A grand parade, band performances, and traditional Chinese dance and music to mark the 31st anniversary of World Falun Dafa Day regaled onlookers in downtown Toronto on May 6. The event also included a flag-raising ceremony.
Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions that involves meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the tenets of “truthfulness, compassion, forbearance.” After it was introduced in China on May 13, 1992, the practice grew rapidly in popularity largely due to its health benefits, and by 1999 it had an estimated 70 million to 100 million adherents.
But the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) viewed Falun Gong’s popularity a threat to the regime’s rule, and in July 1992 launched a persecution campaign with the intention of eradicating the practice. The campaign, which continues today, involves the arbitrary incarceration, torture, brainwashing, and sexual abuse of Falun Gong adherents, as well as the live harvesting of their organs to supply China’s lucrative transplant industry.
“Movements like Falun Dafa are so important for the vibrancy of our communities, and in making sure that, as Canadians, we can have the opportunity to practise and profess our faith,” he said.
“We know the terrible, horrific situation that Falun Dafa members are putting up with in China, and thank God, in a country like Canada, we don’t operate like that we allow people that freedom of expression and freedom of association.”
Former Conservative MP Wladyslaw Lizon, who was grew up in former Soviet-controlled Poland, highlighted the importance of uniting people who live in free societies against authoritarian regimes like the CCP.
“Fortunately, here in Canada we can celebrate, but we cannot forget about those people in China,” he said. “They’re ... not only discriminated against, but jailed by the communist government that does everything to stop the movement [of Falun Gong],” he said.
Pointing to Poland’s experience in successfully pushing back against the oppressive Soviet regime, he said that China will also see change for the better one day.
“I’m sure that by working together, by remembering those in China, we also will be successful, and the change in China will come,” Lizon said. “We will prevail.”
Toronto resident Sheng Xue, a Chinese Canadian and longtime democracy advocate, said she has witnessed the perseverance of Falun Gong practitioners over the past 24 years.
“I was here in May 1999, right here on this square [at Toronto City Hall] for the first World Falun Dafa Day. I have been in solidarity with the practitioners since that day on. And after 24 years of resisting persecution, Falun Gong practitioners have become a role model of resistance [against tyranny] in human history,” Sheng said in Mandarin.
“Falun Gong group has endured the most severe persecution—we know that organ harvesting is the most cruel, brutal, inhumane, and shameless crime in human history—and Falun Gong practitioners have been the main victims of this atrocity committed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Dean Baxendale, president and CEO of Optimum Publishing International, said the event “corroborates the struggles of many who have arrived here as refugees fleeing persecution in China in the hands of a brutal and soulless communist regime, a criminal regime.”
“Here in Canada, we can be who we want to be, strive for what we want and what we need, while living with our fellow citizens in peace and harmony,” he said.
“But as you all know, the CCP has a different plan—using the United Front Work Department and the network of Chinese friendship associations that seek to engage and control all members of the [Chinese] community.”
