(Clearwisdom.net, May 20, 2005)On Friday, 13th May, the practitioners of Falun Gong in Bratislava celebrated the World Falun Dafa Day. This day is also the 13th anniversary of the public introduction of Falun Gong, which is also known as Falun Dafa. Falun Gong was first introduced by Mr. Li Hongzhi on May 13th 1992 in Changchun, China. In a short time, the practice became very popular in China with number of practitioners quickly amounted to more than 100 million. Today, Falun Dafa has spread to more than 70 countries around the world. Despite the tremendous benefits that Falun Dafa have brought to society and individuals, with the goal to control public will and secure its political power, former Chinese Communist Party Leader Jiang Zemin started to persecute Falun Dafa in 1999 using all state resources. The persecution soon escalated to a genocide, and in the past 6 years, more than 2000 innocent practitioners have been tortured to death.

On this occasion, the practitioners of Falun Gong from Slovakia and Czech republic organized a small cultural event: They demonstrated exercises of Falun Gong, distributed balloons with the words "World needs truthfulness, compassion, forbearance" to children and they also told people about the unjust persecution of Falun Gong in China. Many people signed our petition against persecution and many listened to practitioners. People enjoyed the pleasant atmosphere created by the peaceful practice and sincerely hope that the suffering of Chinese practitioners will soon be ended.