An Appeal from a 65-Year-Old Mother

Greetings!

My name is Wang Guizhen. I am 65 years old and have retired from working at a factory in Chenzhou City, Hunan Province. My husband and I started practising Falun Gong in 1994 and we have both benefited much from it. The headaches that had plagued me for years went away, while my husband's nephroptosis and haemorrhoids were cured.

In a few short years after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999, my family was torn apart. My husband passed away, my daughter-in-law is still detained and being tortured in the Hunan Province Women's Prison, and my son has left home.

Because I went to appeal for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in 2000, I was sentenced to one and a half years of forced labour and detained at Baimalong Women's Forced Labour Camp in Zhuzhou City, Hunan. During my detention, my husband, in his 60s, was arrested and taken to Chenzhou City Detention Centre. There, he was threatened and tortured with cold water poured over him during the cold winter days. After his release, his health deteriorated daily and the local police harassed him relentlessly. He became depressed and passed away in 2005.

Luo Juan (also known as Luo Ting), my daughter-in-law, started to practise Falun Gong after she witnessed the miraculous recovery of one of her relatives. At that time, Luo Juan was in her 20s and worked for Chenzhou City Sanitation Bureau. During the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) period in 2003, one of her relatives suffered from tuberculosis and was diagnosed as terminally ill by the No. 1 People's Hospital of Chenzhou. She witnessed her relative's full recovery from the illness after practising Falun Gong for only two weeks.

My son, Cui Junwu, doesn't practise Falun Gong but is supportive of it. He is kindhearted and has deep respect and love for his parents. Our whole family received many benefits from practising Falun Gong and enjoyed a healthy and happy life before the persecution began.

Personnel from the Changde City 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) arrested practitioner Yuan Donglan, who was renting a home next to my son, in August 2007. They also broke into my son's home; ransacked it; arrested him and his wife; and confiscated their passports, materials exposing the persecution of Falun Gong, printers, computers, bank cards, a camera, and other personal items.

My daughter-in-law tried to escape arrest, but ended up hitting the police car. She was then taken to the hospital, where she managed to escape police custody. After that, she was forced to become destitute. My son was taken to Chenzhou City Detention Centre and detained for six months. During interrogations, he was handcuffed and hung up for three days. The handcuffs cut into his flesh and a scar is visible to this day. He was only released after paying a fine of over a hundred thousand yuan. As a result of the persecution, he lost the opportunity to study abroad and was put under police surveillance for three years.

My daughter-in-law was arrested on February 16th, 2010, in a hotel in Kunming City. She was then taken to Chenzhou City Detention Centre. There, she went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. As a result, she was cuffed to a bed, brutally force-fed, and injected with unknown drugs until she was near death. When she lost consciousness, the guards pressed hard on an acupuncture point below her nose for more than 20 minutes until she regained consciousness. The inmates all cried in sympathy at what was happening to her.

Still, the authorities at the Chenzhou 610 Office ordered the Beihu District Court judge and the Procuratorate to sentence her to six years in prison on May 17th, 2010. She was transferred to Changcha City Women's Prison.

My son went to the prison many times to try to visit her but was always turned away by the prison authorities. Under intense pressure and faced with a broken family, he could no longer deal with the situation and wanted to get a divorce to end his suffering. He then used the excuse of getting a divorce to see his wife in November. When they saw each other, both my son and his wife sobbed. Luo Juan didn't dare to tell my son about the torture she was enduring because the phone lines were tapped. Instead, she turned sideways so that he could see the bruises on her face.

My son was distraught and cried non stop after seeing his wife that day. He hit his head with a beer bottle and said, “I can't see how we can survive.” He later left home without telling anyone.

My daughter-in-law, Luo Juan, is still being tortured. Every day she is deprived of sleep, forced to stand for long periods of time, forced to do labour, and beaten. Her legs and feet are so swollen that she can't squat down to use the restroom. Sometimes she'll lose consciousness several times a day.

The prison authorities called her parents on November 19th to tell them to talk to her about dividing up the properties for the divorce. Her father and I went to see her at the prison. She looked extremely frail and emaciated. She begged her father not to talk about the divorce or dividing up the properties. She then told me, “Mum, it is hell in this prison. I have had enough. I will probably have to give in to the authorities.” I can only imagine what she has been enduring. I felt such grief that my heart aches for her.

Wang Guizhen

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/12/17/33775.html