OTTAWA — The exiled founder of the Falun Gong movement made a surprise visit to an Ottawa festival where he addressed North American practitioners of the meditation movement.
Li Hongzhi arrived unannounced Saturday afternoon for the festival put on by Falun Dafa — another name for the group — and delivered a 20-minute speech in Mandarin, organizers said.
Li, who moved from China to the United States, has made only a few public appearances since Beijing banned the meditation movement in July 1999.
“I heard Master Li was coming one minute before he arrived,” said Grace Wollensak, an Ottawa practitioner of Falun Gong. “We didn’t know he would be here, not at all.”
Organizers said nearly 1,000 people attended the weeklong festival, which included a demonstration of meditative exercises on the lawn in front of Canada’s Parliament buildings.
In the speech, Li focused on his spiritual teachings, Wollensak said, but also said that Falun Gong members were facing “vicious persecution.”
Falun Gong attracted millions in the 1990s with its mix of traditional Chinese religion, health exercises and the teachings of Li, a former government grain clerk.
Hundreds of the group’s followers have been thrown in jail. Others have been tortured or sent to labor camps.
China says the movement is an evil cult, accusing it of killing some 1,600 followers by driving them insane or telling them to reject medical help.
