(Clearwisdom.net) At the end of July, Horst Koehler, the President of Germany, and his wife went on holiday to the city of Cham in Bayern. On the first day of their holiday, President Koehler publicly invited local people and tourists to visit the Arber with him and climb to the peak of the hill. On learning of this, local Falun Gong practitioners felt that this was a good opportunity to see the president and tell him about Falun Gong face to face while handing him a petition.

The Falun Gong practitioners received support from all sides. Besides those practitioners who learned about the situation making suggestions and sending righteous thoughts to support the activity, Mr. Roermer, who works for the local International Human Rights Association, drove the practitioners to the Arber. We reached the mountainside of the Arber when the President was holding a press conference. After hearing of our reason for coming, the police introduced us to the related personnel. After reading the petition, even those tourists who did not know us helped us look for room among the crowded media personnel in order to approach the President.


A Falun Gong practitioner with a petition in hand talks with Mrs. Koehler, (photo taken by TV station in Bayern)

Paper lotus flower and bookmark presented to the First Lady

On the way to the peak of the hill, a practitioner approached the First Lady, Mrs. Koehler. After first introducing herself, the practitioner gave her a little lotus flower that was handmade by Falun Gong practitioners. Hanging from the little lotus flower was a bookmark about the "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance International Art Exhibition" together with details of when and where the exhibition would be held in Cham. Mrs. Koehler was pleased to accept the small gift and told the practitioner that she already knew that Falun Gong practitioners are being persecuted in China. After that she listened to the recent situation about Falun Gong.

On the peak of the hill, Mr. Roemer and the Falun Gong practitioner each had a good opportunity to hand their petitions over to the president, who was surrounded by many reporters, and expressed their hopes that the President would try his best to help gain the release of the innocent people who have been illegally detained by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China. This March, Falun Gong practitioner Jiang Renzheng was sentenced to three years of imprisonment when the German Government sent him back to China. The petition handed over by the Falun Gong practitioner included detailed information about Jiang Renzheng's case.

In addition, the practitioner also hoped that the President would see the beauty and purity of Falun Gong during his holiday and he too was given a little paper lotus flower with a bookmark as a gift. The President was very pleased and said that he would find out the whole story of the case. His retinue also guaranteed that the practitioner would receive a reply from the president.

The next day, footage of the Falun Gong practitioner talking to Mrs. Koehler was broadcast by a TV station in Bayern. A director of a local company in Cham praised the bravery of practitioners when he read in the newspaper about a Falun Gong practitioner who was the wife of one of his employees handing the petition to the President.

http://clearharmony.net/articles/200508/28217.html