Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in New York City held a grand Chinese New Year parade in Brooklyn on Feb. 16 to send holiday greetings to local residents, despite the cold rain and chilly wind.
The practitioners marched along Eighth Avenue in 24 teams with three themes: the beauty of Falun Dafa, a call to end the Chinese communist regime’s persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in China, and support for the 440 million Chinese people who have withdrawn from the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a spiritual practice consisting of simple, slow-moving meditation exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Founded by Teacher Li Hongzhi in China, Falun Gong grew in popularity during the 1990s, with 70 million to 100 million adherents in China alone by the end of the decade, according to estimates at the time.
Feeling threatened by Falun Gong’s popularity, the CCP and its then-leader Jiang Zemin launched a systematic elimination campaign in July 1999. Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated in the ongoing persecution, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
Outside mainland China, Falun Gong is widely practiced in many countries around the world and praised by local governments for its health benefits and moral teachings.
Michael Yu, a staff member of the parade organizer, the Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 16, “Falun Gong practitioners are marching in the wind and rain not only to wish the community a happy new year but also to send a message to the world: now, the CCP is extremely afraid that more and more Chinese people will wake up and choose to ‘Quit the CCP.’ And if this trend continues, the CCP will eventually collapse.”
“Falun Gong is a religious belief group. We hope that the U.S. government will continue to pay attention to the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, impose further sanctions on the CCP, and strengthen the crackdown on its transnational persecution in the United States,” he added.
Despite the weather, the parade attracted fascinated onlookers along the streets.
Mr. Kuang, who was in a chef’s uniform and watching from the entrance of a local restaurant, told The Epoch Times that he had only been in the United States for two years and when he was in Guangdong, China, he had heard about the CCP’s suppression of Falun Gong.
In the United States, Falun Gong can not only march openly but also have police cars to lead the way and escort them, Kuang noticed. “In China, this is totally impossible,” he said.
Kuang said that he did not know much about Falun Gong before but now, when he saw the “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance” banners, he said he was very much in agreement with Falun Gong’s teachings. “Be sincere, do good things, be patient when things go wrong, and don’t get angry easily, I understand all these values,” he said.
Chen Shanfeng, who escaped from China to the United States last year, was holding up a big banner with the word “Forbearance” in the parade.
He told The Epoch Times that he initially wanted to carry the banner with the word “Compassion” because his name has that character in Chinese. But when it started to rain heavily, he suddenly realized that “I should cultivate forbearance” and took the corresponding banner.
Chen said that he came to the United States because he could not see true freedom in China. On his first day in the United States, Chen went to the Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP to denounce any ties to the party.
He said that he believes life in the United States is a normal life in a normal society. After he started practicing Falun Gong, he cherished the opportunity to be in the United States even more because of its freedom of belief.
