The CCP is ‘against everything good in this world … so it has to do with all of us,’ says one parade participant.
NEW YORK—Thousands of people in blue and yellow jackets popped up in the heart of the Big Apple for a parade on May 10 just after a misty rain.
It’s an annual tradition. Fairies holding lotus flowers, a float ferrying people in ancient Chinese attire, a Western-style marching band, and Chinese waist drummers. They marched through the streets of Manhattan for about 1.5 hours, in step with sounds and melodies that drew inspiration from a China long ago.
The New York parade is one of the largest of its kind in the world to commemorate World Falun Dafa Day, with an estimated 5,000 people taking part this year. It also marks the anniversary of the spiritual discipline’s introduction to the public 32 years ago.
It’s a day that mixes joy and sorrow.
The practice drew an estimated 70 million to 100 million people to it in China in the 1990s; it centered around meditative exercises and the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. In China, Falun Gong has been severely persecuted at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1999.
During the nearly 25 years of brutal persecution, an untold number of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed through torture, slave labor, and forced organ harvesting. Survivors in China—and those who practice in more than 100 countries around the world—say the communist persecution can’t make them bend their will.
Wang Huijuan, a Chinese language teacher in New York, took part in the parade. Her sister-in-law, music teacher Li Chunyuan, has spent weeks in Chinese detention for her faith.
Her alleged wrongdoing was “singing at home.”
“It sounds ridiculous, right?” Ms. Wang told The Epoch Times. The police, while conducting a house raid, told Ms. Li’s husband: “Do you know that she sings at home everyday? We’ve been monitoring her for a long time.”
Not that there was anything wrong with the songs, Ms. Wang said. Ms. Li, who has a sonorous voice, sings songs with lyrics that celebrate Chinese traditions, such as the lunar Chinese New Year, that “brings people hope,” said Ms. Wang.
By Eva Fu
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