A group of Falun Gong practitioners arrived in Steinbach Monday around noon in front of Steinbach City Hall to protest and inform Canadians of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Spokesperson Paula Liu says Falun Gong is "a spiritual discipline steeply rooted in the Chinese traditional culture. It's based on the values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. We base all our actions and all we do on these values and we are an individual group from the Communist party."

Liu adds the persecution started in 1999 when the Communist party felt they could no longer control the group of Falun Gong practitioners and sought to eradicate them instead. For the past two weeks Liu, along with a group of fellow Falun Gong practitioners have been travelling to cities and towns in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba with the goal of visiting over 250 cities in Canada to tell Canadians about the forced organ harvesting in China to those of the Falun Gong practice.

"Our end goal is to, hopefully, stop the persecution of Falun Gong," says Liu. "We want to be able to stop the organ harvesting that's going on in China right now. We also want to be able to prosecute Jiang Zemin who is the sole initiator of the organ harvesting as well as the persecution of Falun Gong and we want to deliver him to justice."

She says there are currently more than 200,000 people in China who have filed a criminal complaint against Zemin. Liu adds they visited Steinbach because they wanted to relay the message to as many people as possible.