Local lawmakers have condemned the actions of a man who witnesses say assaulted multiple Falun Gong practitioners during and after a Mid-Autumn Festival parade in Brooklyn over the weekend.
“I welcome the Falun Gong members marching in the parade on Saturday peacefully as they have every right as Americans to do so and they have the necessary permits approved,” Lester Chang, New York state assemblyman for Brooklyn’s 49th District, told The Epoch Times. “I am very sad and angry that two peaceful parade marchers were assaulted, unprovoked, by a member of our community.”
After initial reports that two women were assaulted, witnesses reported three more incidents. The parade organizers have filed a police report.
“I hope the NYPD will catch the perpetrator and prosecute that person to the fullest extent of the law,” Chang said. “Let me be clear, I am against any violence to any peaceful event. Every American has the right to march peacefully.”
Susan Zhuang, a member of the New York City Council for District 43 in Southern Brooklyn, agreed.
“No matter what race, no matter what religion, everyone should feel safe on the streets,” she told The Epoch Times.
Both lawmakers are members of the Eighth Avenue Council in Brooklyn.
Iwen Chu, a New York state senator who was born in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times the attack was unacceptable.
“No act of violence is acceptable on our streets,” Chu said. “Everyone has the right to free speech and assembly. The United States is a country that values religious freedom. Our office will work with the law enforcement to better understand the situation and protect public safety.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that includes slow-moving meditative exercises and teachings based on the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance.
Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners from the New York area participated in the Sept. 14 parade, which ran from about noon to 2 p.m. on Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn’s Chinatown.
According to witnesses, an Asian man wearing a light-colored T-shirt punched a woman participating in the parade shortly before 12:45 p.m. A volunteer guard in the parade ran up to the man and shielded the woman with his body, and the attacker retreated.
Minutes later, the same man reappeared and allegedly punched parade participant Wang Lirong from behind, hitting her in the shoulder, back, and neck, almost knocking her to the ground. He retreated again when the same volunteer guard, Wei Lisheng, intervened again and shielded Wang, witnesses said.
“He shouted, ‘I will remember you,’” Wei told The Epoch Times.
Wang said she was stunned, as she had never encountered something like this in the United States.
Wang said she believed the assault was a hate crime. The sort of targeted hatred the man displayed toward Falun Gong practitioners was something instilled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has since 1999 made it its mission to wipe out the practice, she said.
Additional witnesses told The Epoch Times they saw the same man, who was captured on video at the scene, attack other Falun Gong practitioners after the parade.
One said she saw the man assault another practitioner, Yang Xiaoping, and that she and another woman told him to stop. The man allegedly ignored them and walked away, and the witness said she saw him hit two other elderly Falun Gong practitioners, almost knocking an older woman to the ground.
Yang said the man rammed his shoulder into his chest so hard that he became numb and dizzy and almost fell, adding that he later learned that others had seen this same man assault other participants of the parade.
For some time, the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York, was a hub of such activity. Falun Gong practitioners had set up a booth to raise awareness about the practice and the CCP’s persecution of it, and they were regularly harassed by pro-CCP individuals.
“It’s really horrible that in the United States, the land of the free, that this would be ongoing,” Martha Flores-Vazquez, state Assembly district leader for Flushing, told The Epoch Times.
“In Flushing, it took us a long time to get the protection that we needed,” Flores-Vazquez said. “Now, we need to bring that same protection to the borough of Brooklyn, Kings County, to Manhattan.”
In Flushing, the district leader took the issue from community affairs meetings to the local police precinct, resulting in the arrests of pro-CCP attackers in her district.
“It’s very clear that we have not ended the crisis, and it’s very clear that now ... there’s a heightening of awareness that [the CCP] has infiltrated some of our institutions,” she said.
“It’s like a cancer that continues to grow, and until you remove it; it’s not going to stop. You remove it by seeing something, saying something.
“We have to report each and every incident that occurs so it’s on record, so that we can claim justice. We have to document, we have to make the public aware of what’s going on.”
