NEW YORK—A man has been arrested after allegedly assaulting a Falun Gong adherent who volunteers at an information booth in New York’s Flushing neighborhood.
Qi Zhongping, 77, insulted and physically attacked Falun Gong practitioner David Fang, leaving Fang with multiple scrapes on his neck, hand, and knee.
Adherents say that Qi has for years harassed adherents at the stand, although this is the first time he has been criminally charged.
Qi was arrested on Feb. 18, two days after his assault on Fang. He faces charges of assault in the third degree with intent to cause physical injury, a class A misdemeanor, and harassment in the second degree, according to a Queens Criminal Court case report.
According to Fang, Qi has been around the area for at least a decade, distributing marketing materials to people on the street. He made false accusations against female Falun Gong practitioners and often harassed adherents with verbal abuse as they talked with passersby about their faith and the persecution they face in communist China.
In Flushing, the adherents, some of whom are survivors of the regime’s persecution, established five small tented kiosks to bring awareness to the abuses that have been taking place for the past 23 years and counting.
Qi also confronted Fang at the Falun Gong booth near the metro station on the afternoon of Feb. 16 and made offensive comments about the faith.
“They were so crude that I can’t bear uttering them,” Fang told The Epoch Times.
Qi snatched away another female practitioner’s phone when he saw the woman filming him. He scratched and attempted to bite Fang, who tried to get the phone back, bringing both to the ground in the melee.
Grabbing a walking stick from Falun Gong practitioner Gao Jinying, Qi then chased Fang around the booth several times, trying to hit him.
Fang, a former middle school music teacher in China, was barred from the classroom and demoted to do logistical work when Chinese police found out he was telling others about the ongoing persecution. Knowing millions of fellow adherents are still suffering in China, Fang called the hostility from Qi “cruel” and almost “inhumane.”
“As Falun Gong practitioners, we are a peaceful group. We never attack others or provoke them. How could he show such hatred toward us and our faith?” said Fang, who suspects the man was acting at the behest of the Chinese regime.
Many female adherents have encountered Qi in the past, said Fang, but given Qi’s advanced age, they haven’t raised the issue or confronted him.
“When they were bullied, they became quiet and wouldn’t say anything,” said Fang, who added that he'd seen Qi hurling insults multiple times in recent weeks.
Adherent Li Xuejin, who twice experienced Qi’s threats in 2021, confirmed Fang’s accounts.
“One time I told him, ‘You can’t act like this.’ He began to say very off-putting words, and held up his fist,” the 63-year-old told The Epoch Times.
Qi shook his fist in Li’s face and almost hit her, only to be stopped by a woman from a nearby vendor stand. Qi also made similar gestures when she talked with another man about the regime’s misdeeds, she said.
Joe Zhang, a bystander who recorded part of the scene, also expressed shock at Qi’s aggression.
“In America, people enjoy the freedom of belief,” he told The Epoch Times, describing the man as “fierce.”
Zhang added that he wants to see such behavior “strictly punished by law” to discourage similar acts from happening.
“He definitely has been poisoned by the Communist Party,” he said.
Zhang said Qi had also assaulted a Christian kiosk that Zhang’s friend manages.
Qi’s dialect seems to be from Fuzhou, the capital of southeastern China’s Fujian Province. As Qi dropped the walking stick, another man in a black suit patted Qi on the shoulder and said some words that seem to be “all good, all good,” the video that Zhang shot shows.
A hearing on the case is set for May 1.
The incident isn’t an isolated one for the adherents at the Falun Gong booths.
“It left a lingering fear in me,” Xu Weiguo, a booth volunteer, told The Epoch Times shortly after. She said that as a woman, witnessing Zheng’s “brazenness even on American soil” was unsettling and caused her to lose sleep.
Zheng had pled guilty to committing a hate crime and two counts of criminal mischief for acting with intent to damage property, according to court records dated Nov. 28.
Qi’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
