The Epoch Times has documented Chinese Communist Party-linked violence against Falun Gong practitioners in New York since at least 2008.
NEW YORK CITY—An Asian man attacked multiple Falun Gong practitioners during a parade for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival holiday in Brooklyn’s Chinatown neighborhood on Sept. 14, according to witnesses.
The parade was organized by the Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP, a New York-based organization that helps Chinese people renounce their ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Since its launch in late 2004, the group’s volunteers around the world and in mainland China have helped more than 435 million Chinese people quit the CCP.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual meditation practice that teaches the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. Official estimates put the number of practitioners in China at 70 million to 100 million in 1999, when the CCP launched a whole-of-state operation to “eradicate” Falun Gong.
Today, the CCP still targets Falun Gong for persecution, and those efforts extend overseas. The Epoch Times has documented several similar attacks on Falun Gong practitioners by pro-CCP assailants, but the Sept. 14 incident is the first documented in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn Attacker
Around 12:45 p.m., a man wearing a light-colored shirt rushed from the sidewalk into the street where Falun Gong practitioners were participating in the Mid-Autumn Parade.
According to a witness, the man spat on one woman holding a Falun Gong banner before a male practitioner wearing a bright crossing guard vest ran up to him, putting himself between the woman and the attacker.
Wang Lirong, a parade coordinator and the second victim of the attack, saw this happening before the attacker moved toward her. When the man caught up to her, he punched her multiple times from behind, she said.
Wang was walking alongside the parade wearing a yellow jacket and a bag with the words “Falun Dafa” on them.
“It happened suddenly,” Wang told The Epoch Times. “He suddenly pounded on me and hit my head with his fist. I instinctively tried to move back, and he hit me on the right shoulder, and I was almost knocked down.”
By Eva Fu and Catherine Yang
