Greetings,

At the core of Falun Gong are the values of truth, compassion, and forbearance (or in Chinese, Zhen, Shan, Ren). Falun Dafa teaches that these are the most fundamental qualities of the universe itself, and takes them to be a guide for daily life and practice. Falun Gong is also known as “Falun Dafa.”



By 1999 Falun Gong was reported to have grown to become the largest, and fastest growing, practice of the sort in Chinese if not world history. In just seven years since its 1992 introduction to the public, an estimated 70-100 million persons in China were by then making Falun Gong a part of their daily lives.

In Asia spiritual practices of this variety are often referred to as ways of “cultivation”, or “self-cultivation,” and form an important part of traditional Chinese culture. Various Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian practices fit this rubric.

Through consistent and dedicated practice, the student of Falun Gong comes to achieve a state of selflessness, greater insight and awareness, inner purity, and balance—the inner workings of what might be called true health. Ultimately he or she approaches what in the Asian tradition is known as “enlightenment” or “attaining the Dao” (or “Way”).

The first and second exercises are demonstrated by Teacher Li Hongzhi below, and as you can see the exercise movements are simple but profound in health:





While Falun Gong aspires to inner transformation of the self, it nevertheless typically translates outwardly into positive change in the world, insofar as the practitioner becomes a more patient family member, a more conscientious employee, a more giving member of the community, and so on.

Falun Gong has thus been the subject of many citations, awards, and proclamations as conferred by government officials and a variety of organizations. Many who practice Falun Gong have been the recipients of service awards in their communities. The practice’s founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, is a four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and was nominated by the European Parliament for the Sakharov Prize For Freedom of Thought.

Speaking quantitatively, Falun Gong is practiced in some 80 countries around the world; as of 1999, an estimated 100 million persons in China alone were practicing with more than 1300 hundred Honorary Awards and Proclomations for the practice's tremendous health benefits.

In 1993, Mr. Li Hongzhi was named the “Most Welcomed Qigong Master” in Beijing and bestowed by an official body with the Award for Advancing Frontier Science. That same year, The People's Public Security News—the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Public Security—praised Mr. Li for his contributions “in promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people, in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society.”

The Third and Fourth Falun Dafa exercises are demonstrated by Teacher Li Hongzhi below:





By 1999, Chinese officials went so far as to quantify Falun Gong’s benefits, such as when one official from China’s National Sports Commission, speaking with U.S. News & World Report, declared that Falun Dafa “can save each person 1,000 yuan in annual medical fees. If 100 million people are practicing it, that’s 100 billion yuan saved per year in medical fees.” The same official went on to note that, “Premier Zhu Rongji is very happy about that.”

Today Falun Gong is practiced freely in more 70 countries around the world, with clubs and associations existing in a range of cities, companies, universities, and other settings.

The Beginnings

Falun Dafa has an ancient history. It was passed down over the ages from a single master to a single disciple in each generation. The disciple would later have a disciple of his own, to whom he would pass on the teachings, thereby quietly passing the practice down throughout history.

Below is the 5th meditation exercise demonstrated by Teacher Li Hongzhi. This meditation was practiced secretly before been made public by Teacher Li:



Cultivators of Falun Dafa strive to cultivate their xinxing [mind-nature, or character] and remove their attachments to become kinder, more honest and more patient people. The higher one is able to elevate xinxing, the deeper the understanding one has of the teachings presented in Zhuan Falun (Falun Dafa’s primary text):

http://www.falundafa.org/book/eng/zflus.html

People of all nationalities, races, socio-economic backgrounds, gender, ages, occupations, and different faiths are welcome to practice, and do so entirely of their own free will, at their own pace, and for as long as they choose.


What is most serious is that few people today are aware that the practice and its followers received much in the way of official recognition in China during the 1990s, prior to a dramatic, and violent, change in political winds in 1999 which saw the practice banned.



Regrettably in China, its country of origin, it is currently banned and the subject of gross human rights violations at the hands of communist rulers, so therefore, I would like to please direct your attention now to a dire area of the world, namely Mainland China, which has not been entirely looked at from the perspective of Human rights Atrocities. The Major Concern that we should soon address is the source of much evil that is effecting not only China, but the world in general: The Chinese Communist Government.







In Particular the Brutal Persecution against a peaceful spiritual meditation practice, namely Falun Gong, and their innocent practitioners who have experienced not only 7 years of the most evil atrocities against them, but also just recently exposed the illegal organ harvesting of Thousands of imprisoned Falun Gong Practitioners in over 36 deaths camps around Mainland China.


Representatives of China’s Evil Communist regime have actively tried to share their rather crude and skewed picture of Falun Gong with People around the world including World Governments and Corporate Businesses.

It’s possible there is some confusion. Firstly, Falun Gong has no political agenda or aspiration of any sort.

It is a spiritual discipline; this it always has been, and always will be. It is merely that since 1999 those who practice Falun Gong have faced tremendous-and often violent-persecution at the hands of China’s communist regime. So inhuman has been the maltreatment that nearly 3000 adherents are now known to have died from torture in police custody; hundreds of thousands are currently held in jails and labor camps simply for who they are. Practitioners of Falun Gong are denied schooling, deprived of jobs, denied custody of their own children, publicly humiliated, raped and sexually assaulted by police, and stripped of most every basic right we in the free world believe a human being is entitled to.

Furthermore, China’s Communist regime has invested more than 1 quarter of the entire GDP of China's National Economy, for the last 7 years, into propaganda meant to breed hatred and discrimination against the group-both in China and around the world, including here.

After July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin's faction launched a far-reaching campaign of disinformation to justify its persecution of Falun Gong and to escape world condemnation. Since the persecution started, state-run media have flooded the printing presses and airwaves with fabrications about Mr. Li Hongzhi and Falun Gong.

In early 2001, desperate to turn the tide against Falun Gong, the Chinese Communist Party attempted an outrageous stunt: a staged self-immolation of five people on Tiananmen Square. The state-run media then blamed it on Falun Gong. As with all lies, the propaganda fails miserably in the details. This staged self-immolation has been analyzed by neutral reporters and by careful observers of the same videotape that was broadcasted by the Chinese government:



As many as 40,000 Falun Gong practitioners who committed no crime have been secretly put to death in Chinese hospitals and their organs sold “on-demand, investigators told a United States Congressional committee in Washington, DC last Friday. Worse still, little is being done to stop the ongoing killing.

http://faluninfo.net

http://www.fofg.org

http://falunhr.org

“Time is very much of the essence on this issue, former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia and the Pacific David Kilgour told the Congressional Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigations. “We believe that innocent men and women continue to be killed across China for their organs as commercial products.

Kilgour and international human rights attorney David Matas introduced their investigative report on allegations of systematic organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. (full report) available at:

http://investigation.go.saveinter.net




“All the evidence pointed in the same direction as our ultimate conclusion: the communist government of China in its hospitals, detention centers and other agencies in numerous parts of the country has over the past half decade put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience, Kilgour said. “Most of the victims were convicted of nothing; they were murdered by medical professionals for their vital organs.



Atop all of this, the regime has robbed Falun Gong of any voice by burning its books in mass rallies, banning all Falun Gong related literature, and blocking all Falun Gong websites and even Western news reports.

Under this circumstance we have been left with no choice but to speak out.

Our goal has been simple and singular: to let people hear our side of the story; to expose those violating our rights; and to, by doing so, end the genocide we face.

We are not interested in political power.

We would love nothing more than to meditate quietly in parks. But when people beat down our doors and arrest and torture our parents, friends, and children, when they try to wipe out our very existence, we feel duty-bound to speak out. Martin Luther King Jr. is not remembered as a criminal for fighting unjust laws; he is a hero.

Secondly, I would point out that Falun Gong is not deviant, weird, or dangerous, as China’s communist regime has tried to portray it. Consider the bigger picture.

For one thing, all of the accusations the evil regime has made came overnight, with the banning of Falun Gong in 1999; during the seven years before then, from 1992-1999, Falun Gong was practiced by millions and totally mainstream, and even praised by various official bodies of the Chinese state.



That is to say, the accusations were a sudden political invention. And these accusations, it is worth noting, are something Chinese officials do not allow outsiders to investigate; those who try are arrested.

Or from another perspective, we might note how none of the accusations made by the regime are made in Taiwan, another Chinese society. There, hundreds of thousands on the small island practice Falun Gong freely. There, Falun Gong is, to this day, enormously popular and praised by government officials and doctors alike as healthy and beneficial to society. Falun Gong is there taught in hospitals, schools, and even prisons. Then we might ask: is it that Falun Gong is so radically different on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, or is it the political systems?

Taiwan, after all, is a democracy. Indeed, we can see that China’s regime does not allow other groups to exist freely-be they religious groups, labor unions, or political parties.

What this means, then, is that China’s regime has tried to scandalize Falun Gong. It has done so for at least three reasons:

1) doing so paints the oppressor in a rosy light, as if it were stomping out society’s bad elements; if people knew the truth about what Falun Gong is they would be outraged at the communist regime’s actions
2) by shifting attention to Falun Gong’s beliefs, the spotlight is removed from the practices of China’s communist regime, which include the brutal torture and even murder of Falun Gong’s followers;
3) by painting Falun Gong as weird, cultish, or different from you and me, it hopes to scare people away from the issue, make things seem terribly messy, and dull the listener’s humanity, as it were.

In a word, the attempt is to undermine sympathy and support for Falun Gong, to alienate the group, and to justify what is in essence simply another attempt by the Chinese leadership to exercise totalitarian control.

So Guys, it is important that today we are focusing the discussion on what is real and what is dire, and I wish to applaud you for your Courage and Heart felt support.

In closing, I would like to mention one initiative that is occasion for hope, and symbolizes our efforts for justice in China. The Global Internet Freedom Consortium which consists of five U.S.-based organizations has launched a project called, “Cyber Freedom for China and the World. The project, now in its seventh year, has been extremely successful in advancing freedom of information in China. At the present time, essentially every website blocked to mainland Chinese users is accessible through the consortium’s anti-blocking technology. This includes the web sites of Voice Of America and Radio Free Asia, as well as the uncensored versions of Google and Yahoo. In 2005, hits by mainland Internet users through our technology averaged 30 million per day. It has created a safe, secure online virtual environment where Chinese people can practice and realize the freedom of speech, association, and belief that does not exist elsewhere in China.

The positive impact is both very real and important - we are not only bringing Internet freedom to China as well as all other repressive countries, but also facilitating the peaceful transformation in China that the world has long hoped for.

Our efforts are done fully for the welfare of China's people, and even, insofar as we seek to uphold the law and constitution, for the sake of the country.

There is nothing "anti-China" about supporting constitutionally-guaranteed rights when they are abused, or pointing out the perpetrator.

In America, we call this being a good citizen. I call it, in our case, being a friend of China. Surely "China," after all, is the people of that vast country -- and not its unelected rulers, who so regularly abuse and exploit her people for their narrow, private interests.

I would like to urge you to take every opportunity to raise Falun Gong issues to your friends, families and Leaders about the atrocities by the Chinese communist leaders and help save innocent lives by taking concrete steps to end this persecution soon.

To help stop the brutal persecution against Falun Gong, please consider signing the going to the world wide petition site below and help support:

http://www.falunhr.org/te/index.php?signature=1&lang=en

http://www.falunhr.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=413&Itemid=91

History will not only judge what we have done, but also what we haven't done when we could of done something.

Thank you for your time and concern.

Best Wishes,

Mitchell Nicholas Gerber
678-362-9894