Ten years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, 10,000 Falun gong practitioners gathered outside China’s central leadership compound in Beijing. They had come to appeal at China’s central appeals office — to appeal for practitioners who had been wrongfully arrested in the city of Tianjin, for their books, which had been banned, and for practitioners all over the country who were being harassed and investigated by the police.

They were met by then-Chinese Premier Zhu and the arrested practitioners were released. It seemed like the appeal had been successful. But in reality, time was running out, and the brutal crackdown was getting closer and closer.