United States: Dr. Huang Appeals from America “Help Find My Brother Huang Xiong”

Huang Xiong

I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to more people in the world to pay close attention to the situation of millions of Falun Gong practitioners in prisons and labour camps in China. One of them is my brother. I appeal to people everywhere to help me find my younger brother, and help end this persecution in which tens of millions of practitioners suffer daily. I ask public security officials and government officials in China to treat Falun Gong practitioners well, and in doing so secure a better future for themselves.

It has been almost a year since my younger brother disappeared in China.

My younger brother's name is Huang Xiong. He was born in 1978, and he is about 5 feet 4 inches in height. He has a college degree with a major in computer science, and he used to live in Furong Township, Wan An County, a small mountainous county in Jiangxi Province, China. In 1996, after I learned Falun Gong, I brought this great practice to my hometown. Many of my friends and family, including my younger brother, learned it and benefited from it. However, since the persecution of Falun Gong started in 1999, my younger brother has been without a home. He was put in labour camp for 2 years, and after that he had to remain homeless in order to avoid further persecution. All this suffering, simply for his belief in "Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance"! It has been 8 months since I last heard from him, in April of 2003. It feels as if he has simply vanished from this earth.

At the time that the persecution of Falun Gong started in 1999, my younger brother was being trained at a computer-learning centre in Beijing. On July 21, 1999, he and many others went to the government appeals office to appeal and tell them that Falun Gong is good. Due to this, my younger brother was arrested in February 2000 in Beijing, and was sentenced to two years in a forced labour camp in Jian, Jiangxi Province. Appealing is a citizen's right, guaranteed by China's Constitution, yet the first charge in his sentencing document stated that, "Huang Xiong participated in a public appeal in Zhongnanhai, Beijing, on July 21, 1999." Even the emails that he sent became charges against him.

In the summer of 2001, after almost one and a half years of imprisonment, he was finally allowed to go home on bail. He still had to hand in "Thought Reports" to the local police often, and accept their brainwashing tactics, so his personal freedom was restricted. Since he did not want to give up his belief in "Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance," and his pursuit of rationality and justice, he had to leave his home and start a two-year journey of homelessness. In the process, he clarified the facts of the persecution to other Chinese people. He went many places, met many people, told many about the truth of Falun Gong, and highlighted to people that Falun Gong teaches benevolence. His efforts led many people to know the truth, but it also caused the police to pursue him, and so he had to constantly stay on the move. Despite this, he never stopped telling people about the truth of the persecution of Falun Gong. I became the only person who was regularly in touch with him, although I was in the U.S., and he stayed in China.

The last time he and I made contact was on April 19, 2003. Since then, I have not heard a single word from him, not had a single sign, and none of his friends and relatives know his whereabouts. He seems to have simply "evaporated." The police department in my home province of Jiangxi also has no information about him.

My guess is that he must have been arrested. Otherwise, he would surely contact me! I am the only relative that he can contact, since he is afraid that if he contacts his friends and relatives in China, they will also be persecuted.

All my brother did was to tell people that Falun Dafa is good, and that there is nothing wrong with becoming a good person and following "Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance." What he was doing was courageous, conscious, and just.

Xiong has always had a kind heart towards others. When he was little, he once went to shop for groceries with grandma, and he felt that grandma had bargained too effectively. On their way back home, he insisted that grandma pay some more money to the peasant who sold them the vegetables. He felt compassion for the peasant, and felt that the peasant should not have been taken advantage of. Yet there is no place for him, for such a good person who simply tells the truth and upholds his beliefs, in the land of China.

The public security staff in China also "investigated" me, although I am outside of the country. Some government officials in my hometown told me that other officials from higher levels have even investigated the history of my father's grandparents. My college classmates also told me that after 1999, some state security officials went to my college and asked them about me. When my younger brother was arrested for the first time, my relatives said that I was black-listed by government officials in Beijing. They warned me not to come back, and said that I would be arrested at customs if I should try to return. My brother once said that the officials would beat you up once they arrest you.

One night last April, on the day that I lost contact with my brother, I had a clear dream of him being brutally beaten by police, to the point that he simply could not stand it any further. Can you imagine what kind of a feeling that is? Many people do not understand why Falun Gong practitioners go and appeal their cases. What I want to tell them is that we humans are not unfeeling beings. Aren't we moved when our families are affected? It is a person's moral obligation to stand up and speak out when his parents, brothers and sisters, or wife and kids are treated unfairly, when they are bullied, raped and tortured to death. Since the persecution started in 1999, according to the Falun Dafa Information Centre, there is documented evidence of at least 881 Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted to death. This simply should not be tolerated any longer.

My brother is quite young and thin, and I do not know how these vicious people have been treating him. I believe that in the end, justice will prevail, and that no wrongdoers will escape. I'm determined to seek justice for my younger brother. Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan, among those who are responsible for the persecution, have been sued overseas for their crimes. I believe that justice will eventually prevail for Falun Gong practitioners and their families.

Along with my brother, some of my former classmates are also Falun Gong practitioners. Some of them have been forced to leave home to avoid persecution, and others have been imprisoned. One of those incarcerated is Mr. Wang Bin, who was my classmate at South Central Industrial University in Changsha City, Hunan Province. He is said to be jailed at Lufeng Detention Centre, part of Changsha Prison, Hunan Province, located at 133 Cheng Nan Dong Lu, Zhuojiatang, Changsha City. He was a doctoral candidate at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, and was arrested in March 2001 while on his way to the office of the Process Engineering Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science to get his degree certificate. Though he did nothing wrong, he was later sentenced to three years in a labour camp. I have many other friends that attended the Chinese Academy of Science who are also Falun Gong practitioners. Many of them have doctoral or master's degrees, or are graduate students, such as Mr. and Mrs. Cao Kai, and Mr. Zhang Yong. During this holiday season, I do not even have their addresses to send them greeting cards. Because of Jiang Zemin's persecution against Falun Gong, they have all become homeless, with no one knowing their whereabouts. There are also situations such as that of Mr. Sam Lu, who lives near me in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. His wife Ms. Zhou Xuefei has been detained at Sanshui Women's Labour Camp in Guangdong Province for more than three years. Although she was released in January 2004, Ms. Zhou is still under surveillance at home. She hopes to join her husband in the U.S., but there are many obstacles in their path to reunite with each other.

Jiang's Regime also tries to force Falun Gong practitioners who have gone back to China to visit their friends and relatives to become their agents. In an effort to extend the persecution of Falun Gong outside of China, they threaten to harm practitioners' friends and relatives in China, trying to force overseas practitioners to provide officials with information on overseas Falun Gong activities. These schemes have been exposed, and the public has come to know the officials' bad deeds. As a result, the attempt to persecute Falun Gong practitioners outside of China has completely failed.

I would like to again take this opportunity to appeal to more people in the world to pay close attention to the situations of millions of Falun Gong practitioners in prisons and labour camps in China, like my brother. I appeal to people everywhere to help me find my younger brother, and help end this persecution in which tens of millions of practitioners suffer daily. I ask public security officials and government officials in China to treat Falun Gong practitioners well, and in doing so, secure a better future for themselves.

Thank You!

Dr. Huang Wanqing