The Tragedy of Ms. Jia Xueyun from Hebei Province

Ms. Jia Xueyun is a Falun Gong practitioner in her 40's from a village near Sanhe City, Hebei Province.

Ms. Jia Xueyun and her husband An Songlin worked hard together to provide for their family and parents. They had a very warm and loving family. Ms. Jia was the epitome of a traditional virtuous wife. She had a gentle and mellow disposition. She was very understanding of others. She extended her help to those in need. She treated her parents-in-law with filial respect and she also cared greatly for her sons and husband.

But now Ms. Jia Xueyun has become a completely different person. She stares into space, she mumbles to herself, has difficulty walking and has to rely on others' care. What has happened to her? Who could have done such a thing to this loving and virtuous woman?

Ms. Jia Xueyun started practising Falun Gong in 1998 and was very determined in cultivating herself and upgrading her morality. Meanwhile, she generously shared with her friends, relatives and neighbours about her experiences of studying the Falun Gong books and practising the Falun Gong exercises, as well as the health benefits she experienced from this wonderful practice. Many of the people who knew her also started practising Falun Gong and thus started their journey to return to their original, true and good nature. Before July 20, 1999, when Jiang Zemin started to openly persecute Falun Gong, Ms. Jia Xueyun had a wonderful home. She was a kind and healthy mother of two sons. Her husband was in the construction business and specialized in making steel window frames. While she was an excellent help to her husband's business, she also managed to care for the entire family. Life was good back then.

When Jiang Zemin ordered the persecution of Falun Gong and Falun Gong practitioners, Ms. Jia Xueyun decided that she must step forward to help the Chinese Communist government understand that Falun Gong brings numerous benefits and does not do any harm to society. Therefore, she made a trip to Beijing, hoping to share with the government her personal experiences of practicing Falun Gong.

However, by the time Ms. Jia arrived in Beijing, the State Appeals Office, that was supposed to entitle every Chinese citizen the right to appeal for justice, had already been turned into a snare for the Public Security Bureau to attract and abduct Falun Gong practitioners. The only other place left for practitioners to appeal for justice for Falun Gong was Tiananmen Square, but it was now crawling with police ready to pounce on Falun Gong practitioners wishing to appeal. Ms. Jia Xueyun ended up being abducted by the police and then transferred to the Sanhe City Appeal Office, which then brought her back to the Public Security Bureau in Sanhe City. There, the deputy head, Zhang Shanglin and section head, a man surnamed Shen, repeatedly beat and shocked Ms. Jia with electric batons before they illegally took her to Kaiping Forced Labour Camp in Tangshan, Hebei Province.

Because of the tight information blockade in Kaiping Forced Labour Camp and throughout China, it is not clear what types of torture Ms. Jia suffered during her 100 days of illegal detention. All we know is that when she was released, she was muddle-headed and on the brink of death. Kaiping Forced Labour is virtually a living hell for Falun Gong practitioners. The deputy section head, Wang Jianzhong, is infamous for his appalling ritual of shocking female Falun Gong practitioners until they pass out. Squadron captain Zhang Zhenmin is notorious for having beaten Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Cui Yanqiu in front of all the prison inmates, and for throwing perfectly healthy practitioners Ms. Qiu Liying and Ms. Zhao Shuying into a psychiatric hospital and torturing them with psychiatric drugs. He also tortured practitioner Han Zhenju from Yongqing County to death. The perpetrators at Kaiping Forced Labour Camp have subjected imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners to many types of excruciating torture, such as hanging them from trees in the cold, shocking them with electric batons, depriving them of sleep, savagely beating them with spiked or barbed clubs, and many other types of inhumane torture.

Falun Gong practitioners tried to reason with the torturers, tried to bring them back to their conscience, reported their crimes to the management staff, made complaints and even went on hunger strikes as a nonviolent means to protest the persecution against them, but nothing could deter their violence. Ms. Jia Xueyun, too, had no choice but to go on a hunger strike as an ultimate, nonviolent means to protest the torture and incarceration. Kaiping Forced Labour Camp could care less about Falun Gong practitioners' lives. They did not release Ms. Jia until she was on the brink of death, in order to avoid any legal responsibility.

Ms. Jia Xueyun was nothing but skin and bones when she was finally brought home. In fact, she was hardly breathing. Both of her arms were riddled with marks from needles, but it was not clear what type(s) of drugs they had injected into her body. She could only manage to speak a few words before she lost her voice. She could not move her arms, legs, tongue, or even her eyes. The doctor told her family that it was time to notify the funeral home and prepared for her death.

Ms. Jia's friends and family knew that she was perfectly healthy before she was incarcerated in Kaiping Forced Labour Camp. In just three months, her weight dropped from 143 lbs to 66 lbs. Every friend and relative that came to see her could not help bursting into tears and felt indignant at the injustice perpetrated against Jia Xueyun. Her husband, An Songlin refused to give up hope and rushed her to hospital for emergency resuscitation. It cost the family nearly 50,000 yuan (1). Ms. Jia now has to completely rely on other people's care and her husband is now going to divorce her. Her elderly mother-in-law takes care of Ms. Jia.

Note:

"Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/3/7/96797.html