More than 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York, on April 25 to mark the 27th anniversary of a peaceful protest in China—an event whose impact continues to be felt today.
He Ai-shan was among the more than 10,000 practitioners who went to Beijing on April 25, 1999, and attended Saturday’s parade and rally in Flushing. Speaking at the rally, she recalled joining the protest as a 19-year-old college student, alongside two classmates.
Studying in Beijing at the time, He said she and her classmates bicycled to a street next to Zhongnanhai, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) leadership compound. They arrived at around 8 a.m. local time, by which point a large group of practitioners had already gathered, she added….