LOS ANGELES—Nearly 200 Falun Gong adherents held a candlelight vigil in front of the Chinese Consulate July 18 to mourn their loved ones who were persecuted to death in China.
When the night fell, they sat in rows silently, holding candlelights and pictures of those who died as a result of religious persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“Today we [are here] to protest and condemn the Chinese Communist regime’s persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China for the past 23 years,” said Yingnian Wu, a UCLA professor and the spokesman for practitioners in Los Angeles. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a traditional Chinese spiritual practice consisting of five meditative exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Its popularity during the 1990s—with almost 100 million practicing in China, according to official estimates at the time—drew the CCP’s attention….