“My personal experience proves that the police were arranging the route. We were just going to appeal, and the first route arranged by the police was to lead the practitioners from the intersection of Fuyou Street and Chang’an Street northward, while another route arranged by the police was to go south from Fuyou Street, converging near the west gate of Zhongnanhai.”
He said, “It’s like the ‘Reichstag fire’ in Nazi Germany, ‘4.25’ was deliberately provoked by the evil CCP to persecute Falun Gong (a conspiracy), that is (first) oppressing practitioners in various places, slandering Falun Gong in the media, creating conflict, and then guiding practitioners to Beijing for an appeal.” During the appeal, the police “arranged the route for practitioners, creating a siege around Zhongnanhai.”
He mentioned that they saw Premier Zhu Rongji coming out of the west gate of Zhongnanhai and walking into the practitioners’ procession, asking what’s going on. “Some practitioners replied: ‘We came to appeal, some practitioners from Tianjin were arrested, and they wouldn’t let us practice Falun Gong, and there have been situations in various places where practicing Falun Gong was not allowed. Later, Premier Zhu Rongji brought in representatives of Falun Gong practitioners into Zhongnanhai… around seven or eight in the evening, practitioners who came out from Zhongnanhai said: those from Tianjin who were arrested have been released.”
At that time, he thought the matter was satisfactorily resolved. But then the persecution began, seeing the CCP using the “4.25” as an excuse for persecution, and observing other evidence revealed, he learned that the “4.25” incident was a conspiracy created by the CCP to persecute Falun Gong.
He said, “We are eyewitnesses, no matter how the evil CCP tries to make excuses, it cannot change what we have heard and seen firsthand.”
He mentioned that Falun Gong practitioners practice “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance”, and “for such a group of people, the CCP has to violate its own laws, fabricate evidence to persecute them, which in itself shows that the CCP is an evil regime. This evil regime not only persecutes Falun Gong but also applies the same means of persecution to the whole society; in 2020, it persecuted the world by spreading the virus. (People around the world should say to it), ‘No!'”
Falun Gong practitioner Liu Xiaobin spoke at the gathering. He mentioned that Falun Gong has no enemies, and all they do is, after recognizing the evil nature of the CCP, advise those brainwashed, deceived, and enticed by the CCP to recognize the truth, break free from fear, shake off the shackles of the CCP’s claws, and have a bright future.
He said, Falun Gong practitioners, with a heart of great benevolence and great forbearance and immense courage, face difficulties without fear, persist day by day, for decades, in clarifying the truth to the world. “As the ancients said, ‘One should be magnanimous and resolute, with a heavy responsibility and a long way to go,’ yes, to make the truth clear to the world, this is my mission. Although the responsibility is heavy and the road is long, we have no regrets so far, until the dissolution of the CCP.”
The gathering attracted the attention of passersby and vehicles, with Falun Gong practitioners participating in the event telling the truth to pedestrians and distributing informational materials.
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