Pictures laid across the Free Speech Zone on campus to show a different way of life for people in China and what happens to them when they choose to live a way the government disapproves of.

Margaret Jiang, president of Falun Dafa at Iowa State, said they put on a silent demonstration to show people pictures of the persecution of practitioners of Falun Dafa in China.

“The persecution is increasing in China, it has doubled in the last six months,” Jiang said.

Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science, said the government of China has been arresting people for practicing Falun Dafa.

“The Chinese government has never been supportive of religion because they are a communist government,” Schmidt said.

Jiang said there are currently 17 million people practicing Falun Dafa.

She said there are more practitioners of the religion than there are people in the Communist Party of China.

“The situation in China is different [from the United States],” Jiang said. “They do not like people who have a different ideology.”

Jiang said the Chinese government believes the Falun Dafa is political, but she said that is not true.

“There is no political agenda behind the Falun Dafa,” Jiang said.

“They just want to have good health and be good people.”

She said some countries across the world are helping the practitioners of Falun Dafa survive in China, where the way of life originated.

Schmidt said communist governments have always been opposed to religion. The Falun Dafa holding open rituals and meetings has caused problems for the Chinese government.

“The Chinese government does not consider the Falun Dafa to be a religion, but a religious cult or sect,” Schmidt said.

Jiang said a positive example is the country of Canada, who has influenced the Chinese government to save two of the practitioners’ lives.

“We believe as we get more support the situation can change in China,” Jiang said.

She said they do not want any more of the practitioners to die needlessly.

“We want to show the human rights violations by the Chinese government and save the practitioners,” Jiang said.

Jiang said there are currently 15 females practitioners who were sentenced to death in labor camps and the Chinese government tried to block the information from getting out to the rest of the world.

She said Friday’s demonstration was an effort to show people what happens to those who disagree with the Chinese government.

“We are planning to travel around the state of Iowa to call for help for the practitioners,” Jiang said.

They are part of a national campaign called SOS to rescue the practitioners, she said.

The national campaign will be marching to Washington, D.C., July 19. The day will mark two years of persecution of practitioners in China.

Schmidt said this has created an interesting struggle because the Falun Dafa has a large following worldwide on the Internet and the Chinese government has tried to hack into the programs to find out who the people behind the Web site are.

“The Chinese government is very aggressively after the Falun Dafa,” he said.

Schmidt said there are ways other countries are trying to pursue China into abiding by worldwide human rights standards.

“Countries can tell China if you want to do business with our country, your country will have to accept certain standards or you will not get very far with us,” Schmidt said.

There will be another demonstration Friday for people to learn about the Falun Dafa situation.