Mr. Tan Zhiqiang is a Falun Dafa practitioner who was laid off from the Jiangnan Machinery Factory in Xiangtan City, Hunan Province. His wife, Ms. Xu Li, also a practitioner, used to be a high school teacher. She went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and was arrested in January 2001. She managed to escape, but since then she has been forced to leave home to avoid being arrested again. On February 20, 2004, between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m., Mr. Tan and his wife Ms. Xu delivered some computer equipment worth over 20,000 yuan (1) to the second floor of the Shabei Bureau of Commodities Building, in the rain. The light on the second floor was on when they arrived. Mr. Tan went up first while his wife waited downstairs. What they did not know was that the police were waiting for them. When Mr. Tan did not return after a while, Xu Li felt that something was not right and was getting ready to leave. Suddenly a plain-clothed policeman, Huang Jinqi, grabbed her, knocked her to the ground and started beating her. Xu Li shouted, "Falun Dafa is Good!" Curious onlookers surrounded them, so Ms. Xu used the opportunity to clarify the facts about Falun Dafa. The police were so afraid of being exposed that they drove the people away. Because Xu Li was struggling against the illegal arrest with all her strength, she was covered with mud and soaking wet. When she saw her husband again, Mr. Tan had been badly beaten by the police and his face was covered with blood.
On that day, their seven-month-old son was sleeping when they left home. [Mr. Tan and Ms. Xu only planned to be gone from home for a short while. However, the illegal actions of the police prevented their returning home to care for the child.]
Mr. Tan and Ms. Xu were taken to Zhoukou Detention Centre.
On the morning of February 22, policeman Huang Jinqi visited Ms. Xu at the detention centre. She requested to see her son so that she could breast-feed him. It had been two days since she had fed her son. Huang told her that the baby was already being fed and she would not be allowed to see the baby unless she renounced Falun Dafa. In the afternoon, Ms. Xu again demanded to see her child, but Huang insisted on denying the request because she refused to renounce Falun Dafa.
In the afternoon of February 23, the detention centre suddenly released Ms. Xu, citing that she was breast-feeding. Huang Jinqi drove Ms. Xu to the Taikang County Police Department. Around 10:00 p.m. that evening, Ms. Xu was taken to the County Hospital, escorted by Feng Jinlin from the County Police Department and Yu from the Education Department of Chengguan County. At the hospital, Ms. Xu was met by her mother, whom she had not seen for three years. The old lady held her daughter in her arms and cried, "What happened to you? The child's buttocks are festering terribly." When Xu Li entered the hospital ward, she was totally shocked. Only three days ago, her son, Zhengzheng, was still a healthy baby, but now he was lying in bed. He was wearing an oxygen mask, and an oxygen tube was inserted into his nose; he was receiving intravenous injections through a needle in his head, his eyes were closed, and he was unconscious. Only then, Ms. Xu realized that what policeman Huang had told her about her child being safe was a lie.
Xu Li's heart was in pain; she hurried to hold her child's ice cold hands. "Zhengzheng!" she cried. Perhaps a mother is connected to her child through the heart. After repeated calling, the child's hands finally warmed up. Zhengzheng opened his eyes and moved his head toward his mother. He made some weak and helpless noise, sounding more like the cry of an injured kitten. When Xu Li was changing her son's nappy, what she saw was shocking. The child had ulcerations over his entire buttocks and his thighs. The infection was too horrible to look at. Later, after the child's wounds healed, dark coloured marks remained.
So what happened? As it turned out, on the night Zhengzheng's parents were arrested, the police took their key and illegally searched their rented flat on the sixth floor of the Yinghe Elementary School Faculty Dormitory. They confiscated clothes, bedding, and 7,000 yuan in cash. On the afternoon of February 22, Feng Jinlin from the County Police Department took Zhengzheng to Ms. Xu's mother who lived in Xunmukou Township, Taikang County. When the child first arrived, he was slow to react, and did not cry or laugh. The adults present thought he was retarded. When Xu's mother took over Zhengzheng, his face was blue and pale. There was a layer of dry skin on his lips. His cry was weak and he vomited continuously. His clothes and blanket were soaked with excrement and urine. When she tried to change his clothing, she saw that his buttocks had become infected and festered because nobody had changed his nappy for two days. His penis and anus were raw from infection. The nappy he was wearing had been rubbing against his thighs and caused bleeding and infection.
Poor Zhengzheng was only seven months old. He did not have parents to care for him in the two days he spent at the police department. One of his fingernails was missing, and he had a high fever.
Think about it, February was still winter and it was raining in those few days. A seven-month-old baby really needed his parents to care for him, but his parents were taken away from him. He had no one. He was alone and forsaken!
His grandmother took him to a doctor for a fever-reducing injection. Zhengzheng was crying and fussing all night. His grandmother and aunt did not sleep and took turns caring for him. In the morning of February 23, his grandmother took him to Dr. Jiao for an intravenous injection. Suddenly, the child's face turned blue as if he was going to die. His grandmother was so frightened that she ran to the town hospital. She found Dr. Li Guoxin, a pediatrics doctor who was having lunch. She asked him to give the child oxygen. Then she called the emergency number 120 for an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, the medics saw that the child's condition was so bad that they were afraid he would die on the road. They did not want to take the child. After Xu Li's family repeatedly begged for help, they finally agreed. The child's eyes were rolling backward in his head during the trip.
When the child arrived at the county hospital, the hospital refused to admit him at first and advised that he be taken to Kaifeng City. Zhengzheng's grandmother was afraid the child was too young and too weak to take another trip. So she begged them until the hospital finally agreed to admit him. Zhengzheng was put into Bed 11 in Room 7 in the newborns ward. The hospital used "Tan's child" as his name on the paperwork. Because he was too young and had a ulcerated infection over a large area of his body, he was having difficulty breathing and was in and out of consciousness. On several occasions, he stopped breathing. Because the special-care nurses from the hospital took quick action, he was able to survive. Since the child's parents had been illegally detained and he was in such critical condition, his grandparents worried that they would not be able to take the responsibility if the child died.
At the critical moment, Xu Li's parents called the Zhoukou City Police Department and requested Zhengzheng's parents to be released because of Zhengzheng's condition. Who would take the responsibility if something happened to the child? At first, the police department was not willing to release anyone. So Ms. Xu's family kept on calling. Finally the police released Xu Li.
Zhengzheng had to wear an oxygen mask for about a week. Because of the intravenous injections, his head was shaved and full of needle holes. The nurse was having difficulty finding a blood vessel for an injection. After the oxygen was removed, Zhengzheng started to have high fever and diarrhea. He lost a lot of weight. Everyone in his family was fearful for his life and utterly exhausted. During the time he was hospitalized, Feng Jinlin and others from the county police department visited him with feigned concern. After twelve days of torment, Zhengzheng was released from the hospital on March 6. The medical expenses and all other expenses added up to more than 2,000 yuan. Because Zhengzheng's mother had been living without a fixed location to avoid persecution since 2001, she had been away from home for a long time. Now that she was home, her school did not allow her to go back to work as a teacher. Since she did not have any income, Ms. Xu had to live off her elderly parents at the Xunmukou Township Chemical Plant.
On March 10, four days after Zhengzheng left the hospital, he developed a fever of 38 ºC (100.4 ºF). On the same day, two women and one man showed up in a police car, claiming that they were from the county police department. They asked Xu Li to write a "guarantee statement" (2). At the time, Ms. Xu was in a hurry to take her son to the doctor. When they demanded that Ms. Xu stay and write the statement, she refused. Some time later, Feng Jinlin and others from the county police department again went to Xu Li's home and tried to coerce her to write a guarantee statement. Zhengzheng had a high fever then as well.
Xu Li and her family asked to see Zhengzheng's father, Tan Zhiqiang. Their requests were denied. She tried to retrieve the 7,000 yuan the police had confiscated, but she was not successful. She asked the police to return the clothes and bedding that they had taken from their rental apartment, and this request was also denied.
On April 10, several people driving a police car and an unmarked car showed up at Xu Li's parent's place. They claimed to be from the Zhoukou Procuratorate and the Taikang Police Department, and included the supervisor of Xunmukou Township and several officers from the township police department. They claimed that Ms. Xu and Mr. Tan's case had been moved to the Chuanhui District Court and they needed to take a statement from Ms. Xu. However, they avoided talking about how Zhengzheng ended up with a life-threatening condition after spending only two days in the custody of the police. Although Zhengzheng survived this ordeal, he became very weak after leaving the hospital. He often developed fever and diarrhea.
Xu Li and her family were constantly worried about Zhengzheng's health condition. Xu Li's parents, who are in their sixties and seventies, have health problems of their own. But they lived with trepidation over their grandson's health. Within one month of Zhengzheng's release from the hospital, the lawless officials went to their place three times to harass Ms. Xu. It was like one misfortune after another, the whole family lived in fear and even their neighbors could not have peace.
Unable to withstand the constant harassment from the police, Ms. Xu left her elderly parents and her nine-month-old son and was forced to leave home. She became homeless and now lives in difficult circumstances.
A young woman was forced to leave her home and live in unfamiliar places, just because she would not give up her belief in the principle of Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance. In a country as large as China, there is no place she can turn to for justice. One can only abhor the treatment she has received, and feel concern for her and her family.
We ask all kind-hearted people around the world to lend a helping hand to Zhengzheng and his family. Please provide urgent help to those Falun Gong practitioners who are being persecuted by Jiang's regime so that justice can be upheld and wrongdoing can be punished.
Notes
(1) yuan -- Chinese currency; 500 yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China.
(2) The so-called "Guarantee Statement" is a statement to declare that a practitioner is remorseful for practising Falun Gong and guarantees not to practise Falun Gong again, not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and never again associate with any Falun Dafa practitioners.
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/7/6/78782.html
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