NEW YORK—A blue-and-golden dragon, a float of fairies seated atop large lotus flowers, and a full Western marching band formed part of a contingent of thousands who marched through midtown Manhattan for a yearly celebration.
The New York parade, with 5,000 attendees, marks one of the largest of its kind in the world to commemorate World Falun Dafa Day, which also marks the anniversary of the spiritual discipline’s introduction to the public 31 years ago.
In the 1990s, the spiritual practice, also known as Falun Gong, spread rapidly in China, drawing, by some estimates, up to 100 million people to the practice. But it has been violently persecuted since 1999, when the Chinese communist regime unleashed a bloody campaign aimed at eradicating the faith….