Poland: Practitioners Participate in 3 Human Rights Film Festivals and Witness the Importance and Magnificence of Fa Study
By practitioners in Poland
(Clearwisdom.net) In December 2002, an international human rights
organization - the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights - organized a film
festival on the theme "Human Rights in Film". One of the feature films was Danny
Schechter's documentary "Falun Gong's Challenge to China", which is a telling
exposé of the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution practitioners face in
China. In addition to running an information stand, practitioners were invited
to give a brief talk to the audience and personally introduce the film. The
festival was a great success. Since then, the film festival has been held in 3
other Polish cities (Toru , Cz stochowa and Kielce). Practitioners were invited
to take part in all of them and distributed materials, talked to the media and
explained the facts to members of the audience. At all 3 festivals, practitioners were allotted a period of
time after the film to hold a panel discussion and take questions from the
audience. In each case, the discussion lasted approximately 1 hour. The film
about Falun Gong was always well attended, and the interaction with the audience
was animated. The support and sympathy exhibited towards Dafa was touching. On June 4, in the City of Kielce, we were joined by special
guests for the panel discussion -- Australian practitioner Jane Dai and her
3-year-old daughter Fadu. Jane talked about the persecution she and her family
faced in China for practising Falun Gong and, as she is one of the plaintiffs in
the lawsuit against Jiang Zemin in the US and Switzerland, she talked about the
lawsuit, its importance and its implications. A major local radio station
interviewed Jane and one of the Polish practitioners at length, and information
about the persecution was carried in the printed media as well. Furthermore,
when the festival organizer was interviewed on live radio and asked to give
details of the festival program, he briefly introduced the guests and the films,
and the remaining time he devoted to the issue of the persecution of Falun Gong
and expressed his strong support for the cause. Jane stayed in Poland for 3 weeks and in that time she met
with the media, government officials and organized numerous peaceful appeals in
front of the Chinese embassy in Warsaw, both to clarify the facts about the
persecution and to support the lawsuit against Jiang. For the first peaceful
appeal only two media outlets came. One, however, was Poland's largest
newspaper. The article was prominent, positive and the picture exuded the
determination of practitioners facing history's most brutal persecution. Practitioners felt that the media turnout at the first appeal
was not satisfactory, so we reflected and shared, concluding that we hadn't done
well enough overall. We thus decided to redouble our efforts in sending forth
righteous thoughts, diligently studying the Fa, sharing experiences, truly
collaborating together to improve our performance as one body, and continuing to
contact the media and government officials with persistence. Eventually, our determination not to lose this precious
opportunity paid off - after we studied the Fa together we would discuss the
plans for the following day, and thanks to Fa study we became clear on how we
should proceed. Our harmony together improved also thanks to our study. For
example, it became natural that as one practitioner would talk to the media, the
others would send forth righteous thoughts for support, and the results got
better and better. Overall, the following are some of what was accomplished
thanks to our focusing on Fa study and always holding ourselves to the standard
of the Fa: a good article in Gazeta Wyborcza, the biggest national newspaper in
Poland and a follow up article in their weekend magazine; a spot on the evening
news (it ran twice) on one of the most-watched television stations, Polsat; a
picture and caption in Metropol, Warsaw's best-read newspaper; a lengthy
in-depth interview on Poland's main public radio station, Polskie Radio; an
article in Warsaw Voice, a weekly English-language magazine; an article on the
PAP (Polish Press Agency) news service website; an interview on Radio Eska; an
article and published interview on the O.S.K.A. website (a women's issues NGO);
and finally, a long letter from the practitioners to the people of Skierniewice
published in Glos Skierniewic, the biggest newspaper in the city of Skierniewice.
We realize that time is very precious. Opportunities, once
gone, may never come again. The opportunity to step out and safeguard the Fa is
a great honor, which we must take seriously and do our utmost to fully meet the
standard both in personal cultivation and Fa-rectification.
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