The Epoch Times: 700 Days in a Nanjing Jail: Woman Works to Free American Fiance

*FREE MY FIANCEE* - Yeong-Ching Foo, Charles Lee's fiancée, speaking at a rally calling for his release. Foo has been working non-stop since Lee's arrest in January 2003 to obtain his freedom.

Charles Lee sits unmoving on a wooden stool. His heart is beating fast, his breath is short, his back is straight, and his eyes look straight ahead at the television. He is not allowed to move.

After seven hours or longer, he may be taken into a room to make Christmas tree lights for export. For Lee, this is another holiday season away from his fiancée as a prisoner of conscience in China.

In New York, as streets bustle with last-minute shoppers and houses are in their full luminous spectacle, Ms. Yeong Ching Foo is alone at her desk, writing a letter to President Bush.

"Please call for the release of my fiance Charles, a U.S. citizen," Foo writes. "Charles is imprisoned for his non-violent appeal for human rights, abused and tortured in communist China for his beliefs. Charles has been persecuted for over 700 days."

Lee, 40, was arrested and beaten minutes after his flight landed in southern China on January 22, 2003. The Chinese government accused him of planning to sabotage broadcast equipment, put him through a one day trial, and sentenced him to three years in Nanjing Prison, 170 miles west of Shanghai.

But Foo, 30, says her fianc?is a courageous man who risked his life to help others. She says that since arriving in China, Lee has been tortured and put through a show trial in which he couldn't even defend himself. Lee's purpose in going to China was to broadcast evidence of a covert campaign of persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China, she says.

Since March 2002, Falun Gong practitioners in China have used the method of overriding broadcast signals to break through the state monopoly on information.

According to human rights groups Falun Gong, a popular and peaceful spiritual practice, has been subjected to persecution since it was banned in China in 1999. The Falun Dafa Information Center claims that over 1,188 Falun Gong practitioners have been killed in the state-run campaign, most through torture during forced conversion.

Dr. Charles Lee, a U.S. citizen and prisoner of conscience (www.rescuecharles.org)

Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Menlo Park, California, is a Falun Gong practitioner himself. He is also a medical doctor and a member of Amnesty International Group 466. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign- Urbana and conducted research at Massachusetts General Hospital before meeting Foo at a social gathering at Stanford.

Foo, who was born in Malaysia and graduated from the University of California Davis, has spent the last two years traveling across the United States trying to free her fianc? She has spoken at press conferences, written to elected officials, the President, and the ambassador to China. She attended both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican one hoping someone could help bring her fianc?back alive.

"It's wrong for him to be imprisoned, suffering physical and mental torture for so long. How long must I wait?" Foo says. "Charles needs to come back to the United States before it's too late."

Although the Chinese government claims that it treats all its prisoners humanely, U.S. consular officials in China have repeatedly protested the treatment Lee has received. Last week, State Department Consular Affairs Spokeswoman Kelly Shannon said that Lee appears to be tired and weak. Since Lee is refusing to sign a confession, the prison is forcing him to sit motionless for long periods of time watching Chinese government videos vilifying Falun Gong. This has taken place for some 50 days.

Lee's fiancée says that the Chinese government has tried brainwashing him since his arrest, hoping to "transform" him and make him give up his spiritual practice.

When Lee was first arrested, he was deprived of sleep for three days and nights and was handcuffed and tied with a rope in painful positions for as long as 130 hours. According to U.S. consular reports, Lee said he was beaten repeatedly and displayed bruises all over his body.

In order to protest what he called illegal detention and mistreatment, Lee wrote a letter of appeal to the U.S. Consulate. Much of the 96-page letter was written while Lee was handcuffed. The prison authorities, however, withheld critical pages of it.

In protest, Lee embarked on a hunger strike in order to demand that his letters reach the U.S. consulate in Shanghai so they could forward it to his fiancée in America. Only after enduring eight days on hunger strike and painful forced feeding via a hard plastic tube inserted into the nasal channel, did the prison authorities release the remainder of Lee's document in June 2003.

Immediately Lee's local Amnesty International chapter responded with a letter demanding his release. "Recent information accessed from China indicates that...basic rights have not been respected, that Dr. Lee's life is in danger, and that he is in urgent need for help," the letter states.

Many U.S. officials have also raised their concerns about Lee's imprisonment and abuse. In March 2003, Lee's representative, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, and Holocaust survivor Congressman Tom Lantos wrote to the U.S. Ambassador to China. "The manner in which Dr. Li [Lee] has been treated is outrageous," the letter states. "We respectfully ask for your personal intervention on Dr. Li's behalf at the highest levels of the Chinese government. Dr. Li must be allowed to return home immediately to his fiancée, and resume his life here in the United States."

Yet the prison has continued abusing Lee, forcing him to glue shoes for long hours, causing him to feel nauseous from the intoxicating fumes. They then started forcing him to make Christmas tree lights for export.

"To me it's very ironic," says his fiancée. "I can't imagine what he's going through this Christmas and New Year, the second year he's spending the holidays in jail."

Dr. Sherry Zhang, founder of Friends of Charles Lee, says that although Lee has not yet been released, Americans' protests have been shown to improve Lee's conditions.

"Every time Americans raise a big outcry and the media and U.S. government start talking about this case, Charles' conditions improve dramatically," Zhang says. "I hope all kind-hearted people in the U.S. can help us rescue Charles."

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