Falun Gong Practitioner Zhao Xianghai from Xiangtan City Wrongly Detained in a Psychiatric Hospital, His Mother Calls for Help

Name: Zhao Xianghai
Gender: Male
Age: 42
Address: Unknown
Occupation: Crane Driver for the Coal Preparation Section of the Xiangtan City Steel Company Coking Plant
Date of Most Recent Arrest: August 2007
Most Recent Place of Detention: Xiangtan Municipal Number Five People's Hospital (Mental Hospital)
City: Xiangtan
Province: Hunan
Persecution Suffered: Forced injections/drug administration, torture, physical restraint, wrongful detention in a psychiatric hospital

Mr. Zhao Xianghai was a crane driver for the coal preparation section of the Xiangtan City Steel Company Coking Plant. However, because he practises Falun Gong, he was held and tormented in a psychiatric hospital by the Xiangtan 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) and officials from his workplace for five years. When he was picked up he was very healthy, but now he has become extremely feeble. When his elderly mother went to the hospital to visit him, she was attacked by the hospital staff, who also searched her. Mr. Zhao's mother, her plea below, is seeking help from the international community.

A healthy person is detained in a psychiatric hospital

My name is Li Aihua. I call on your to help stop the injustice being done to my family. My son, Zhao Xianghai, was born in Baijia Town, Liuyang City, in 1970. He was a crane operator for Xiangtan City Steel Company. He started to practise Falun Gong in 1998. He has benefited greatly in both body and mind and became healthy. He became a better person and became kind, honest, and tolerant.

After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, my son wanted to dispel the lies the CCP was spreading and tell them his personal story of cultivation, so he went to appeal in Beijing in 2000. Unfortunately, he was arrested on Jinshui Bridge in Tiananmen Square and taken to Xiangtan City Detention Centre. In the detention centre, he started a hunger strike to resist the persecution. After a few days, he lost consciousness and was sent to hospital. After he came to, he managed to escape. After spending a period of time out of town, he went to appeal again. This time, he was sentenced to one year of forced labour and was fired from his job.

Xianghai went to work in Guangzhou in 2006. When he was on the train, the police saw him reading Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Gong. He was arrested again and sentenced to one and a half years in Xinkaipu Forced Labour Camp in Changsha City. After just 10 months in the labour camp, his health severely deteriorated. He was so weak and thin that he was only skin and bones.

On August 6th, 2007, the Xiangtan City 610 Office told the Xianggan Police Department and Xianggan Coking Plant to apply for a medical parole for Xianghai. At that time, I was hospitalized, so they took my son to Xiangtan City Psychiatric Hospital because “there was no one at home.” Despite his fragile physical condition, the nurses gave him electric shocks and force-fed and injected him with unknown drugs. In his struggle to resist such inhumane treatment he jumped out of the hospital from the second floor and broke both his legs. As he walked to the road in severe pain, he was captured and taken back to the hospital. The doctors were afraid that he would escape and expose the horrific abuse he had been subjected to, so they handcuffed and fettered him. He has been detained there for five years.

Mother in her 70s seeks justice for her son and is met with abuse

I'm already in my 70s. I've travelled thousands of kilometres to visit my son several times. But the nurses will not allow me to see him. I went from Liuyang to visit my son on December 19th, 2011. Again the nurse refused to let me see him. One of the nurses began verbally abusing me and shouted that Zhao Xianghai was special and no one was allowed to visit him because he practised Falun Gong, as well as other terrible things, and they threw the food I brought on the ground. The moment the nurses opened the door, I snuck in and saw that my son's room was locked. I called out to him and he walked toward me. But the nurse stopped him, and then they dragged me out. On March 30th, 2012, I went to visit him again, but the nurses surrounded me and forcibly searched me.

I've gone to my son's employer several times to request his release, but the hospital told me I had to pay a 38,000-yuan¹ “medical fee” for that to happen. This is a huge amount of money for someone from a rural area like me. My family has now become penniless since my son was unjustifiably fired and persecuted.

Call for help

The persecution is so cruel and intense that the healthiest and most mentally stable person could be driven into mental illness, and my son Zhao Xianghai could really become mentally ill anytime because of the torture. I cannot endure this any longer. Such crimes must be stopped. I call on anyone and everyone to help. Please help us rescue my innocent son from the psychiatric hospital!

Contact information:
Social Stability Office of Xiangtan City Steel Company: +86-731-58652016
Long Quansheng, doctor-in-charge of Xiangtan City Psychiatric Hospital

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.