It's the Mid-Autumn Festival, but My Mother is Still Being Persecuted

My mother, Ms. Huang Xin, age fifty-one, is a retiree from the Shenbei Railroad Hospital in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China. Because she practises Falun Gong, in September of 2003, she was illegally sentenced to the Dabei Women's Prison. During her detention she has been cruelly persecuted and forced to take the psychiatric drug chlorpromazine for the past eight months.

I am the only child in my family. At age three, I was diagnosed with polio. To treat my illness, mother carried me to Western and traditional Chinese hospitals all over Shenyang City. However, all of the doctors exhausted their knowledge without being able to help me. Finally, she found a famous, senior doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. He said to my mom, "The child's growth cells in his legs are already dead. But you can let him exercise his legs to stimulate the growth cells. However, being so tiny, the child cannot do the exercises by himself. Thus, you can help him by applying hot water to his legs and by massaging his legs afterwards."

Thus, before dawn each morning, my mother would pull my withered leg out of my sleeping bag for a hot water compress and a massage. Two hours later, my mother then rushed to her job with hazy, sleepy eyes. Then, after supper, amid my crying and resentment, Mom would continue the hot water and massage treatments. So this process, which took a total of four hours per day, lasted for seven years without interruption. It was seven years of motherly love and devotion. If not for her sacrifice, I would have needed crutches and would have been permanently disabled. What kind of miserable life I would have had, if not for Mom's efforts. Without surgery or taking any medicine, a person with infant paralysis recovered from the illness via the two hands of his mother. Mom really created a miracle! I feel truly grateful beyond words to my mom whenever I think of all this.

However, poor inborn physique, a busy job and taking care of me for such a long time finally caused Mom a series of maladies, including low blood sugar, low blood pressure, low stomach acid, dizziness and disorientation, no appetite and sleeplessness. When she was only thirty-eight years old, Mom had to take early retirement due to poor health. To cure her weak physical conditions, some of which she had since childhood, Mom went to study at a medical school. Unfortunately, she did not heal herself, and she became well known as a "chronic invalid" because her health continued to worsen.

In 1996, Mom started practising Falun Gong. Six months later, she was healthy as if she had been completely remolded. Her large eyes regained their lost splendour, and her complexion appeared rosy. Laughter and songs returned to our family. Mom was able to do all the household tasks and take good care of my father and me. That was the happiest period of time for our family. Mom was full of energy every day and capable of helping seniors who were sick at the homes of our relatives and friends. Father was so happy that he told everyone he encountered, "Falun Dafa is so good!"

Unfortunately, in July 1999, Jiang Zemin and his accomplices started to suppress Falun Gong, and numerous practitioners were arrested and beaten. Mom was not spared this misfortune. She was arrested four times and had to leave home four times to avoid further persecution. Finally, she had to leave home permanently. Under tremendous pressure and with great reluctance, Father was forced to divorce Mom.

In the autumn of 2003, the police again arrested my mom, and the Heping District Court illegally sentenced her to eight years in prison. The sentencing happened without our family being notified. My mother was denied appeal rights, the right to have a defending lawyer present, and normal legal procedures were ignored, such as documentation of the court's decision. More tragically, my mother, who has never suffered from any mental disorder, is being forced by the prison staff to take chlorpromazine to numb her nerves. Excessive use of this psychiatric drug makes her incapable of talking or walking for long periods of time. She also has lost most of her memory of the past.

For more than two years, day and night, I have been thinking about and missing my mom, but I cannot see or hear from her. I am wondering what happened to the China that had good traditional values and five thousand years of civilisation? Why does today's government suppress the existence of citizens who believe in Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance? Why does the ruling party persecute the peaceful Falun Gong practitioners and devastate an innocent woman like my mom who has benefited so greatly from Falun Gong? That same Communist Party forced turned her into an invalid again!