(Minghui.org) Romanian Falun Dafa practitioners organized an information booth in Timișoara’s Victory Square to raise awareness of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of Falun Dafa in March 2023.
Timișoara is designated by the European Union as Europe’s “Cultural Capital” for 2023. On December 20, 1989, it was declared the first city free of communism in Romania. March 11 was the first time that Dafa practitioners in Timișoara held an informational booth since the restrictions during the COVID pandemic, and many locals and tourists stopped by their booth.
Timișoara’s Victory Square (Web photo)
The practitioners’ booth served a dual purpose. In addition to drawing public support to bring about an end to the CCP’s persecution, it also demonstrated the peaceful nature of the meditation practice and how practitioners in Romania and worldwide have benefited from Falun Dafa.
They distributed pamphlets about the practice and set up two display boards with in-depth descriptions about Falun Dafa and the persecution in China —including how the CCP harvests practitioners’ organs to be sold for profit.
Practitioners staffing the booth were all local volunteers who wanted to tell other Romanians about the ongoing human rights atrocities targeting practitioners in China.
Practitioners also demonstrated the Falun Dafa exercises at the booth, which drew many passersby. People stopped to watch and asked for more information about the practice. The practitioners told them about the group practice site they had in the Timișoara Botanic Park, where they do the exercises together every Sunday.
One gentleman read the display boards and was handed a pamphlet by a practitioner. As he read the materials, he said, “And yet, why do they want to kill [these practitioners?]” he asked. “I’ll tell you why, because these people can’t be manipulated!”
A young woman stopped by the booth and asked about the lotus flowers on display, which practitioners were offering to passersby as a symbol of Falun Dafa and the values the practice stands for: Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
“‘Falun Dafa is good,’” she said, reading the text aloud. “How wonderful!”
Another gentleman, after listening to a practitioner explain the purpose of the booth to someone else, walked up and signed the petition asking the Romanian president to condemn the CCP’s forced organ harvesting operations.
“You’ve Come to the Right Place!”
Georgiana, one of the Falun Dafa volunteers, said that many Romanians did not know about the persecution.
“I watched them read the display boards about the persecution, and then they often ask, ‘Is it true?’” she said. “I tell them about the worldwide efforts to stop this genocide. I explain that they can help by signing the petition, and they immediately sign it.”
Georgiana also shared a photograph that another volunteer took of the booth’s location.
“We were surprised [to see] that next to [our booth] was a big poster covering a whole building with the words: ‘You’ve come to the right place’!”
The practitioners plan to continue the information booth in the coming months so that they can tell more people about Falun Dafa and the persecution.
Background: What Is Falun Dafa and Why Is the CCP Persecuting It?
Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) was first introduced to the public by Mr. Li Hongzhi in Changchun, China, in 1992. The spiritual discipline is now practiced in over 100 countries and regions worldwide. Millions of people who have embraced the teachings, which are based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, and have learned the five exercises, have experienced improved health and well-being.
Jiang Zemin, former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), perceived the spiritual discipline’s growing popularity as a threat to the CCP’s atheistic ideology and on July 20, 1999, he issued an order to eradicate the practice.
Under Jiang’s personal direction, the CCP established the 610 Office, an extralegal security organization with the power to override the police and judicial systems and whose sole function is to carry out the persecution of Falun Dafa.
Minghui.org has confirmed the deaths of thousands of practitioners as a result of the persecution over the past 24 years, though due to the difficulty in getting information out of China, the actual number is believed to be much higher. Countless practitioners have been imprisoned and tortured for their faith.
There is concrete evidence that the CCP sanctions the harvesting of organs from detained practitioners, who are murdered to supply China’s organ transplant industry.
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