Jiejun Chen was distributing human rights materials in Vancouver’s Chinatown when he was approached and threatened by the stranger on Monday, July 28.
Chen said he was punched and kicked after he produced a camera to take the man’s picture.
According to witnesses, the assault followed increasingly threatening behaviour from groups of mainland Chinese people that would appear suddenly when Falun Gong practitioners began distributing materials about the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
Chen said the man had been carrying a sign with anti-Falun Gong slogans which he threw on the ground. After he tried to take the man’s picture the man ran and pushed him and tried to take the camera.
“Then he started to hit me. He targeted my head and face. I felt very dizzy. I told fellow Falun Gong practitioners to call the police at once.”
Chen added that when the man saw that the group was about to call the police he ran off. Because Falun Gong teaches non-violence, Chen had no way to stop his assailant except by hanging on to his clothes.
“He started to hit me harder and targeted my head and my face. He tried many dishonorable techniques, including kicking me in the crotch and biting me.”
The incident follows a spate of violent attacks against Falun Gong practitioners by Chinese mobs in New York’s Flushing area.
In a recorded telephone between an investigator for the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong and Chinese Consul General Peng Keyu of the Chinese Consulate in New York, Peng admitted to having encouraging the attacks on Falun Gong in Flushing.
Following the initial Flushing attacks, sporadic assaults on Falun Gong practitioners have been reported in Paris, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles.
Falun Gong is a meditation practice that was banned by the Chinese communist regime in 1999 after a government study found it had 100 million adherents.
Falun Gong has since become the target of widespread hate propaganda. The regime regards it as a threat and is upset by overseas Falun Gong attempts to expose numerous cases of torture against their friends and family in China.
Sue Zhang, media spokesperson for Falun Gong in Vancouver, said the attack on Chen is a direct result of the regime’s propaganda.
“Because of the Chinese Communist regime’s hate propaganda and smear campaign against Falun Gong for the past nine years, a group of Chinese people here have fallen prey to the propaganda and become the henchmen of the Chinese Communist regime. We call upon police in Vancouver to thoroughly investigate this hate crime.”
