By a Swedish practitioner
Sweden, a country people refer to
as “the Nordic Mountains and Villages,” lies in the east of the Scandinavian Peninsula.
Her northern boundaries border on the north of Finland, her west is near Norway,
her south is near the North Sea and her east is close to the Baltic Sea. Sweden's
climate, within the temperate zone, is comfortable and pleasant. Sweden is covered
with forests and is rich in lakes. Lake Vanern is the third biggest lake in Europe.
Sweden has a population of over 8,900,000, 90 0f whom are descendants of the Germanic
race. Her official language is Swedish and 900f her people believe in Christianity.
Stockholm, the capital, consists of 14 big and small islands and islets with
mountains and waters enhancing each other's beauty. That is why it is called
“the Venice of the North.” Alfred Nobel was from Stockholm. From 1901 onwards,
the Nobel Prize and Certificate are awarded each year by the Swedish King himself
to the person who wins this coveted prize.
The Nobel Prize has five awards:
Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine, Literature and Peace. December 10th
is the commemoration day when Nobel passed away. On this day, the Ceremonies of
Issuing the Nobel Peace Prize are solemnly held in Stockholm and Oslo respectively.
As the Swedish people are well educated, they are gentle and cultivated. They
have a good sense of humor, and are quiet and easygoing as well. In public places,
few people speak loudly.
The Swedish people have been practicing
Falun Dafa since 1995. Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, taught the practice
in person in Sweden on April 6th, 1995. To help more people understand Falun Gong,
Master Li gave five lectures, about three hours each, including three in Gothenburg,
one in Stockholm, Sweden's capital, and one in Uddevalla. To enable more
people to attend, Mr. Li especially arranged the speeches to be held from 7:00
to 10:00 p.m.
From the 14th to the 20th of April, Master Li taught the first
Falun Gong lessons in Nordgarden, Sweden. More than one hundred and twenty people
attended the class, most of who were westerners. During the seven days of the
lessons, Master Li taught people about Falun Dafa and cultivation practice.
The First Falun Gong Lessons in Sweden
Afterwards, to create an environment
for cultivation practice and to help more people learn Falun Dafa, practitioners
held the nine-day workshop with Master Li's lecture videos many times. They
have persisted in holding workshops for years, so more and more people have come
to practice Falun Dafa. Every practitioner wanted to have a Swedish copy of Zhuan
Falun, the main text of Falun Dafa. Therefore, practitioners started to
translate the book. The English version of Zhuan Falun had not been completed
at that time, so they asked practitioners from Mainland China to help translate
Zhuan Falun into English, and then they translated it into Swedish. The
Swedish Zhuan Falun was formally published in October 1997.
What is
cultivation practice? It is unfamiliar to most Western people. Though they can
understand its general concepts, when confronting concrete matters in daily practice,
they don't know how to deal with it. A certain practitioner liked to drink
beer. He always bought a case of beer each time he went shopping. After he attended
Master Li's nine-day workshop, when he drank the beer at home, it tasted
bitter. He though it might be going bad, so he emptied the remaining beer. He
bought another case of beer the next day. It still tasted bitter. He looked at
the date, but it was still within the expiration date. He then understood what
was happening and quit drinking.
Some Western practitioners do not continue
attending the workshop when they experience sickness karma. To avoid the situation,
some veteran practitioners make sure to attend each workshop. They discuss and
share experiences after learning every lecture. They also organized a visit for
Western practitioners to travel to Dalian in China, to study the Fa
and share experiences with practitioners in China.
Clarifying the Truth
Everywhere
  Sven Olausson in Hong Kong |
  On the Great Wall in Beijing |
Several Swedish Falun
Gong practitioners initiated a long journey to spread the Fa. In December 1999,
seven Swedish Dafa practitioners went to South Africa. They held a nine-day workshop
and spread the Fa in many cities.
Sven Olausson works in shipping services.
He has visited almost all nearby countries to spread the Fa. When people asked
him why he does so, he replies simply, “From the bottom of my heart, I want to
help spread the Fa.” He has been to China seven times. He said, “I feel that China
is my real home. When I made contact with practitioners in China, I had a special
feeling. I felt they were like my family.”
Since the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) started to persecute Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, Sven has been to many
big cities to participate in conferences and activities to spread the Fa. When
people asked him, “How do you have so much time?” He replied, “I work without
taking a rest for a couple of days. Then I can collect a large amount of vacation
time to spread the Fa.” He has been to nearly thirty-five countries, including
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt,
Israel and many others. He is most impressed by India.
In 2002, Sven and practitioners
from other countries went to India together. They held Master Li's nine-day
workshop with local practitioners. He recollected, “People there were friendly.
They spoke English, so it's easy to communicate with them. When we talked
about the content of Zhuan Falun, they understood it easily.” Many people
attended the workshop at that time. When they learned the facts of Falun Gong,
they made great efforts with local practitioners to broadcast Master Li's
nine lessons to the entire nation through the biggest television station in Bombay,
the capital of India.
Coming for You
On November 20th, 2001,
more than thirty Dafa practitioners from twelve countries held up a banner reading,
“Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance,” on Tiananmen Square in China. The action
shocked the world. Among the practitioners, nine were from Sweden, including Pirjo.
  Western Falun Gong practitioners in Tiananmen Square |
Pirjo is a nurse in the Neurosurgery Department of a hospital in Gothenburg. She
is a veteran practitioner who obtained the Fa in April 1995. After studying Master
Li's teachings, she understood what cultivation practice is, the principle
of the universe and how to be a good person. Pirjo said that she had not heard
anyone tell her such profound theories in such simple and understandable words.
Since then, she decided to practice cultivation. Pirjo usually listens to the
recordings of Master Li's Fa and reads Zhuan Falun after she gets
off work. She also practices the exercises at the local exercise site. All the
pain in her body has disappeared.
Pirjo could not understand why the CCP banned
such a good cultivation practice. Why does it persecute the people who simply
want to be good people? She called the media and newspaper offices to tell them
the facts. Based on her personal experience, she told them that what the CCP did
was wrong. She and other Falun Gong practitioners handed a petition to the Chinese
Embassy to ask for a stop to the persecution.
Falun Gong practitioners in
China are persecuted to death every day since the persecution began. Pirjo cried
several times. She could no longer just stay at home. So, on November 20th 2001,
she and other Falun Gong practitioners went to Tiananmen Square. In the middle
of the red terror of the CCP, to let more Chinese people know that facts, they
opened a big banner reading, “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance,” and cried
out from their innermost selves: “Falun Dafa is good! All people in the world
know that Falun Dafa is good!”
Their shouts struck the CCP police with panic.
Six police cars sped over to them and surrounded them in about one minute. A lot
of policemen jumped out of the cars. They beat and arrested them. Pirjo was dragged
into a police car by her hair. Some practitioners were injured, some practitioners'
hair was pulled out and others' clothes were torn. A practitioner in her
fifties was beaten black and blue in many places.
This experience made them
even more steadfast in their belief in Falun Dafa.
A chorus composed of European
Dafa practitioners wrote the song, “Coming for You.” The song was written about
this magnificent event. It has spread all over the world, including China.
Coming for You
Coming from far away,
Again and again, I came for you,
I came for loving you.
Precious Chinese people, please listen to my heart-felt
voice,
Falun Dafa is good, Falun Dafa Hao!
See the truth behind those
lies.
  Doing the Falun Gong exercises in a park in Thailand |
After coming back from China, Pirjo went along with her husband to work in Thailand.
She often goes to parks to do the exercises, and distributes truth-clarification
materials to passers-by. She said, “Since I live here now, I am responsible for
people here learning the facts.”
The CCP Extends the Persecution Overseas
On the early morning of April 29, 2003, Pirjo and her husband were asleep.
Several Thai police suddenly broke into her home. They searched her whole house,
took away Falun Dafa related truth-clarification materials and CDs. They also
took her to the police department and planned to deport her back to Sweden.
Pirjo asked the police, “What law of Thailand have I violated? Why do you take
me here?” Police had no response.
Then she asked, “Did the Chinese Embassy
put pressure on you?” The police officers answered, “Not only the Embassy, but
the Chinese government.”
Prijo said, “Since I have not violated any law. You
should restore my freedom. You don't have any right to deport me.”
The
Thai police authority truly could not find any excuse to deport Pirjo to Sweden,
but feared irritating the Chinese Communist regime. They detained her for 39 days
in the police station. At the moment, some head of the Chinese Communist regime
was going to visit Thailand. They were afraid of seeing Falun Gong practitioners.
So they threatened the Thai government and police with commercial sanctions and
exported the persecution of Falun Gong abroad.
  The Gothenburg Post reports the incident with a nearly full-page article |
 A reporter interviews Prijo |
The Sweden media
interviewed Pirjo after the Swedish Ambassador took her back to Sweden. She exposed
the Chinese Communist regime's deceit and viciousness via the TV network.
An Exceptional Train: “Yellow Train”
“Yellow Train” isn't
an ordinary train; it is actually a small music band founded by practitioner Anders
Eriksson of Sweden, composed of seven practitioners. It was established in 2003.
The color yellow represents the Buddha school, and also is the color most feared
by the major culprits who persecute Falun Gong. “Train” refers to spreading the
truth to all directions and saving people in the fastest way. As of today, “Yellow
Train” has composed ten songs, and has toured Sweden eight times. They are getting
popular in Sweden. The musicians were interviewed by the radio station of Karlstad
and the program was aired live to an audience of more than twenty thousand.
Anders is also a veteran practitioner, who started practicing in the fall of 1995.
He has loved music since he was a child. He was a student in the piano department
of a music school when he was only nine. Later, he worked as a technician in a
photo service shop. He's been to China three times; and learned what true
cultivation is. He said, “I didn't know what cultivation was at first, until
I listened to Chinese practitioners' experience sharing during my first trip
to Beijing. I have learned a lot from those trips to China.”
Ever since Jiang
Zemin's faction started the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, Anders
started to think about how to use his talent in music to help stop the persecution.
His first song is called, “Walk On.” The lyrics convey the following meaning:
“They put my wife into prison, beat her and torture her to mental collapse. I
saw the Yellow River turned to red, so many people were tortured, and thousands
were killed. …… as a whole group, we crossed thousands of thousand miles.
Our steps are all over major cities in the world, for our belief and rights. We
came to Tiananmen in Beijing to demonstrate the great law of the universe, “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.'
We are persecuted for doing that. We will never give up our beliefs, and we walk
on, 'till the end of the persecution! To end the persecution!”
 “Yellow Train” performance in Gothenburg |
Anders joined the “Coming for you Choir of Europe.” He said, “This is a very special
choir. We normally sing in both Chinese and English, just to help more Chinese
people learn the facts. The members of the choir come from different counties
and different occupations. Everybody has a special feeling when we gather for
rehearsal, that is a sublimation of energy. Because each of us sings with our
hearts.”
These practitioners are using their voices to help people understand:
“The world needs Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.” They hope to wake up people
with song, to help each one of us see through the evil nature of the Chinese Communist
regime's tyranny.
http://clearharmony.net/articles/200605/33337.html
Posting date: 4/June/2006
Original
article date: 3/June/2006
Category: World
News