Practitioners' April 1999 Appeal at the Tianjin Teaching Institute -- An Eyewitness Account

By a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net)

[Editor's note: A magazine affiliated with Tianjin Teaching Institute published a slanderous article by He Zuoxiu, the brother-in-law of the later "610" system's head, Luo Gan. Practitioners thus went to the Institute to appeal, during which Tianjin police arrested and beat over 40 practitioners. Others urged the police to release them, but were told their order came from the high above and any appeal should go to Beijing. That is why tens of thousands of practitioners later had the famous April-25 appeal in Beijing.]

A secondary school teacher told me a story on May 16, 2004 about what she saw on April 21 or 22, 1999 at the Tianjin Teaching Institute. She was there to attend a class that day, and saw many people sitting at the front entrance. At a glance, she thought that they were unemployed workers, but upon closer look, she saw workers, farmers, students, and professional people. Some read and some meditated with eyes closed. All were quiet and no one spoke. She was puzzled at what these people were doing there.

After her class, she saw these people lining up for the washrooms. Some of the participants who attended the class came as well. She heard a person already in the line say, "Let's go elsewhere and not get in the way of these people from the class." They then went to the washrooms further away, vacating the line for those who came later.

This schoolteacher thought to herself, "It's extremely rare nowadays to see people being so considerate, and I admire them for that." Soon after, it started to rain. She yelled from a window inside the building to those who were sitting quietly outside, "Go elsewhere, so you won't get wet." Yet no one moved at all, they still sat there quietly.

To figure out what was going on, the teacher asked a passer-by on a bicycle and learned that the people were Falun Dafa practitioners. She told me later how she thought they all were good people and how much she admired them.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/5/22/75329.html

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