Canadian Citizen Recalls Months of Persecution by National Security Officers While Working in Tianjin

Jiang Zemin's cohorts began persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999. Many overseas Falun Gong practitioners were persecuted when they returned to China to visit family or for work reasons. At the time I worked as a senior control engineer for a U.S. company called Invensys. We were working on what was said to be the largest foreign investment project in China, the Motorola MOS17 project in Xinqing, Tianjin City. This lasted from April 2000 to November 2001. My family and I were harassed and persecuted during that time by perpetrators from Tianjin National Security Bureau. This painful experience has lingered in my memory ever since.

In order to expose the Jiang regime's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and to help more people learn the facts about Falun Gong, I think it is only fitting for me to write down the incidents of the persecution my family and I suffered because of our belief in Falun Gong.

Around 9:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 3, 2001, a dozen people from Tianjin National Security Bureau broke into my temporary residence, room 517 of the Crystal Palace Hotel in Tianjin. Although we firmly refused to cooperate with their illegal search and strongly protested, they forcibly searched through all of our things and cut off our phone connection to the outside.

During the two-hour search, they curtailed my wife's and my freedom to move around. Our 16-month-old daughter was not able to sleep. The perpetrators frightened her greatly. Even now, she often wakes up at night and cries. The perpetrators forcibly took away Falun Gong books and materials, my personal address book, private letters, passport, credit cards, bank card, a laptop, a mobile phone and software, which my company had given me.

I told them that the laptop, mobile phone and software belong to my company. These items contained a lot of information about Invensys Building Systems and the Motorola MOS17 Project, some of which was confidential, but they ignored my warning and took them away. They photographed us and also the things that belonged to my company, which seriously encroached on our basic human rights and my company's interests.

Around 11:30 p.m. they abducted me and put me inside a car outside the hotel. Two burly men guarded the car. They put a pair of dark sunglasses on me and drove away. I could not move and couldn't see anything. About half an hour later I was taken to an undisclosed place, where perpetrators from the National Security Bureau started a 24-hour non-stop interrogation. During this time, I had no personal freedom. I was not allowed to leave the room or make phone calls, and I was watched even when I used the toilet. Sometimes I was not allowed to go to the toilet. I was not allowed to sleep and when I couldn't fight drowsiness any longer, they forced me to stand up. My foot was severely sprained and I couldn't stand up. They forced me to stand up in an attempt to make me answer their questions. I asked many times if I could call my wife but my requests were denied.

One of the perpetrators with the last name Wang seemed to be the leader; another one, surnamed Li, also seemed to be a minor person in charge. The National Security Bureau sent in a different person who seemed to have a higher rank. This person claimed he had been to Toronto and Montreal, Canada. From what he said I could tell he kept contact with infiltrators who mixed in at our practice sites. He didn't show up at the practice sites himself. Moreover, they also sent a spy from my wife's and my hometown in Liaoning Province. It appears they had planned this for a while.

For a whole 24 hours, a dozen perpetrators took turns interrogating me. They threatened me and also enticed me and used various methods in an attempt to make me reveal personal information about some Falun Gong practitioners inside and outside of China, as well as my relationship with them. They were ruthless and said, "Although you are a Canadian citizen, we are afraid of no one. If you don't give us what we want, we'll fix you." An agent from the National Security Bureau said, "I know very well about you and other Canadian Falun Gong practitioners. You don't have to tell us. I even have copies of speeches from the 2000 Montreal experience-sharing conference."

Later I remembered that I had organized practitioners' speech drafts for that conference. During this time, an individual named He Bing borrowed the speech drafts and read them, and she said she would also pass the drafts to a practitioner who was from Toronto and came to her home. Later we found out that He Bing was a spy in Montreal. She was sued in the La Presse Chinoise Eastern slander case. She has since returned to China. Now that I recall the circumstance, I think the "practitioner" who never showed up was the agent from the National Security Bureau I met in Tianjin.

Seeing that I did not believe him, the secret agent told me a lot of detailed information about other practitioners in Montreal. It's obvious that Jiang's group not only persecutes Falun Gong practitioners in China, they don't spare any efforts to persecute practitioners abroad. They invested large amounts of money, manpower and time to secretly investigate and gain personal information about overseas Falun Gong practitioners, and they even use illegal means to harass and threaten overseas Falun Gong practitioners.

These spies from the National Security Bureau also claimed, "In fact, we had our eyes on you when you first entered the country in April last year." I found out they were telling what was really happening. Some maids at the hotel were actually spies, arranged specifically to watch us. They monitored our phone calls and incoming and outgoing mails. We were under surveillance even on our trip back to my hometown in Liaoning Province. In September 2000, while in Shenyang City, my wife noticed that a stranger was always following from a distance when she went shopping and visiting her friend. She didn't take it seriously but later she learned the stranger was an agent from the National Security Bureau. We contacted fellow practitioners a few times while in China and were constantly followed during our visits. We learned all of these when these secret agents boasted of their ability to tail and monitor people.

The reason they didn't arrest me when I first arrived in China but instead waited until one month before completion of my work in China was because they had a greater conspiracy planned: they wanted me to become less vigilant and drop my guard so they could obtain more information about other Falun Gong practitioners through my contact with them, all in order to help them further persecute Falun Gong.

The interrogation lasted 24 hours. Because I was a key employee for the project, I had to go to work at 7:00 a.m. on Monday. They were afraid that other people, particularly foreigners, would learn about their means of persecution, so they released me at midnight on Sunday, November 4. They spent 24 hours searching through all my things and only returned some things that belonged to my company and some personal belongings that didn't have anything to do with Falun Gong. They kept all the rest.

Later I discovered they did something to my computer, because when I tried to contact practitioners in Canada through email, my email was blocked and the National Security Bureau monitored my mobile phone. In order to keep in touch with overseas practitioners I had to reformat my computer. My wife was also persecuted during this time. A dozen National Security Bureau officials took turns interrogating her and as a result, our 16-month-old daughter was kept away from us for a whole evening. I still don't know how much harm it did to her.

After I went home to my hotel, they began 24-hour monitoring. Although I could still go to work during the daytime and my wife could leave the hotel, we were under constant watch. The agents who watched us changed almost everyday, and sometimes they even drove to my office to monitor me. They didn't allow me to leave Tianjin City and didn't allow me to contact other people. Because the project I was working on had a tight deadline, I worked more than 60 hours a week and was tired after work. The National Security Bureau spies still phoned us everyday to harass us and forced us to talk to them and answer their questions. Sometimes they would say they wanted to be "friends." What they actually wanted was to elicit information from me when I wasn't on guard, in order to help them persecute Falun Gong inside and outside of China.

I contacted the Canadian consulate in Beijing on November 6th, using my phone at work during the day. When the National Security Bureau learned we were going to meet with the Canadian consul in Beijing, they panicked. In order to further restrict our freedom, they confiscated our passports. When the Canadian consul Mrs. Melissa Sheppard Legault learned about this, she decided to come from Beijing to meet with me in the afternoon of Friday, November 9, in Tianjin City, but the National Security Bureau decided to prevent the meeting from taking place and forcibly took me away from work to a restaurant at noon on Friday. They took away my mobile phone and cut off my connection to the outside. They not only didn't allow me to meet with the Canadian consul, they also interrogated me for nine hours straight and didn't release me until 9:00 p.m. that evening.

In the evening of November 10, due to help from the Canadian consul, the Tianjin National Security Bureau reluctantly called off the 24-hour surveillance of my wife and I, and we regained our freedom.

Because of harassment and persecution by people from the Tianjin National Security Bureau, it was very difficult for me to continue working in Tianjin. At first, my supervisor and colleagues could not believe what had happened to me. When I told them the truth they were very angry. They also sympathized with me and, although the project really needed me, my supervisor still suggested that I leave as soon as possible.

Before I left, two National Security Bureau agents with the last names Zhang and Li came to me and said they wanted to see me off, that they wanted to be my friends, and they encouraged me to come back to China, and other drivel. I said to them, "If you don't stop persecuting Falun Gong, I will not come back, nor will I be friends with you. You all know Truth-Compassion-Tolerance is good and Falun Gong practitioners are good people. Why do you so cruelly persecute them? I love my motherland China and I hope I can do something to help China become more powerful and prosperous, but when I do come back to help, I was persecuted like this only because I practise Falun Gong and for being a good person. We are very disappointed at this." They couldn't answer me. I asked them to return all my Falun Gong-related materials but they refused.

We got on a return flight to Canada on November 12, escorted by Canadian consul Mrs. Melissa Sheppard Legault. Here I want to especially thank the Canadian government, the Canadian consulate in Beijing and Mrs. Melissa Sheppard Legault, who strongly supported and helped us. I also want to thank my supervisor and colleagues at Invensys and Motorola for their sympathy, understanding and help.

What the Tianjin National Security Bureau did to us not only severely interfered with our work and life in China, our whole family suffered, physically and mentally, because of the persecution. I lost ten pounds within one week, suffered from insomnia, loss of appetite and decreased efficiency at work. Their illegal behaviour severely damaged the image of the Chinese government and people, and greatly hurt the enthusiasm of us overseas Chinese to contribute to the improvement of China.

Here, I want to solemnly warn those who are still following Jiang's group in this persecution: immediately stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. Those who persecute Dafa not only hurt others, they also bring disaster upon themselves. All perpetrators who persecute Dafa only can see immediate advantages such as promotions and monetary reward; but what goes around comes around.

I hope the National Security Bureau officials and police officers who are persecuting Falun Gong practitioners in China can tell right from wrong and don't cling to the false hope that they will be spared from just punishment.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/12/25/63182.html