Persecution of Retired Teacher, Practitioner Ms. Yang Baoying, and Her Family from Fuxin City

Sixty one year-old Ms. Yang Baoying is a retired teacher living in the Xitie Neighbourhood District of Fuxin City, Liaoning Province. She has more than thirty years of teaching experience and is well respected in the area. The Shenyang Railroad Bureau once awarded her the title "Model Head Teacher." Her class was awarded the distinction "Outstanding Class of Fuxin City." She worked so hard at her job that she fell ill over time. She developed a nerve disorder, inflammation of the nose and throat, bone protrusions in the neck vertebra, arthritis and tuberculosis. She took medication daily and lived with pain.

Ms. Yang Baoying started to practise Falun Dafa in April 1996, whereby all of her illnesses disappeared. She lived a happy, illness-free life. She even gained weight. She went from 88 pounds to 132 pounds. She was energetic and enjoyed life.

Jiang Zemin started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. He ignored Falun Gong practitioners’ requests for freedom of belief and fabricated charges against Falun Gong. The slanders and lies concocted by Jiang and his gang deceived the public.

Yang Baoying and her married daughter, Yang Mingzhe, went to Beijing to appeal on July 21st, 1999. They wanted to say some heartfelt words, such as, "Falun Gong benefits the country and the society in countless ways and doesn’t cause an ounce of harm," but the police patrols arrested them before they could reach the Bureau for Letters and Calls. They were taken to the Fengtai Stadium in Beijing, where they were verbally and physically abused, exposed to the sweltering heat and deprived of food and water. In the evening they were dragged onto a train and taken to the Xitie Police Department in Fuxin City. Yang Baoying and her daughter didn’t eat for three days and they didn’t sleep for four days, and they sat on the concrete floor in the police department. It was cold close to the floor and hot close to the ceiling. The mosquitoes attacked with a vengeance, and the stench in the place was unbearable. The police targeted Ms. Yang's family by putting them on a blacklist and intensively monitoring them. Their phone was tapped, special persons were assigned to watch them, spies followed Ms. Yang around and harassed her at home. The police arrested her, and her other family members and friends were implicated. The family could not eat or rest in peace.

Ms. Yang and her daughter again went to Beijing to appeal on November 26th, 1999. Yang Baoying was arrested on December 19th after she became separated from her daughter. She was taken back to Fuxin City and locked up at the Xindi Detention Centre.

Ms. Yang's 90 plus year-old mother was paralysed and incontinent. She called out for Yang Baoying every day. Her son was traumatised and suffered a mental collapse. He smashed windows many times with his fists and sustained bloody cuts. He had to be sent to a mental hospital, which charges 2,500 yuan¹ per month for treatment. Yang Baoying’s husband Yang Dongge longed for his wife to come home to take care of her mother and son, but Li Jian, deputy head of the Haizhou Police Department, along with officials from the Political and Security Section refused to release Yang Baoying because she refused to write a guarantee statement to give up practising Falun Dafa.

We have also heard that when all this was happening, Yang Baoying’s daughter was cornered in a building in Beijing when delivering letters for other Dafa practitioners. She tried to escape from the police by jumping out of a fourth floor window. She severely injured her sciatic nerve, sustained fractures to her feet and could not take care of herself. She passed out from pain each time she turned over in bed. In February 2000, when she had recovered slightly, the Beijing police again arrested her and took her back to the Fuxin Detention Centre. On May 30th, 2000, she was sentenced to one year of forced labour by the Haizhou Police Department. She was held at the Fuxin Labour Camp where she was savagely tortured. Her term was then extended by six months. Yang Baoying's husband could not take so many heavy blows and often sat still in the room, staring at the empty walls. It was Chinese New Year, and the family was broken. Yang Baoying was held for four months. She was released on bail in mid March 2000.

A dozen people broke into Ms. Yang's home in June 2001. These people included Zhao, the former head of the Political and Security Section at the Fuxin City Police Department, Zhang Qi, the current deputy head of the Civil Administration Bureau, and some deputy heads of the Political and Security Section at Fuxin City Police Department, including Feng Guoping, Zhang Xuan, Zhou Tao and Yang Shuchen. The home invasion happened at around 4:00 p.m. and they arrested her on June 12th, 2001.

Prior to 4:00 p.m., the police had gone to the railroad elementary school where Yang Baoying works. School principal Song Chunyan cooperated with the police and phoned Yang Baoying to find out whether she was home. The police lied to Yang Baoying and told her that something had happened to her daughter Yang Mingzhe at the labour camp. They told her to go there and help solve the problem. Yang Baoying knew it was a trap, and she refused, saying that she had to take care of business at home. The police, however, succeeded in tricking Yang Baoying’s husband into going there. They later went to Yang Baoying’s home and arrested her.

Yang Baoying and her husband were both held at the Xindi Detention Centre. The inmates beat and otherwise humiliated her husband Yang Dongge. He was made to mop all the floors and was forbidden to drink water or use the restroom. He was held at the detention centre for eight days. His daily food consisted of uncooked balls of flour-mixture. The inmates took the other food. Yang Dongge grew very thin.

At this time, only their son, recently discharged from a mental hospital and not yet recovered, along with Yang Baoying’s very elderly and paralysed mother were left at home. Their relatives went to different government agencies to report the difficult situation of Yang Baoying’s family. The Political and Security Section agents at the police department extorted 4,000 "yuan" before releasing Yang Dongge. Ms. Yang Baoying was held for another month and her family was forced to pay an extortion fee of 5,000 yuan. Lawless officials squandered 2,000 yuan of the money. After Yang Baoying went home, she learned that the police had extorted money from her family without issuing a receipt. She and her husband went back to the police department to ask for receipts. They went there about six times. Finally, the police reluctantly gave her a void receipt after changing the date and the amount of money recorded on it.

Between April 2002 and the sixteenth party congress, officers from the city police department, Xitie Police Department and the neighbourhood district party committee frequently harassed Ms. Yang at home. They said someone had reported her and they wanted her to sign a document at the police department. They tried to find out what she was doing and were always trying to find ways to arrest her. Finally, she left home and lived a homeless life for about eight months in order to stay free of harassment.

About six local police officers, including Xu Chunli from the Xitie Police Department, tried to pry open the door to Yang Baoying’s home at around 9:40 a.m. on February 10th, 2004. They pounded on the door while some other officers waited in front of the apartment building in a police car. They threatened, "If you don’t open up, we’ll destroy the lock." They tried to pry open the lock for more than two hours but couldn’t open it. They then broke the lock. Several days later, the police returned and pried at the lock again. Yang Baoying thought, "The police cannot bully the common people like this. You are administrators of the law, and yet you are going against the law. You cannot do whatever you want. You do not even have any evidence against me."

Ms. Yang went to the police department on the morning of February 24th, 2004. Police department head Liu Wei and political head Liu Fuli immediately called the city police department and other branch police departments. Feng Guoping from the Political and Security Section at the Fuxin City Police Department, and Zhou Xiaomin from the Haizhou Police Department arrived and talked to Yang Baoying. They would not let her leave the police department. In the evening, a room full of police officers with menacing looks on their faces stood in front of Yang Baoying. A brawny officer cursed at her while twisting her arms behind her back and yanking her hair. He pulled out a bunch of her hair. Then several police officers pushed her into a police car and drove her to the Xindi Detention Centre.

The guards and inmates at the detention centre screamed at her. They tried to handcuff and shackle her, but she firmly resisted it. She held a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Then the guards brutally force-fed her, and they held her on a tiger bench. She shouted, "Falun Dafa is wronged! It’s a grave injustice!" Deputy detention centre leader Wang heard her. He hastily brought an electric baton from another room and said to her in a cold voice, "So you are wronged? I’ll help you shout more!" He then shocked her hands and face with the electric baton, which produced a crackling noise. Yang Baoying felt as if she was being stabbed with needles. Her chest tightened, her body curled up and her arms and legs shook. She gritted her teeth as her flesh burned.

After a while they force-fed her again. A male inmate tried to insert a rubber tube into her nose but he could not do it. Doctor Wang kicked Yang Baoying’s feet. He grabbed the tube and tried to insert it himself. Yang Baoying struggled and resisted. Deputy detention centre head Wang shocked her already wounded face with electric batons. After the force-feeding she clung to the wall and barely made it back to her cell, where she violently vomited the concentrated salt water that she had been force-fed. Blood came out of her nose and throat for several hours. In the evening her face swelled even more severely from the electric shocks. A huge blister appeared on her face. It has been more than two years, and the scar on her face is still visible.

Yang Baoying was held at the detention centre for 35 days and then sentenced to two years of forced labour. Responsible for this turn of events was Zhou Xiaomin from the Political and Security Section of the Haizhou Police Department, and Xu Chunli, a local officer from the Xitie Police Department. These officials, as well as the officer who yanked her hair, interrogated her, but couldn’t get any evidence to send her to prison. That is why they sentenced her to two years of forced labour in late March 2004. Another reason for their decision was that she had written letters to Song Chunyan, the school principal and to Liu Xinmin, the Party secretary at her former school. The letters stated the fact that officials from these two schools were sending all of their Dafa practitioner employees to the Fushun Brainwashing Class. Yang Baoying had personally delivered the letters to them, for which they thanked her. Yet later, Song Chunyan and Liu Xinmin gave the letters to the police, who used them as an excuse to persecute Yang Baoying. They sentenced her to one year of forced labour for each letter, amounting to the two-year forced labour sentence. The labour camp document stated the following:

"Yang Baoying was cruelly tortured at the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp. She was subjected to cruelties including brainwashing and having to listen to and watch radio messages and videos slandering Falun Dafa. She was deprived of sleep for refusing to "reform²." She was compelled to do slave labour until her arms hurt and she could not raise them. Her fingers turned numb and she could not bend them. Ms. Yang developed rheumatoid arthritis in her back and legs. Her sentence was extended by two months. The police would not release her until her family paid them 1,750 yuan. Her family, stating they really did not have that much money, gave the police 800 yuan. The police released on her April 23rd, 2006."

As is obvious from the above account, Yang Baoying was mentally tormented, physically tortured and extorted of lots of money. Wang Dajiang, along with others from Ms. Yang's daughter's work place, the Junzheng Hotel, extorted 2,000 yuan from their family in December 1999. Officials from the Political and Security Section at the Fuxin City Police Department extorted 7,000 yuan from Yang Baoying and her husband in June or July 2001. Yang Baoying was forcibly "treated" by a doctor and force-fed at the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp in 2005 and extorted for more than 1,500 yuan.

Yang Baoying was held at the Fuxin Detention Centre between December 1999 and March 2000. Her pension was annulled and she never got it reinstated. She was held at a detention centre in June 2001 for one month and was paid for fifteen days of her pension. She was held at the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp again between February 2004 and April 2006, during which time her pension was completely cut off. The law does not specify to stop pension payments when the recipient is in a labour camp. The school officials arbitrarily stopped it. The principal and party secretary of the school reported to the Labour and Capital Section of the Jinzhou Railroad Education Committee that the reason they stopped Ms. Yang's pension was because she had been sent to a labour camp. The Jinzhou Railroad Education Committee has been disbanded. The Social Security Centre at the Jinzhou Railroad Office is now in charge of pensions. Yang Baoying asked the office many times about her suspended pension but they refused to pay her the accumulated back pay, claiming that they are following government decrees on the matter.

Persons and organisations responsible for the persecution:

Railroad Elementary School in Haizhou District, Fuxin City, Liaoning Province, the former Fuxin City Railroad Elementary School
Principal, Song Chunyan: 418—5560819
Zip code: 123002
Social Security Centre at Jinzhou Railroad Office in Liaoning Province
Li Yang: 416—2553710
Zip code: 121000

Note

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

2. "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://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/8/11/135329.html