SAN FRANCISCO—Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners rallied on April 25 in front of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, marking the anniversary of 10,000 fellow practitioners’ peaceful appeal 26 years ago in Beijing, the political center of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The group made the appeal in 1999 for freedom of belief to follow their meditative practice of Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, and for the CCP to stop harassing practitioners throughout the country.
Practitioners in Beijing were told at the time that the issue had been resolved after then-Prime Minister Zhu Rongji met with several representatives. Upon the news, the 10,000 people, who had gathered of their own accord, packed up as quietly as they had arrived and left to return to their homes across China.
“They were seeking basic human rights in the most peaceful way,” Kerry Huang, one of the practitioners who appealed in Beijing, told The Epoch Times.
The rally became a yearly event following the CCP’s decision to launch a full-scale persecution of Falun Gong a few months later in July 1999, Huang said. Practitioners have since faced coercion to renounce their beliefs, arrest, imprisonment, torture, and even death.
“We are here to [raise] awareness of the still ongoing persecution, and to tell people truthfulness, benevolence, and forbearance, [the core values of Falun Gong,] is for everybody, and ... society will be better through cultivating by such principles.”
Deepak Yadav, an entrepreneur from India, told The Epoch Times, “That’s a historic day in the world, to see such a peaceful practice, a peaceful appeal, peaceful event, where practitioners came and they appeal very peacefully to the government to stop harassing them.”
“It’s basically a reminder of how important human rights are for people, and if we have to stand for something, how peacefully we can do, and what is the right way,” Yadav, also a Falun Gong practitioner, added of the historic day.
Alex Wang and Julia Zhu, a couple who recently arrived to San Francisco from mainland China, said they were deprived of a normal life following being arrested and detained for 10 days in late 2021 for spreading cards with QR codes that could help people to read uncensored information about China by bypassing the regime’s Great Firewall.
“We lost our decent jobs in the college and couldn’t find another one being constantly harassed by police officers,” Wang said.
Although the couple managed to leave China and arrived in San Francisco in 2024, Wang’s mother was left behind because her passport was invalidated by the authorities.
Wang said his mother was arrested again in China and is now facing a trial. “Every practitioner in China, like our family, may suddenly lose a normal life due to the persecution.”
“I think if more people can gather and demonstrate peacefully, it has strength in it,” Gabor from Hungary said as he passed by the protesters while sightseeing.
“Keep up the good fight, but it’s not easy,” he said.
Local resident Kim Quinteros said she was saddened by the persecution. “Many oppressed people don’t have a voice in society, and big business and people with money are the only voices that matter, and that is very horrible, and I don’t agree with that.”
“I believe everyone has a right to live their lives freely, without persecution, and be able to find their own truth and follow their own passions,” another passerby named Patrick from New York said.
“It’s well known that there’s really gross and evil human rights violations in China in general, how they treat their people, and there needs to be radical change over there, really put power back to the people there, and really reinforce their true natural born given rights there, yet the government in place right now is not interested in any of that.”
“You can see from the signs that you have here, it’s just probably the tip of the iceberg of what’s really going on over there,” he said.
