What Were Tsinghua University Authorities "Checking Out" at the Shandong Women's Prison?

My sadness and indignation were beyond words when I read about Ms. Liu Zhimei of Shandong Province, who suffered a mental breakdown at the hands of the Tsinghua University Party Committee, Beijing Public Security Bureau, Haidian District Court, and the Shandong Women's Prison staff.

Ms Liu, who had been mentally and physically tortured for refusing to give up her belief, finally agreed to be "transformed"¹. She greatly desired to be readmitted to Tsinghua University and resume her studies. University staff came to the prison to assure that she had been truly transformed. They did not believe that she was, so they decided against readmitting her. From this incident, one can tell that Tsinghua University is like the prison when it comes to brainwashing.

Ms. Liu Zhimei is 25 years old. Over the past four years, she was imprisoned in detention centres and prisons. She was from a rural area in Laiyang, Shandong Province. She was accepted into the chemical engineering programme at Tsinghua University at seventeen, and exempt from taking tests. In September of 1999, at the beginning of her third year, due to the persecution by former Chinese Communist Party leader, Jiang Zemin and his regime, university staff refused to register her and forced her parents to take her with them. They suspended her without any written notification.

Later on, Ms. Liu was arrested from her rented room in the Haidian District in Beijing. She was moved to different detention centres and finally imprisoned at the Beijing Public Security Bureau No. 7 Detention Centre. Her head was beaten so cruelly that it became disfigured. Her chest was covered with injuries and most of her nails had been pulled off during the torture.

In November 2002, she was sentenced to a 12-year prison term and taken to the Shandong Women's Prison in Jinan. For a long time, she refused to cooperate with the authorities and refused to be transformed. Finally, she was tempted by the promise of going back to the university. Under tremendous pressure and against her conscience, she agreed to be transformed. When she was told that she would not be readmitted to Tsinghua University after what she went through, she suffered a mental collapse. She is still jailed in Shandong Prison. Her mother is in a rural area. When she heard that her daughter had been sentenced to a 12 years in prison, she also suffered a mental collapse. Being an impoverished family, they had not been able to come up with enough money to visit their daughter in prison.

Ms. Liu was once the envy of many people. She had been able to escape the hard life of the countryside, accepted into the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing. Since she was forced out of the university and subsequently arrested by the police from the Beijing Public Security Bureau, she has endured tremendous pressure because of her belief. She has endured brutal beatings and torture at the detention centre in Beijing and brainwashing in the Jinan Shandong Female Prison. Because she still longed to resume her studies, they were able to ensnare her with empty promises.

Why did Tsinghua need to send people to the prison to make sure that she had been transformed? What were they "checking out"? Were they afraid that this student still believed in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance"? Ms Liu never thought of the much-coveted Tsinghua University as a prison of the mind.

I believe that Ms. Liu will never be able to forget that the staff from Tsinghua University has closely followed Jiang's regime. Ms. Liu still held the illusion that the university was different from the prison. She did not realise that the hands of the Chinese Communist Party extended to the campus. Staff from the university did not come to readmit her, but instead pushed her further into despair.

It's very clear now that this century-old educational institution has been commandeered by the communist regime. One has to pay the price of one's conscience in order to pursue knowledge there.

We are asking those who use the excuse, "This is from higher authorities and we have no choice but to implement these orders." Do you have any conscience left? Do you feel guilty, seeing the suffering and pain of Ms. Liu and her mother? Treat Falun Gong practitioners with kindness and let Ms Liu return to Tsinghua University.

Note:

(1) "Reform or Transform" Implementation of brainwashing and torture in order to force a practitioner to renounce Falun Gong. (Variations: "reform", "transform", "reformed", "reforming", "transformed", "transforming", and "transformation")

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/7/31/107395.html