(Minghui.org) Organizers of the 2018 Gold Coast Multicultural Festival once again welcomed the Falun Dafa group to present at the annual event in Queensland, Australia.

The event is funded by Gold Coast City Council and attracts 20,000 locals and visitors each year to the touristic Southport Broadwater Parklands.

Practitioners set up a booth and demonstrated the exercises. Many people who watched the peaceful movements said they wanted to learn. Others stopped to sign a petition calling for an end to the communist regime's persecution of the practice in China.

Queensland MP Sam O'Connor

Queensland Police liaison

The incumbent Queensland Member of Parliament for Bonney, Sam O’Connor, stopped at the Falun Dafa booth to pose for a photo and show his continued support. MP O’Connor has supported practitioners’ efforts on many occasions and this time was keen to hear how he could help practitioners more in his local area. He invited practitioners to another upcoming multicultural event being organized in his electorate.

Two community liaison officers from the Queensland Police Service also visited the Falun Dafa booth, and were glad to see that the practitioners had returned to the festival this year. They took Falun Dafa fliers and signed the petition.

Several Chinese people stopped at the booth. Many of them were surprised to hear that 300 million people had withdrawn their memberships in the Chinese Communist Party organizations. They took the opportunity to declare their withdrawals from the CCP too, condemning its crimes against the Chinese people.

Friends of Falun Gong

Several elderly friends and family members of a practitioner visited the booth, received the latest Falun Dafa brochures, signed the petition, and posed for a group photo to show their support. Some of them commented on how wonderful the practice looked, and after seeing the exercises wanted to learn. They arranged for practitioners to teach them at their retirement village.

A specialist doctor from Melbourne said she had learned about Falun Dafa and the organ harvesting crimes targeting these prisoners of conscience in Mainland China. She signed the petition and practitioners told her about the Chinese regime’s “soft power” influence through the Confucius Institutes in Australian schools and universities. She promised to check out independent documentary films like “Hard to Believe” and “In the Name of Confucius.”

Garry stopped to read a display board showing the five sets of Falun Dafa exercises. He was impressed to hear one practitioner describe how he fully recovered from a knee injury caused by practicing judo martial arts, and the positive effect the exercises have had on his wife’s ongoing recovery from a chronic heart condition. Garry said he would read the information and find out more about the benefits of practicing Falun Dafa.

On-stage exercise demonstration

Event organizers also invited the practitioners to demonstrate the Falun Dafa exercises on the festival stage. At first there were not many people in the audience, but as practitioners began showing the various exercise sets, quite a large crowd gathered. Some of them visited the Falun Dafa booth afterwards to find out how they can learn the practice.