A Country Woman's Open Letter to the International Community of Judges and Lawyers

Dear Judges and Lawyers,

I am writing to tell you about the enormous hardships my family and I have suffered and to ask you to please help us in our efforts to gain redress of these injustices. I have been deprived of the most basic human rights, including the freedom of speech, the freedom of belief, and the right to legal recourse. We have suffered from brutal persecution, both physically and mentally. I want to file a lawsuit against the chief criminal responsible for this injustice.

I was born in February 1953 and was often sick when I was young. As a result, I had to quit school after one and a half years. As an adult, because of my unhappy marriage, on two occasions I attempted to commit suicide. One time was in 1983 when I drank some pesticide. Because I had been exposed to toxic chemicals, the lining of my stomach was severely damaged. After I lost consciousness for twenty-four hours, a doctor told my family that I would not survive long even if I regained consciousness. I survived somehow but my entire body was in pain. The nerves on the left side of my body were damaged, and I also had muscular atrophy. I saw many doctors, but they all said these conditions could not be cured. I thought of committing suicide again. However, my family looked after me day and night, and I could not find any opportunity to do it.

In late December 1997, I started practising Falun Dafa. After only one week, all my pain was gone. After practising for three months, the trachea inflammation, which had tormented me since I was young, was also cured. My broken family was now happy and harmonious. As a result, many of my family members also started to practise Falun Dafa, including my husband, my twenty-year-old daughter, my thirteen-year-old son, my seventy-year-old mother, and my brother and sister-in-law.

On July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin began his campaign to persecute and defame Falun Dafa. On November 10, I went to Beijing to appeal, hoping to tell the government leaders about my personal experience, and to tell them, "Falun Dafa is good." I was arrested in Tiananmen Square. That evening, Shen Tao, a policeman from Laixi, picked me up and detained me in a detention centre in Laixi for twenty-four hours. Then the Nanlan Government officials detained me for more than twenty days. I was released three days after I began a hunger strike to protest the illegal detention.

In June 2000, my husband Zhou Hengxing also went to Beijing to appeal. He was arrested, sent back, and brutally beaten by the police. They sent him to the Nanlan Government Office, where nine Dafa practitioners were already detained. The police demanded a fine of 1,000 yuan before they could be released [note: 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly salary of an urban worker in China]. They detained my husband for more than one month. They released him eight days after he started a hunger strike to protest his illegal detention.

On December 14, 2001, when I was distributing truth-clarification materials in Shaocun Village, someone reported me to the police and I was detained for half a month. That night, because I refused to squat like they asked me to at the Shaocun Village Police Station, the police handcuffed me to the heating pipes for more than twenty hours. During my detention, the police searched my home on the evening of December 23. They confiscated all my Dafa materials, books, and tape recorders. They even took away our black and white television set.

The police arrested my husband and daughter. After detaining them in Hetoudian for one day and one night, the police held them outdoors for two or three hours in freezing temperatures. Later, they sent my husband to Laixi Prison. After detaining him for nearly one year, they sentenced him to four years at Weibei Prison and sent him there on October 22, 2002. My daughter was detained in Dashan in Qingdao City, Shandong Province for nearly ten months. She was then sentenced to five years in the Jinan Prison and sent there on August 28, 2002.

At that time, my son was fifteen years old and studying at Nanlan Middle School. On the night before my home was searched, the police woke him up. Terrified and dressed only in his nightclothes, my son shivered from the cold while the police interrogated him. The next morning, when he arrived at school, he learned that he had been suspended. When he returned home, he was shocked at seeing the mess caused by the police's search. Not knowing what to do, my son slept in a cold corner for the night.

After half a month, I was released from detention and returned home. Since then, my son and I have experienced many hardships. I went to the school many times to ask that my son be re-admitted. The person in charge told me that he had done well in school and had behaved well. Nonetheless, my son would have to write a guarantee to give up practising Falun Gong before being re-admitted to school. My son refused, and thus stayed at home for half a year. Later, forced to give up the normal path of going to high school and then college, he went to study at Diaojiabu Technical School in Laixi in June 2002.

On August 17, 2002, when fellow practitioner Hu Keling and I went to visit my daughter at Jinan Prison, the authorities interrogated us at the Jinan Train Station. The police detained us and turned us over to the Laixi Police, who took us back to our area. They detained me for two days and two nights. They sentenced Hu Keling to forced labour and sent her to Wangcun Labour Camp in Zibo City. The physical examination showed that she was in poor health. Still, the Laixi Police and the Laixi "610 Office" (1) sent her to a mental hospital, where she was persecuted for more than three months. During that time, they force-fed her and forced her to take unknown drugs. After she was released from the hospital and taken back to police custody, Hu Keling looked dull, with hardly any facial expression. She shivered all over. Her whole body was stiff, her face was swollen, and she suffered from blurred vision. She did not have her menstrual period for more than four months. After her sister pleaded for help, the police released Hu Keling on January 28, 2003.

On September 19, 2002, a "brainwashing class for determined Dafa practitioners" was held in Laixi. Two Dafa practitioners in my village, Zhou Ruie and Zhang Chunyan, were arrested. Fortunately, I was not at home at that time. It was unsafe to return home. My neighbour told me that the police were surrounding the houses of practitioners in order to arrest them. My son and I had to spend the Spring Festival at a relative's home in order to avoid arrest.

At about 8:00 p.m. on February 29, 2003, after working all day, I started to prepare dinner. Suddenly, more than ten policemen surrounded the house. They broke in and took me away. They left the front door open after my arrest. The police sent me directly to Xinzhuang Brainwashing Centre for two days and one night. Because I would not speak there, they handcuffed me to a window for eight days and eight nights. They did not allow me to use the toilet until I started a hunger strike to protest.

After returning home, I was often harassed by the authorities. When the director of the "610 Office," Wang Shouhua, saw the teachings of Falun Dafa written on my door, he ordered the Hetoudian police to arrest me. At about 7:00 a.m. on September 19, 2003, five policemen beat me, kicked me, and threw me into the police van. In their violence, they even ripped the buttons off my clothing. Because I kept speaking the truth, a policeman covered my head with a cushion. I could hardly breathe and struggled to throw off the cushion. After arriving at the police station, they slapped me in the face and poured cold water on me, soaking my socks and pants. At about 10:00 a.m., they sent me to the Laixi Detention Centre, where I was detained for half a month. My family knew I had been taken away without my shoes, so they bought shoes and sent them to the detention centre. However, the authorities fined them 100 yuan for that.

Later I learned that the local government officials had arrested five hundred practitioners in preparation for an inspection by higher officials in Qingdao.

On August 25, 2002, I went to Jinan to visit my daughter again. Seeing my daughter's thin face broke my heart. My daughter kept crying. I told my daughter through the speakerphone, "I hope you do well, are a good person wherever you are and are always considerate of other people." Before I could finish speaking, the guard fiercely warned me not to say such words. I do not know exactly what my daughter had suffered there, but from her expression, I could tell she was under heavy pressure. Although my husband has been held in Weibei Prison for such a long time, I have not been able to visit him -- I do not have the money for the trip.

In the past several years, my family members and I have been persecuted like this just for insisting on being good people according to the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance. I am sharing my personal experience with you to inform you of Jiang Zemin's illegal persecution of Falun Dafa. Jiang and his accomplices have committed heavy crimes. Falun Dafa is good. Falun Dafa is freely and openly practised and supported in more than sixty countries. Only China brutally persecutes innocent practitioners for their beliefs. It is the law of heaven that "good is repaid with good, and evil is repaid with punishment." I believe that people who support righteousness will rectify this grave injustice against Falun Dafa, and history will bring about a just verdict.

- A Falun Dafa practitioner in Laixi City, Shandong Province

People who are involved in the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in my local area:

Wang Shouhua, Director of the "610 Office" in Laixi City: 86-532-8487255 (home), 86-13963970187 (mobile).

Shen Tao, Deputy Director of the "610 Office" and Director of the Political and Security Department in Laixi City: 86-532-8483613 (office), 86-13969791597 (mobile).

(1) The "610 Office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong and has absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and the entire political and judiciary system.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/3/3/69062.html