Rats were king at the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco on Saturday night, as crowds of people turned out to celebrate the animal known for its witty, generous and cunning behavior. This is the third time for Falun Gong to be banned in this feast, sources from San Francisco Chronicle on February 24.
The humans watching the parade and those participating in it had to rely on their own craftiness to avoid being completely soaked during the celebration, which included more than 100 entries and 27 floats on the parade route.
The parade and festival have been mainstays of San Francisco since the 1860s. In 1958, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce began organizing the event.
This year, the five mascots of the Summer Olympics in Beijing served as the parade's grand marshal. They are called Fuwa, and represent a fish, a panda, a Tibetan antelope and a swallow - all popular animals in China. The fifth represents the Olympic flame. San Francisco will be the only city in North America to host the Olympic torch as it makes its way from Athens to China.
Retiring KTVU anchor Dennis Richmond served as the human grand marshal.
Not everyone was celebrating, however. Practitioners of Falun Gong gathered at California and Kearny streets, protesting the Chinese Chamber of Commerce's decision to bar the organization from the parade. This is the third time for Falun Gong to be banned in this feast.
The controversial spiritual group was allowed to participate in 2004, when it applied under the name Falun Dafa. On the yearly parades of Chinese New Year, Falun Gong would hold banners and hand out leaflets, turning a holiday celebration into an anti-Chinese propaganda.
Thus, the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce refused to let it take part in the parades of year 2006 and over 4000 Chinese signed their name to support it. However, Falun Gong sued the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce and its consultant Bai Lan in the highest court of San Francisco, asserting it was an extended "persecution of Chinese communists". On July 17, Judge Ronald Quidachay made a verdict listing 6 forceful reasons to affirm the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce's right to exclude Falun Gong from the parades.
But Falun Gong would not give up, it turned to the Commission on Human Rights in San Francisco. On October 31, the Executive Director Virginia Harmon rejected the litigation and announced it would not accept its appeals. Falun Gong followers went on to protest in the city hall, but nobody would care to listen to their stories.
In 2007, the court supported Chinese Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco to have excluded Falun Gong in Chinese New Year's parade. On February 7, San Francisco Superior Court ruled that followers of Falun Gong did not suffer discrimination when the group was barred from marching in a Chinese New Year Parade that received city funding. Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney sided with the city Human Rights Commission's conclusion that the Chinese Chamber of Commerce was within its rights to exclude Falun Gong. The city contributes $77,000 of the parade's more than $800,000 budget along with police protection. This year's procession, which celebrates the Year of the Pig, is scheduled for March 3 in downtown San Francisco. This is the second time that Falun Gong was refused to participate in New Year's parade since 2006 for reason that Falun Gong practitioners previously violated the parade's ban on political activity when they handed out anti-China leaflets.
(Facts.org.cn, February 25, 2008)
