Sweden: Thoughts on the Malmo Festival (Photos)
By a Falun Gong practitioner who directly suffered persecution in China
(Clearwisdom.net) Malmo is the third biggest city in the south of Sweden. It is elegant and beautiful. The grand Malmo Festival was held from August 20-27 in the city. I was told that activities to promote Falun Gong would take place over two days during the Festival. With the benevolent thought of letting more people know the truth about Falun Gong and having made two hundred paper Lotus Flowers, I cheerfully participated in the grand festival.
The streets of Malmo were decorated especially colorful. With smiles on their faces, people together with their families made for the streets and parks one after another.
An area on the busiest street in the city center and an area in the park were arranged for Falun Gong activities such as waist-drumming, dancing, a demonstration of Falun Gong exercises, and demonstrations of how to make Lotus Flowers of all kinds (as a means of telling people about Falun Gong practitioners' orphaned children). Banners reading, "Falun Gong is Good" and "The World needs Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance" in both Chinese and Swedish were displayed. All these activities drew the applause of people who stopped to watch. Some people learned the Falun Gong exercises on the spot.
A table with Lotus Flowers of all kinds was crowded with people. Not only children were learning how to make Lotus Flowers, but some elderly and young people were interested in making them as well. While teaching these children and adults how to fold Lotus Flowers, Falun Gong practitioners who took charge of the activity were telling them about the persecution that Falun Gong practitioners in China were suffering from and in what a difficult situation those practitioners' orphans are. When leaving with leaflets and Lotus Flowers they had made themselves, practitioners told people about the brutal nature of the persecution in China.
In the parade, we played waist-drums punctuated by a loud chorus of "Falun Gong is good." All sorts of feelings welled up in my mind upon seeing the faces of people who stopped to watch, on seeing and hearing people of different ethnicities shouting together with us "Falun Gong is good," on seeing people holding their cameras taking pictures and videotaping, seeing people reaching their hands out for Lotus Flowers and leaflets, and also seeing the goodness still existing in the hearts of people living in Sweden. I couldn't help thinking of my own country, my family members, friends and fellows and thinking of those practitioners who are cultivating Falun Gong. Although we are all living under the same blue sky, we are treated as far apart as heaven and earth. On thinking of these, I couldn't stop the tears from running down my face.
In China, if you go to Tiananmen Square and shout, "Falun Gong is Good," you will be put into prison. If you give someone a leaflet telling him or her that practitioners are being cruelly persecuted in China, if he or she doesn't know the facts of the persecution, he or she will report you. If you are caught by a policeman, you will be accused of "disturbing society and the peace," and will be fined, sentenced, forced to do hard labor and/or fired from your job. Some will be even tortured to death by excruciating means, and their families will be broken up.
My two colleagues who are cultivating Falun Gong and I have been put into prison many times and suffered all kinds of humiliation and torture just because we told people "Falun Gong is good," because we are firm in our beliefs, and because we told our fellow countrymen the facts of the persecution. Later I was forced to go into exile overseas and those two colleagues of mine have been discharged from public employment. One is still being detained in a forced labor camp. In the six years of being illegally suppressed, he has been forced into hard labor four times. The longest time he has spent doing hard labor is two years, and the shortest time is one year. He has spent most of his time during the past six years in forced labor camps.
I feel fortunate though, when I think that practitioners in China are still suffering from the cruel persecution. When I was in danger of being again put into prison by the local 610 Office, the UN Organization of Human Rights reached out their hands to rescue me, and I received care and assistance from the Swedish Government. Today I can, in the land of Sweden, shout from the bottom of my heart: "Falun Gong is good." After the activities, I couldn't help crying on my way home.
I am grateful to have the chance to give the Swedish people my cherished Lotus Flowers with words, "The World Needs Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance." I hope that my countrymen in China can listen to the words of truth spread by practitioners all over the world. For your own futures, please consider what practitioners told you calmly, and disengage yourselves from the thinking forced on you for a long time by the Chinese Communist Party. Cherish and respect the sunshine and favor that the Gods have given us, take good care of mother earth which has nourished our lives, and end the thinking and actions against the universe, nature and humanity, that is "fighting against heaven, fighting against Earth, and fighting against humanity." Let our earth have less violence and more peace. Let us have less hatred and more sincerity, kindness and forbearance in our hearts. Let the earth which bears the weight of us and let that existent soil under our own feet safely run in the vast expanse of the universe and not be weeded out by the cosmos. Let everything on mother earth in China be prosperous, and let the Chinese people live a life with freedom as do the Swedish people. 
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