(Clearwisdom.net) On Monday April 17, 2006, the three-day Truthfulness Compassion Forbearance International Art Exhibition opened in Albany, the capital of New York State. In the exhibit, painters who practice Falun Gong displayed the beauty of Falun Dafa in their artworks and exposed the brutal persecution of Falun Gong in China.

The exhibition was located in a large meeting hall inside the State Government building. A lot of people visited the exhibition. People viewed the artworks and praised the subject matter, and learned about the disastrous persecution in China. Many people couldn't imagine how the Chinese Communist Party could use such cruel torture methods on Falun Gong practitioners. They were shocked and couldn't believe that such torture and bloody persecution is still happening today.

People looking at the paintings

Falun Gong practitioners handed out truth-clarification flyers inside and outside the exhibition hall. People condemned the Chinese Communist Party's atrocity of harvesting Falun Gong practitioners' organs while they are still alive to sell for profit and then cremating the bodies to eliminate the evidence. A Jewish person from the former Soviet Union told a practitioner passing out flyers that he heard about the organ-harvesting atrocity on WGY radio. He said he knew that the Communist Party was very evil. He told the practitioner that this radio station has a large audience and that there are about one million people who listen to its news program.

On April 17, a press conference was held inside the exhibition hall at 11:00 a.m., calling for urgent rescue of a local resident's parents, Mr. Zheng Ruihuan and Mrs. Liu Yinglan. Mr. Zheng is a senior engineer from the Jidong Oil Field in Tangshan City, Hebei Province. Because he practices Falun Gong, he was illegally arrested by people from the National Security Bureau of Zibo City, Shandong Province and the Binghai Police Station of Shenli Oil Field. After being tortured for a long time in the detention center, Mr. Zheng and his wife Mrs. Liu were illegally sentenced to 5 years after a secret trial early this year. Local TV station Fox 23 interviewed their son and planned to air the story during the evening news.

Mr. Zheng speaks at the press conference appealing to rescue his parents

A photo of the practitioner's parents, Zheng Ruihuan and Liu Yinglan

Many visitors took truth-clarification materials and the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party and said they would read them at home.

On the second day of the exhibition, more visitors came. Almost every one of them was strongly shaken. People viewed the paintings, learned the facts and signed their names on a petition form to support the "Committee to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong" (CIPFG), to investigate the organ harvesting atrocity in China's labor camps.

An elderly man said that he was 85 years old. He looked at each painting carefully and said, "We are all here for a reason." He signed his name on the petition and took a copy of the Nine Commentaries.

At noon, a young Chinese woman came to the exhibition. At first, she said she could not accept the fact that the exhibition was being shown in a foreign country, because it "made China lose face". A practitioner told her that the "Communist Party doesn't equal to China." She was stunned for a while, as if this were a brand new principle to her. After viewing the exhibit, she decided to quit the Communist Youth League on the Epoch Times website.

A few minutes before the exhibition was to close, a young man hurried into the hall. He stood in front of the painting, "Turning the Big Law Wheel," and listened to a practitioner's introduction. In about two minutes, the practitioner talked about Falun Dafa, from its introduction to the public to the persecution still going on today. This young man immediately went to the signature table and signed his name on the petition form. Of the more than thirty paintings in the exhibition, he only looked at one. Perhaps this is the most important painting he would see in his life.

Inside the state building, the practitioners and a volunteer named JoAnn handed out over 1,000 flyers in two days. JoAnn is a middle-aged woman. When she heard about this event from a friend who practices Falun Gong, she decided to help distribute truth-clarification flyers even though she has a severe chronic illness. When people asked her who provided financial aid to this exhibition, she proudly answered, "We are all volunteers." When she was leaving, JoAnn took a bunch of truth-clarification materials with her and said she would pass them out on her way home.