Fifteen-year-old Boy Takes Poison and Dies After Mother Is Sent to Forced Labour Camp

Ms. Guan Shujun, 39, lived in a village near Qingdao City. She was sent to a forced labour camp from January 2001 to June 2003, for being a Falun Gong practitioner. Her fifteen-year-old son who did not practise Falun Gong, Wang Xiaoshuai, was unable to bear the trauma and took poison and died on August 30, 2001.

In October 2000, Ms. Guan Shujun was sent to a forced labour camp for three years. She was detained in the First Women's Labour Camp of Shandong Province, Jinan City. After Ms. Guan was arrested, her son Wang Xiaoshuai, who was born in 1987, was frequently bullied in school. Her husband gambled all day long and did not care for their son. Wang Xiaoshuai felt that he had lost his mother's love and protection. He was miserable at having lost his mother and then had to endure the other students' dirty looks and gossip. His young heart was greatly traumatised. He took poison and died on August 30, 2001.

Soon after he had taken the poison, he sought help from his classmates, but it was too late, and his life could not be saved even with emergency medical treatment. After Wang Xiaoshuai died, his school took steps to cover up the tragedy.

After Ms. Guan was sentenced to the labour camp, her husband demanded a divorce in compliance with the policies handed down by the Chinese Communist Party. He spent his time gambling and neglected their son. He started to live with another woman even before his divorce was final. Ms. Guan refused to comply with the divorce, but in 2003, court authorities brought her husband to the labour camp and forced her to sign the divorce papers. A previously stable family was thus broken up.

By the time Ms. Guan Shujun was released from the labour camp in 2003, her son had died, and her husband had remarried. She no longer had a place to stay and was forced to live temporarily at her sister's house.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/4/14/99602.html