About 10,000 people gathered in Beijing on April 25, 1999, less than three months before the Chinese regime launched a brutal persecution against the group.
Rallies were recently held in several cities across the United States to commemorate a peaceful protest that happened 26 years ago in China, where the communist regime has no tolerance for public dissent.
Falun Gong practitioners held events in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, and New York to observe what is now known as the April 25 appeal, an event that took place in Beijing, China’s capital.
On April 25, 1999, about 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners from various walks of life and across China gathered near Zhongnanhai, the compound of high-ranking officials of the Chinese Communist Party. They demanded the release of 45 fellow practitioners who had been arrested days earlier in Tianjin city and called for the protection of their rights to practice their faith freely.
During the April 25 appeal, then-Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji met with several representatives of Falun Gong at the State Council. However, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin overrode Zhu’s conciliatory stance toward Falun Gong and decided to characterize the appeal as a criminal threat, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
The peaceful protest became one of the excuses for the Chinese regime to launch a brutal persecution to eradicate the group on July 20, 1999. CCP propaganda has portrayed the April 25 appeal as a “siege” against the Party.
Los Angeles
On the evening of April 22, nearly 200 Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles to commemorate the April 25 appeal. Each of them held a candle to remember fellow practitioners who had been persecuted to death at the hands of the Chinese regime.
Zheng Cunzhu, chairman of the local committee of the China Democracy Party in Los Angeles, said at the event that overseas Chinese and governments in the West should be concerned about the ongoing persecution against Falun Gong.
“If we are not vigilant and allow the CCP’s authoritarian force to expand around the world … in the end, it will spread worldwide like COVID-19,” Zheng said.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that incorporates slow meditative exercises and moral teachings, centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. More than 70 million took up the practice in the late 1990s in China, according to official estimates. Fearing that the practice’s following could threaten its rule, the CCP launched the persecution.
Hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been subjected to torture while incarcerated, according to the Center, while thousands have been killed as a result of abuse in police custody. Due to strict censorship in China, the actual death toll could be much higher.
Philadelphia
Gong Qinhua, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, spoke at a rally in Philadelphia’s Chinatown on April 19. She recalled witnessing the events of April 25, 1999.
Gong said she traveled to Beijing with her family and arrived very early on that day.
“The practitioners were all extremely quiet without causing a disturbance. Some just stood there, while others did the Falun Gong exercises or read,” Gong said.
“In the evening, knowing that the CCP authorities had promised not to suppress Falun Gong and would release the Tianjin practitioners, the crowd dispersed quietly.”
Gong said the Chinese authorities arrested the 45 Falun Gong practitioners in Tianjin to lure practitioners from all over the country to come to Beijing and file their appeals.
When they arrived in the capital city on April 25, 1999, she said, the police also “deliberately arranged” for the practitioners to gather on the sidewalks of two streets next to Zhongnanhai, creating the impression that they were carrying out a “siege.”
“Some people think that if the April 25 event had not occurred, the suppression against Falun Gong could have been avoided. This view reflects a lack of understanding of the CCP’s conspiratorial nature,” Gong said.
“The CCP often sets up traps, such as calling on intellectuals to speak up during the Anti-Rightist Movement, to pave the way for suppression.”
Other Cities
On April 20, Falun Gong practitioners in Seattle held an event to commemorate the 26th anniversary of the April 25 appeal at downtown Westlake Park.
In Chicago, a group of local Falun Gong practitioners held their event in front of the Chinese Consulate on April 19.
In New York, thousands of Falun Gong practitioners took part in a parade in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens on April 19. Sun Ye and his wife, Yuan Jing, were among the participants. The couple, both dentists, had their own dental clinic in China before they recently arrived in the United States.
Sun, from northern Liaoning Province, said he didn’t get the chance to participate in the appeal 26 years ago because he was just a high school student at the time.
“This is my first time taking part in an April 25 event. To be able to come to this free society and participate in such a grand event, I am very fortunate,” Sun said.
“I hope people can remember this part of history, understand the truth about Falun Gong, and work together to stop this persecution.”
Yang Qian, Ma Shanen, and Sarah Lu contributed to this report.