Local lawmakers condemned the actions of a man who allegedly 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 of two women being 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 added. “Let me be clear, I am against any violence to any peaceful event. Every American has the right to march peacefully.”
Susan Zhuang, New York City councilmember 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,” said Chu. “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.”
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 8th 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 shielding the woman with his body, and the attacker retreated.
Minutes later, the same man reappeared and 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 volunteer guard, Wei Lisheng, intervened and shielded Wang with his body.
“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 America. 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.
Wang said she believed the assault was a hate crime. She said the sort of targeted hatred this man displayed toward Falun Gong practitioners was something instilled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), an atheist regime that has since 1999 made it its mission to wipe out the practice.
Additional witnesses told The Epoch Times they saw the same man, identified in a video, 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 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 sidewalk.
Yang said the man had rammed his shoulder into Yang’s chest so hard that he became numb and dizzy and almost fell, adding that he later learned others had seen this same man assault other participants of the parade.
For some time, Flushing, 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 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. Now we need to bring that same protection to the borough of Brooklyn, Kings County, to Manhattan,” Flores-Vazquez said.
In Flushing, the district leader took the issue from community affairs meetings to the local police precinct, resulting in arrests of pro-CCP attackers in Flushing.
“It’s very clear that we have not ended the crisis, and it’s very clear that now that 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,” she said. “We have to document, we have to make the public aware of what’s going on.”
