Persecution of Mother Drives 11-Year-Old Daughter to Mental Collapse

Recently, a sad episode took place in Yanji City, Jilin Province. A teenage girl suffered a mental collapse. She attacked her mother, knocked out a tooth in the process and left scratch marks on her neck. The doors in the house were damaged and everything in the house was in disarray. What caused such a scene?

Ms. Jin Minghua had been a widow since very young. Painstakingly, she brought up daughter Xiaomei through great hardship. Trying to make ends meet was the prime cause of her sicknesses and depression. While in despair, she came across Falun Dafa. Through cultivation, she recovered from her sicknesses, and her depression also disappeared. She became a happy woman again.

However, the persecution against Falun Gong began in July 1999. During the past eight years, Jin Minghua was arrested several times and suffered unimaginable torture during her captivity.

Ever since the persecution started, Falun Gong practitioners have been denied a peaceful environment to follow their beliefs. One day, some practitioners decided to assemble in a park and intended to inform people about the true nature of Falun Gong. Jin Minghua went to take a look, but as soon as she arrived at the park entrance, she was arrested and subsequently sent to the National Security Centre.

When Jin Minghua left home that morning, it was still dark, and her daughter Xiaomei was still in bed. Thinking that she would be back shortly, she locked the door from the outside. At the National Security office, she suddenly remembered that Xiaomei still hadn't had her breakfast and she had to go to school soon. Her request to go home to look after her daughter was rejected. The National Security Office accused Minghua of being one of the organisers at the park, put her under detention for two months, and later sentenced her to one year of hard labour at a forced labour camp.

Minghua did not see her daughter again until some fourteen months later, when she was released. Young Xiaomei, who had lost her father early in her life, suddenly found her mother gone one day out of the blue. The situation was more than the eleven-year-old could cope with. Not only was Xiaomei home alone, she had no financial help.

A group of plainclothes police were on around the clock surveillance in the vicinity of the house, trying to catch Falun Gong practitioners who attempted to help Xiaomei. One could imagine the feeling of a lonely eleven-year-old girl, frightened and cut off from those who would help her.

By late 2000, Jin Minghua was finally released. Upon arriving home, the first thing she noticed was Xiaomei's strange behaviour. The once happy 11-year-old was now suffering from schizophrenia and acute mental problems. After several treatments, there was no significant improvement.

Although Jin Minghua was released, the authorities still put her under surveillance. Every second day, officers would come and turn her home upside down. Every time when the police came, Xiaomei's sickness worsened. At first she fidgeted nervously, but she eventually turned hysterical at the sight of the officers. Later, Xiaomei broke down completely. To keep Xiaomei from seeing the officers, Jin Minghua moved to another house. That did not deter the police from following her. One day, Jin Minghua was again arrested and taken to the Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp, where she was brainwashed, tortured and put through a series of re-education sessions. Her daughter Xiaomei had to be sent to a mental hospital.

In March 2005, Minghua came home. She went to the hospital to see her daughter, only to find that she was being charged over 20,000 yuan¹ for the supposedly free treatments for her daughter. The hospital refused to keep the girl until the bill was fully paid. Minghua had just been released from the labour camp. She could hardly manage to feed herself, much less pay those bills. Without proper medication, Minghua had difficulty managing Xiaomei and her condition got worse daily. By March 16th , 2007, her daughter's condition was so bad that she had to take her back to the hospital to try again, even though she could not pay. She heard of a policy that a mental patient would get two-and-a-half months of free treatment per year. So, Minghua took Xiaomei back to the mental hospital. However, upon finding out that there was still an outstanding bill of 23,000 yuan for Minghua, the hospital refused to accept Xiaomei. The 700 yuan deposit was also lost.

Xiaomei's condition worsened at home. Jin Minghua's meagre wage could hardly foot the bills and the rent. There was no way she could afford paying the hospital, and no one could lend her the money. After much effort, she managed to get friends to help look after her daughter while she was at work.

While Xiaomei was getting better under careful attention, something else happened. One day, a police car came and the officers demanded that Minghua come with them to the police station. Knowing that Xiaomei was sensitive to police officers, Minghua refused to go. The police insisted on staying. The helper who had come to look after Xiaomei did not know what the police were there for, so she rose and left the house. As soon as the helper left, three more officers came in. They insisted on entering the house. Upon seeing them, Xiaomei suddenly went hysterical and drove the police away.

That was not the end of the story. Since then, Xiaomei's condition became so bad that she started attacking everyone, including her mother. In her eyes, everyone she saw was there to take her mother away. This grieved Jin Minghua deeply, who keeps asking herself what wrong she had done by keeping her faith. Why are the authorities doing this to her and her daughter?

Note

1. "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/2007/6/5/156296.html