(Clearwisdom.net)

Falun Dafa practitioners in Kyoto reported that practitioner Hiroyoshi Sawa, a Japanese citizen, went to Beijing at the end of December in order to validate Falun Dafa, expose the evil, and urge the Chinese Government to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. On New Year's Day, Hiroyoshi called practitioners in Japan before he went to Tiananmen Square, and said he had decided to unfurl a Falun Dafa banner there.

Before leaving for China, Hiroyoshi Sawa had written a letter to all of the Japanese media, explaining the reason why he would travel to China and describing the current status of the persecution of Falun Dafa by Jiang Zemin's regime.

In less than five or six seconds after he unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square and shouted in Chinese "Falun Dafa is good," policemen rushed to surround him and push him into a police car. He was interrogated for two hours while being detained in a Beijing Police Station. The police forced him to cancel his hotel reservation. During his detention, Hiroyoshi Sawa was beaten for saying, "Falun Dafa is good" several times to people around him. He was detained in a small underground cell for one night. The following morning the police escorted him to Shanghai and he was forced to return to Japan immediately. Hiroyoshi Sawa was back in Japan on January 2, 2002.