Sai and other riders protest China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: On June 1, a team of young cyclists from around the world embarked on a transcontinental journey to raise awareness for and rescue five orphans in China targeted for persecution, simply for following the spiritual practice of Falun Gong.
Among the riders who pedaled 3,000 miles from Los Angeles, California to Washington D.C. — where they met with national leaders and addressed the U.N. General Assembly — was Aishwarya Sai, an 18-year-old undergraduate from Hyderabad, India.
All of the young cyclists practice Falun Gong in their respective home countries freely, but unfortunately in China they cannot.
Some of the riders on the team have relatives who have been coldly persecuted for their theological beliefs. According to an open letter written by team leader Annie Chen, 19, to President Barack Obama, one cyclist’s grandmother was “tortured until she was blind and deaf,” while the mother of a different teenager was jailed for a year-and-half when he was just one-year-old.
Per the Ride to Freedom website, hundreds of Chinese children are being taken from their homes. Like millions of others, they could be arrested without legal cause, sentenced to abusive discipline, and even tortured to death.
The persecution of Falun Gong has left many displaced, sent to labor camps, or targeted for forced organ harvesting. Along with the verified, but vastly underreported, death toll of over 3,000 Falun Gong practitioners, it is estimated by independent journalist Ethan Gutman in his book “The Slaughter,” that 65,000 practitioners have lost their lives due to forced organ harvesting.
A Human Rights in China (HRIC) analysis of the plight of Falun Gong practitioners in China once noted, “Persecuting children on the basis of their or their parents’ beliefs is a fundamental violation of the rights of the child under international law.”
The peaceful practice of Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese cultivation practice, “guided guided by the characteristics of the universe — Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. The practice was first introduced by Li Hongzhi in 1992.
Per Ride to Freedom, “Cultivation” means continuously striving to better harmonize oneself with these universal principles. “Practice” refers to the exercises – five sets of easy-to-learn gentle movements and meditation. Since the advent of Falun Gong, it has spread to be practiced in more than 70 countries by people of all ages, from all different walks of life, and different cultural backgrounds.