Ireland: Speech from Weekend Activities to Expose Jiang’s Crimes – The Persecution of Females

Violence against women has been systematically used by the Chinese regime to persecute dissidents, religious persons, and other nonconformists, often for no other reason than to maintain the presence of terror. This practise by the Chinese government has long been noted and condemned by international human rights organisations.

In the persecution of Falun Gong, the Chinese government’s violence against women has reached an extreme, in terms of cruelty. Police brutality against women is so rampant that very few of the hundreds of thousands of detained female Falun Gong practitioners have been spared from some form of violations, such as the humiliation of being stripped naked (sometimes for extended periods), the denial of sanitary napkins, sexual humiliation , or beating and kicking to breasts and genitals. In more severe cases, female practitioners were raped or gang raped by police, shocked by electric batons inserted into the vagina, or were stripped naked and thrown into the male criminal jail cells. One woman, who has survived these grotesque tortures said, ”One cannot imagine the sinister nature of the police”.

I have chosen just three cases to tell you about today. These are among the most heinous and horrific acts of violence and cruelty towards women anywhere in history.

Yu Lixin, 36, holds a Bachelor’s degree, a former communist party member, and an employee of Jilin City workers union. In May 2001, she was arrested for practising Falun Gong and sentenced to 5 years in jail. She went on hunger strike three times to protest against the persecution.

Later she was sent to a Police Central hospital. When her relatives visited her, she was handcuffed, shackled and chained to the bed. Her hands and feet were stretched out and chained to each corner of the bed. She was naked except for a tee shirt. An intravenous drip was attached to her foot and a feeding tubehad been inserted into her stomach through her nose. She was forbidden to move and had to urinate and defecate in the bed.When she couldn’t urinate they would insert a catheter into her bladder. Though she was unable to move she was under 24-hour surveillance.

Ms Wang Lixuan aged 27 was the mother of an eight-month-old son Meng Hao. Both were tortured to death on November 7 2000. When her family received the death notices and came to claim their bodies, the found the frozen corpses of Lixuan and her baby son. The coroners examination stated the mother’s neck and knucklebone broken, her skull was sunken and there was a needle stuck in her torso. There were two deep bruises on her baby son’s ankles, two black and blue marks on his head and blood in his nose. He had wounds all over his little body. The death certificates stated, “suicide” as the cause of
death.

In October 1999, several female practitioners were detained in one of the City Detention Centres. One of the practitioners was stripped and thrown into the male criminal cells. She was then gang raped by the male prisoners. She is currently being guarded by her family. They fear more inhumane treatment if they were to make public what happened.

Government forced Abortion is also an approved torture for female practitioners of Falun Gong. Because Chinese law forbids pregnant women to be incarcerated, an injection to induce abortion is common. Sometimes these babies are born alive and nothing is heard again. In China a permit to give birth is needed to have a child. In some cases the government can revoke the permit and force the mother to have an abortion.

A female Falun Gong practitioner’s husband and family can have government pressure put on them to Divorce or disown their wives and mothers. This is very common.

To conclude I would like to read part of the last paragraph in this letter. We are writing to you to ask for your help. We are asking you to uphold justice, help stop the vicious persecution, and protect the basic human rights of women everywhere and especially in China at this critical time in history. We ask this not only for ourselves and not only for our own people—we ask this for all of the women in the world and for all humankind! To allow this evil to exist is not only a humiliation to the Chinese people, it is also a humiliation to the whole human race, and even more so to the future development of human civilisation.