Christina Hong, fourth-grader at Ming Hui School in Rockville, gives flowers
to riders, from left, John Yu, Kitty Ellis, Brian Nieh and Willem Zuur in the
Pedals for Peace bike ride during a stop in Cumberland at City Hall Saturday morning.
(Photo credit: John A. Bone/Times-News)
CUMBERLAND
– About a dozen bikers received a hero’s welcome at Cumberland’s City Hall on
Saturday morning. The teen-agers and their adult chaperones smiled and accepted
applause and flowers from students as they dismounted their bikes.
Why
the attention?
Yen Ching who spoke to the gathering at City Hall said, “They
are riding to save the lives of children and teen-agers in China because of their
own belief or their parents’ spiritual belief in Falun Gong.”
Falun
Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a practice of meditation and exercises with
teachings based on the universal principles of “Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance.”
It is practiced freely in more than 60 countries worldwide. The Falun Dafa Information
Center, which tracks the persecution in China, has verified more than 955 deaths
there.
Keith Ware, who coordinated the bike project, said that it was meant
to call attention to the problem and “hopefully stems the tide of senseless
persecution of children in China.”
The group left Washington on May
13 and is on a 700-mile, weeklong journey to Chicago. They will be making stops
along the way, like the one in Cumberland, to call attention to the persecution
and torture of the Falun Gong practitioners in China.
“I was especially
shocked to see students as young as our age deprived of their right to an education,”
said Hal Wong, one of the bikers. Wong is from Boston and a freshman at Yale.
The
Pedals of Peace were inspired by a young Falun Gong practitioner, Fadu, whose
father was killed for his beliefs. In 1999, the Chinese government outlawed the
practice and began a campaign of persecution that continues to this day. Now 3-year-old,
Fadu travels the world with her mother telling people about their loss.
“We
don’t know the exact number of children suffering from the persecution, but we
do know it has affected kids from 8 months to 17 years old, some of whom died
in police custody. Others have had their families torn apart,” said Ware.
Karen
Chen, a 10-year-old Falun Gong practitioner, told the gathering, “My grandmother
is also a Falun Dafa practitioner like me and she was arrested in her home last
year. The police took my granny and put her under arrest for two months not letting
anyone see her. They even took away her passport and told her she was not allowed
to come see her relatives in the United States.”
Councilman Ed Hedrick
welcomed the riders to Cumberland and told them that “our sacrifices through
history are our foundation stones for the future.”
The Pedals of Peace
group will travel north, then west from Washington through Cumberland, Pittsburgh,
Columbus and Indianapolis, arriving in Chicago on May 21. They will be greeted
by supporters who have tracked their journey on the website www.pedalsofpeace.org.
Several adults, including experienced bikers, will join the teens in their continuous,
relay-style ride.
http://www.times-news.com/articles/2004/05/16/sections/regional_news
/general/news66.txt
Posting date: 21/May/2004
Original article date:
16/May/2004
Category: Media Report
