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Falun Dafa practitioners from Southeast Queensland took part in the Queensland Multicultural Festival in Brisbane’s beautiful Roma Street Parklands. This was the largest multicultural festival to date sponsored by the Premier’s office, and an estimated 30,000 people attended the activities.
The Viva la Gong festival is 9 days of music, art, dance, fashion, film, sculpture, theatre, food and family fun. This is the 5th annual festival of arts, culture and innovation and the second year that Falun Dafa has been invited to participate.
For the second year in a row, Falun Gong practitioners from around Queensland took part in the Cairns “Festival of Lights Parade.” Cairns is a world-famous tourist destination in the far north of Queensland, home to many attractions including the Great Barrier Reef.
An international fight against persecution has gained support from the people of Macarthur. A petition calling for the Federal Government to protect the safety and basic rights of Australian Falun Dafa practitioners has been signed by 2000 residents.
India Falun Dafa Association registered as an non-profit organization in Bombay in September 2004, and the association then became a legal group recognized by the Indian Government. The founding of India Falun Dafa Association formally tells the world that the ancient nation with the second largest population in the world has formally embraced Falun Dafa.
A small nameplate beside the high, burnished metal gates announces the building inside as “Guangzhou City Law School”. But this grimy industrial area on the outskirts of China’s great southern commercial metropolis is an unlikely place for an academic institution.
According to the award-winning Melbourne-based writer Ouyang Yu, whose brother Ming died last year from ill-treatment during detention for his Falun Gong activities, the persecution has attracted little interest in human rights circles in Australia. “Over here you meet up with a wall of utter coldness, a wall of ice,” he said in a telephone interview. “They say other cases are more important.”
In October 2002 Tang was taken to a room. Her legs and wrists were bound, and her mouth taped over. Teams of interrogators forced her to stand up to 19 hours a time as they shouted insults, slapped and kicked her.
Human Rights in China (HRIC) expresses its deep concern over thisreport, in particular as China’s report on its implementation of itsobligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child comes upfor review by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in May 2005.
Since 1999, when the Chinese government started the crack down on Falun Dafa, millions of Falun Dafa practitioners and their family in China have been through brutal persecutions, and I am one of them.
