[Epoch Times November 22, 2021](Reported by the English Epoch Times reporter Eva Fu/Compiled by Mu Qing) With a large backpack on his shoulder and a travel guide in hand, Canadian Joel Chipkar looks alike A typical tourist.
Wearing a black jacket and khaki pants, the 33-year-old, brown-haired real estate agent walked quickly towards Tiananmen Square, the center of the Chinese capital. Ten years ago, it was dyed red by the blood of students and citizens. Of the people died under the guns and tanks of the communist regime.
The weather on November 20, 2001 was quite good in Beijing, which is famous for its thick smog, with bright sunshine and fresh air.
Pedestrians strolled leisurely on the wide gray sidewalk in twos and threes, but Chipka did not pay much attention. He walked straight towards the north end of the square. He has a mission.
Chipka quickly saw what he was looking for: 6 meters west of the Chinese flag pole, twenty or thirty people with light-colored hair like him were gathering together quietly, some sitting on the ground, some Standing, finishing the collar. This scene attracted a lot of curious eyes. At that time, in this country, it was not common to see so many western faces at once.
Chipka stopped when he was still some distance away from the group. He recognized a few faces in the crowd, but he knew it was best not to say hello, because any action that could attract the attention of the surroundings might not be conducive to the action.
A suppressed excitement filled the air. After a while, these Westerners gathered in four rows, standing or sitting, as if taking a group photo in front of the iconic Tiananmen Tower. But this is strategy. After that, they sat down in a meditation posture. Some people unfolded a two-meter-long golden banner with the words “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance” in Chinese and English. These three-character mantras are the core principles of Falun Gong, the persecuted faith group.
At this time, the police swarmed, arrested and followed.
Chipka’s task is to observe and record what happened on the spot.
plan
All this happened two years after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced its suppression of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), when there were approximately 70 million to 100 million people practicing Falun Gong in China. Due to the large number of practitioners, Falun Gong has become a thorn in the CCP for no reason.
In the 1990s, in parks and squares all over China, you could see rows of Falun Gong practitioners doing the exercises every morning. But these activities came to an abrupt end in July 1999, and the CCP launched a nationwide campaign to eliminate Falun Gong.
Since then, Falun Gong practitioners have been victims of harassment, torture, detention and enslavement. Many people were forced to leave their work units or schools, and books related to Falun Gong were confiscated and burned.
The persecution of Falun Gong reached its peak in 2001. China’s domestic radio and newspapers were used to promote a so-called self-immolation incident that took place in Tiananmen Square on January 20, 2001. The incident was later confirmed to have been staged under the order of the CCP’s high-level officials to describe Falun Gong practitioners as suicides. False case.
Increasing misleading information and hate propaganda campaigns have prompted Falun Gong practitioners to travel to Tiananmen Square, China’s political center and popular tourist destination, to call for an end to the persecution.
Falun Gong practitioners overseas watched all this anxiously, and the experience of fellow practitioners in China continued to tell them that they must do more.
For this group of Westerners, the idea of going to Tiananmen Square to call for an end to the persecution has been brewing for at least a year. Peter Recknagel, a 30-year-old German university student majoring in China and economics, is one of the initiators of this project. When he discovered that Falun Gong practitioners in other parts of the world had the same desire, his plan was further expanded.
In the end, 36 Falun Gong practitioners from 12 countries including Europe, North America and Australia flew to China. Many of them do not know each other. The instructions they followed couldn’t be more concise: travel separately; gather near the flagpole before 2pm on November 20th; keep a low profile and convey the message they want to call for; and stay as much as possible.
They took precautions to ensure that the plan was not leaked. At the same time, in order to avoid being eavesdropped by the CCP authorities, only a few people participated in the organization work, and they spoke in Swedish in most of the plans.
Adam Leining, a 30-year-old advertising director from the United States, put the banner in a suit bag. On the night before the action, they pulled down the curtains of the hotel room, turned on the disco music loudly, and then entered the room one by one for small rehearsals. They unfolded the banner to see how big it was, and asked the three tallest group members to hold it.
When everyone gathered in the square, two Europeans held a bouquet of flowers in their hands, as if celebrating. That is to prepare them to buy time.
“There is a signal…and then everyone has to switch to the meditation posture,” Recknagel, now 50, who lives in New York State, recalled to The Epoch Times.
“We must be very, very careful, lest the plan is ruined before the action occurs,” she said.
witness
Chipka planned his role as carefully as possible.
He bought a miniature video camera and a device similar to a pager, and he stuffed it into the strap of his backpack. There is a hole in the strap so that the lens can penetrate outside. Then he spent four full days looking in the mirror with a backpack (demonstration of shooting effects) to master how to adjust the angle of the camera. The tape will play for about two hours, and when everything is ready, he can relax and walk around.
“I thought of all the things that might happen or go wrong, and I had to plan for all of this, because you won’t have a second chance,” Chipka, 53, who lives in Toronto, is receiving “The Epoch Times” said in an interview.
The night before the action, Chipka tossed and turned, having trouble falling asleep, thinking about every small accident that might endanger his mission. The camera may malfunction, or the police may arrest him before he arrives at the scene, then all his work will be wasted.
Hold banner
When Chipka arrived at Tiananmen Square, his friend Zenon A. Dolnyckyj (Zenon A. Dolnyckyj) had gathered with everyone. Dornaki, 10 years younger than him, learned some basic Mandarin from some Chinese Falun Gong practitioners in Toronto.
The two of them met at the Great Wall the day before and hung a yellow vertical flag that said “Falun Dafa is good.” Dornecky has been staying up all night in the hotel, writing these Chinese characters on the banners-in Dornecky’s words, this is a “beautiful, symbolic message.”
“Chipka Joel and I are very firm in my heart,” Dornaki told The Epoch Times. “We know that to go there is risking our lives, but we feel that it is very important to the world. Therefore, it is very exciting to finally reach the Great Wall and hang the flag there.”
Both bought tickets to return to Canada four hours after the Tiananmen operation.
“See you at the airport,” Chipka told Dolnej at the hotel the morning before the action.
But they failed to return as scheduled.
Dornajki spent a whole day reading, meditating, walking around in the nearby streets, looking down at his watch, he walked into Tiananmen Square with great energy, “feeling like a giant.”
When the big banner unfolded, both Recknagel and Rening were sitting. The Dornay base station is behind the banner between the words “True” and “Good”, supporting the banner with both hands.
In 2017, when he told NTDTV’s “Legend Times” program, he said: “I feel very proud because they hold the banner so powerfully, that’s how they hold the banner firmly.”
In less than 20 seconds, the horn of a police car pierced the air. Soon, at least six police cars surrounded them. Police officers in uniforms and plainclothes emerged from nowhere, threw these practitioners into the car, and pushed the crowd away.
With the arrival of the police, Dornaj took out another yellow temporary banner modified from a pillowcase from his trouser leg. He practiced this movement in a hotel. He held this banner and shouted “Falun Dafa is good” with all his strength.
When the police caught him, one of them punched Dornajki between his eyes, causing him to fracture his nasal bone. The blood ran down his nose. He felt a sharp pain and tears filled his eyes.
More fists hit him like rain. He was forcibly pushed into a white police car, where he found a Swedish man knocked unconscious and a French woman with blond hair and blue eyes. The police tried to stop her. Throat to prevent her from shouting: “Falun Dafa is good.”
Chipka stood not far from the chaotic scene, watching his friends being dragged away within a few minutes.
He called a rickshaw back to the hotel, rushed into the bathroom in the hotel lobby, locked the door behind him, and started rewinding. After confirming that everything was in place, Chipka went to the nearest FedEx office and sent the recording back to Canada.
“I’m really relieved,” Chipka said. “When the call to action happened in the square, it was amazing-things happened exactly as they planned.”
trial
The rest were detained in a police station near Tiananmen Square, a cell with blood stains on the wall and no windows. More violence occurred during the interrogation. An Israeli Falun Gong practitioner was beaten in the face and kicked in the groin.
They were later taken to a hotel near the airport. An American medical student was beaten on the head after refusing to sign and tearing up the police report. A woman refused to hand over her mobile phone and was forcibly searched by the police.
Reknagel, who knows some Chinese, warned the police not to attack the medical student again.
“(You) fight again, the whole world will know,” Reknagel recalled, speaking to the police officer in Mandarin.
The police pushed him against the wall in a rage, threatening, “Do you know what it feels like to die?” Recknagel told The Epoch Times.
Nevertheless, compared with treating Falun Gong practitioners in China, the police are restrained. Throughout the proceedings, the police filmed the group of people, including providing food and water, but the arrested Falun Gong practitioners suspected this was for propaganda purposes. The official media later reported that these Westerners were treated humanely.
About 24 to 48 hours later, they were put on the plane and told that they could not return to China within five years.
The real hero is not us
When Chipka looked back on this past 20 years later, he said that their actions were not heroic.
“At that moment we did what we thought we had to do,” he said. “Each of us tried our best.”
According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, since the beginning of the persecution, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been thrown into detention centers, prisons, labor camps and other places, and millions have been tortured. Many detained Falun Gong practitioners have their organs harvested alive.
Minghui.com, a website based in the United States that records the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, has confirmed the deaths of thousands of people. Experts say this is just the tip of the iceberg, because the regime is trying its best to cover up its brutal persecution.
“The heroes who really deserve attention are the Falun Gong practitioners in China. They are going through the test of life and death every day-every time they walk out of their homes, they let people know that atrocities are happening,” Chipka said. “These people in China are heroes, not us.”
Recknagel spent the first 18 years of his life in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He described his trip to Tiananmen Square as a “great adventure.”
“No one really knows what will happen,” Recknagel said. I don’t know how much this will help (change) the situation in China, but at least, it gives us a glimpse of how real and cruel the persecution (of Falun Gong practitioners) is in China. “
“He gave you an impetus…to do his best to stop it (persecution from happening).”
The artist then portrayed the moment when the Western Falun Gong practitioners displayed banners on Tiananmen Square in an oil painting. In the painting, a translucent golden light radiated from the group of practitioners.
“Look at truth, compassion, and tolerance,” he said, pointing to the three Chinese characters on the banner. “At that time, we were standing up for this.”
The painting is now on display in a shopping mall in upstate New York, where Recknagel sometimes visits.
“It’s great to have that photo as a memory!” he said.
But for him and many others, memories of 20 years ago are inseparable from sorrow.
“In China, many people came forward for this, but they didn’t leave photos,” Recknagel said. “Many people were killed.”
Link to the original English Epoch Times：The 36 Who Dared: Fighting for Freedom in the Heart of Red China
Editor in charge: Ye Ziwei#
.
