The Persecution of Ms. Gan Lirong from Shenzhen City

Ms. Gan Lirong from Shenzhen City has been persecuted for many years because of her belief. At the end of 2000, she was arrested for posting Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution and detained at Baoan Custodial Station for five months. Then she was sentenced to one year at the Sanshui Forced Labour Camp in Guangdong Province.

Ms. Gan, 53, is from Baoan District, Shenzhen City. Before she started to practise Falun Gong, she suffered from many diseases such as nephritis, arthritis, heart palpitations, periarthritis of the shoulder, hemorrhoids, and melancholia resulting from long-term insomnia. In November 1997 she started to practise Falun Gong. One month later, many of her diseases disappeared and she had a fundamental change in her perspective on life. She was spiritually uplifted. She managed the finance department very well and gained recognition for her leadership.

After Jiang Zemin's [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] regime started to persecute Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999, her family, work, and life have been severely disrupted. Especially on politically sensitive days, she was followed around the clock. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sent people to specifically follow her. While she was at work, agents watched her outside her office. She was forced to have meals and sleep at her workplace and was not able to go home. Several times while she was working, officers from the Shangtang Police Station in Longhua County, Baoan District, Shenzhen City arrested her, put her in handcuffs, and took her to the police station. Once Director Song interrogated her in person. He asked her why she practised Falun Gong. She told him how she had recovered from all sorts of diseases after practising Falun Gong and how her moral standards had improved. Police interrogated her until midnight before they asked her family to take her home.

In December 2000, Ms. Gan Lirong went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. She held up a banner exposing the persecution in Tiananmen Square and was badly beaten. She kept shouting, "Falun Gong is good!" One policeman kicked her in the spine, stomped on her back, and with one hand grabbed her hair and kept beating her with an electric baton. She could hardly walk. More than 300 practitioners were arrested in Tiananmen Square that day. They were taken to different police stations in Shunyi County. As soon as they arrived, the police took off their coats. The practitioners didn't cooperate and refused to tell their names. The police then pushed them outside, left them standing on icy ground in their bare feet, and removed all their clothes except a shirt. They were left outside until 9:00 p.m., and then allowed to go inside, cold and hungry. Ten days later Ms. Gan's company brought her home.

In November 2001 while she was posting Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution, the police arrested her and took her to Shangtang Police Station. They searched her home, where only her daughter lived. Ms. Gan continued to protest the persecution after she was transferred to Baoan Custodial Station. She refused to wear the prison uniform, recite the prison regulations, or do prison exercises. She also went on a hunger strike. On the eighth day of her hunger strike, she was taken to Sanshui Forced Labour Camp in Guangdong Province. Officials from her work unit and her daughter went to see her once at the Baoan Custodial Station. Her daughter could barely recognize her mother because she was so disfigured due to the torture.

In the forced labour camp, the guards told inmates to cut her hair, put her in the prison uniform, and make her wear a prison badge. They spent her money on a used quilt and clothes for her, but paid themselves three times the going rate. Those in charge persecuted Falun Gong practitioners physically, mentally, and financially. They forced practitioners to watch videos slandering Falun Gong and instigated people who once were practitioners but who had gone against Falun Gong to brainwash and threaten her. They forbid practitioners from talking to each other or seeing each other. Some practitioners were very determined in their belief. Police then instigated criminal inmates to beat them and shock them with electric batons. More than 400 practitioners have been detained in Sanshui Forced Labour Camp.

Many practitioners are still being detained and tortured, and some have even lost their lives. We ask all people of conscience to step forward and help end the persecution of Falun Gong.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.cc/mh/articles/2008/6/3/179648.html