United States: A Musician Mother Demonstrates the Torture Her Son Suffered in a Beijing Forced Labour Camp

On April 10, more than three thousand Falun Gong practitioners from all over the world staged a "Journey of Fa-Rectification" grand parade in Manhattan's Chinatown. The Falun Gong parade procession consisted of nine parts with different themes: "The Fa Rectifies People's Hearts," "Witness 4-25," "Broken Promise, Sudden Persecution," "Deceiving Overseas Chinese and Instigating Hatred," "Peaceful Appeal against Violence," "Voices of Justice," "Global Trial of Jiang Zemin," "Truth Clarification and Fa-Spreading All Over the World," "The Buddha Light Illuminates Everywhere and Rectifies All Abnormalities." In the parade procession, a float on which practitioners acted as real-life torture models made a deep impression on the spectators. One of the actor practitioners was Chen Ningfang.

Chen Ningfang comes from China, where she performed with the famous Central Symphony Orchestra of China for 33 years until she retired. After the persecution was launched by Jiang Zemin in 1999, she was arrested for appealing to the central government for Falun Gong. After passing through many places, she and her husband, Chen Rutang, who is also a musician of the Central Symphony Orchestra of China, came to the U.S. in October of 2000 to join their daughter Chen Ying, who works in southern New Jersey.

Ms. Chen's son, Chen Gang, was the logistic manager at the Carlsberg Brewery in Beijing. Mrs. Chen said, "At midnight on June 25, 2000, a dozen policemen broke into our home and arrested me and my son without any explanation. I was detained for 30 days and my son was sent to the notorious Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp, located in a suburb of Beijing, where he experienced the darkest 18 months of his life. I was so worried about him. I knew that the Jiang regime would do anything to achieve its goal."

Ms. Chen said that she witnessed practitioners who were handcuffed and shackled, and the handcuffs and shackles were connected with a short (about one foot or so) iron chain. As a result, they had to walk, eat and sleep with their bodies bowed.

"In order to force my son to give up his belief, the policemen applied many cruel tortures on him. They only allowed him to sleep 2 to 4 hours a day. Once they deprived him of sleep for 15 days. Whenever he closed his eyes, they would kick him and punch him.

"The policemen also used several high voltage electric batons to shock him on sensitive places such as his head, neck and chest. The skin was burned and his whole body convulsed from the electric shock. His entire body felt like he was on fire or being bitten by snakes. Once the policeman directed over ten criminal inmates to beat him up until his face was unrecognizable. After they beat him up, they tied his legs and feet tightly, and his arms were tied behind his back. Then the criminal inmates tied his neck so tightly to his legs that it almost suffocated him. After they tied him up, they shoved him under a wooden bed and had more and more people sit on top to press down his back. He felt his bones close to breaking. After this torture, he couldn't walk for two weeks. Another practitioner Lu Changjun suffered the same torture and became paralyzed.

"My son experienced this simply because he practiced Falun Gong, an exercise which brought him good health, a happy life, and taught him to be a good person, and because he persisted in his belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance."

With help from many kind-hearted people and governmental officials, Chen Gang and his wife eventually managed to come to the U.S. on July 18, 2003. The family of 5 at last reunited on the other side of the earth. Since he came to the U.S., Chen Gang has gone to many places to testify about the suffering of Falun Gong practitioners with his personal experiences. Recently, he flew to Geneva to testify at the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission.

"Without overseas rescue efforts, my family wouldn't have been able to reunite. Because of such efforts, many kind-hearted people learned about and then came to understand and support my family, and eventually secured the release of Chen Gang." Ms. Chen said, "However, there are still so many broken families and so many people cannot go home because of the persecution."

When asked why she wanted to act as a torture model, she said: "All that we currently are doing is to end this persecution so that all broken families can be reunited and millions of Falun Gong practitioners could have the right to practice and other fundamental human rights."

From July 1999 to April 10, 2004, at least 936 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death. The death cases are spread among more than 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the jurisdiction of the Central Government. According to news from Clearwisdom.net, up to April 12, 2004, the provinces with the most death cases are, in order: Heilongjiang, Jilin, Shandong, Liaoning, Hebei, Hubei and Sichuan. Among the people who have died, women make up about 52%, elders from 50 to 70 years of age make up about 31%.

Throughout China, it is reported that at least 6000 Falun Gong practitioners have been illegally sentenced to prison terms, and over 100,000 have been sent to forced labour camps. Thousands of practitioners have been forcibly sent to psychiatric hospitals to be tortured with injections that are damaging to the central nervous system. Large groups of Falun Gong practitioners have been forcibly sent to local brainwashing centres, where they have been subjected to both physical and mental torture. Many more practitioners have been severely beaten and had large sums of money extorted from them by the police. Falun Gong practitioners who have been illegally arrested, regardless of their age and gender, in general have been subjected to torture such as beatings and being handcuffed or shackled for extended periods in police stations and labour camps.