Please Help Me Rescue My Daughter, Who is Near Death from Persecution

More than ten agents from the Weifang City "610 Office¹" and Police Department in Shandong Province and others from the development zone police department arrested my daughter Kong Qian at around 6:30 a.m. on July 9th, 2008.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) treated my daughter as a "key target" and interrogated her under cruel torture. The police tied her to a metal cross made with steel bars and tubing for seven days. Her hands were stretched and tied tightly with leather straps; her feet were cuffed together; her whole body was placed on two 1.5 cm-diameter steel bars, with 10 cm in between. She could only move her head a bit. Her arms, legs and back and her whole body were in extreme pain. She hovered between life and death in unimaginable agony. When she was untied from the metal cross, she could no longer move and had to be lifted down from the cross, unable to move for several days and unable to stand on her feet. Two months of torture and persecution have reduced my daughter to a skeleton. People who have seen her said, "Kong Qian is so thin that there is nothing left of her face but two big eyes. She is extremely weak and breathes feebly; her life is in great danger."

I am Li Xiyun, a 57-year-old retired guard from Weibei Prison in Weifang City. My daughter Kong Qian used to be very weak and had suffered from many illnesses before she practised Falun Gong. Three days after her birth she had septicaemia, and her life was in great danger. Weibei Hospital physicians immediately sent my daughter to the Weifang People's Hospital, where she was placed in an insulated chamber for a month. Miraculously she survived the ordeal, but became very thin and had to take medication and injections regularly. She stayed in the hospital for another three months before we brought her home. My daughter's teen years again required her to take medication, and she had to have frequent injections. She walked unsteadily and often had to stay home from school due to illnesses, always being extremely weak.

Having to hospitalize my daughter for emergency treatment three days after she was born worried me greatly, and I did not know if she would survive. During the month of post-partum confinement I could not sleep. I lost my appetite and have since developed a severe form of myasthenia gravis. Because I was worried about my daughter's health year in and year out and rushed about to find a cure for her, I was run down from the heavy burden. I suffered from cardiac muscle strain, slow heart beat, coronary heart disease, anaemia, low white blood cell count, low blood pressure, myasthenia gravis, insomnia, rheumatoid arthritis, partial numbness, hyperostosis, migraines and gynaecological diseases. In 1993, I had a hysterectomy. Everyone who knew me said that I was a chronically ill woman who was beyond treatment.

My husband was also a guard at Weibei Prison. When he saw our daughter and me suffering so much from illnesses, he also suffered from enormous pressure every day.

I started practising Falun Gong in 1996, and since then miracles have appeared! Not long after I took up the practice all my illnesses disappeared, and everyone around me said I had become a new person.

Because my daughter witnessed my huge physical and mental changes, she began to practise Falun Gong in 1997. Before long, her weak body became stronger and she became a beautiful young lady.

But less than three years after we began our happy life, in July 1999, Jiang Zemin [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] used the ruling regime and all its power and launched a rampant persecution of Falun Gong, fearing its popularity. From then on, my daughter and I have suffered from ruthless persecution at the hands of the local CCP officials for not giving up our practice.

In December 1999, Kong Qian and an elderly fellow practitioner went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. They were brought back by officers from Weibei Police Station. My daughter was detained in Hanting for 15 days and fined several thousand yuan².

In January 2000, Falun Gong practitioner Chen Zixiu from Weifang was tortured to death. When my daughter heard this she went to Weifang to try to get some justice for her. But she was detained at the Xiguan Police Station in Weicheng for half a day. When Weibei Prison guards brought her back, they detained her in the Weibei Guest House (a temporary prison) in complete violation of the Chinese constitution. Nine people in three shifts kept her under surveillance. They held her for 19 days. I was also detained for 24 days. They deducted all the expenses and subsidies for the nine people from my salary, amounting to over 2,000 yuan.

On April 27th, 2000, Weibei Prison former political division head Zheng Minli, the head of the Weibei Police Station Fan Yongsheng, and more than ten people from the Hanting Police Station came to unlawfully search my house. They confiscated my Falun Gong materials and took me to the Hanting Detention Centre, where I was held for 15 days and was extorted out of 750 yuan.

On October 9th, 2000, my daughter and I went to Beijing to appeal. When we arrived at the Yellow River Bridge, we were seized. Weibei Prison personnel took us back and held us again in the Hanting Detention Centre for 15 days. We went on a hunger strike. The persecutors deducted several thousand yuan from our salaries.

In March 2001, Zheng Minli and others called for people from Wangcun Labour Camp in Jinan City to conduct brainwashing sessions in Weibei Prison. My daughter and I were once again arrested and taken to the Weibei Guest House for several days of persecution.

In July 2001, unable to bear the enormous mental pressure and pain any longer, Kong Qian's father asked for a divorce, saying otherwise he would sue in court. Due to the Jiang regime's implication policy, he had been laid off for three months, lost his managerial position and was told to monitor my daughter and me at home. In August that same year, I reluctantly agreed to his request for a divorce, to alleviate his mental pressure and suffering. Kong Qian's father left us and our happy family was thus broken up due to Jiang and his CCP clique's persecution.

In July 2002, my daughter and I lived temporarily in Weifang. The authorities tried to arrest us again. They went to our relative's place several times to search for us. Since then, the two of us have been homeless, without a secure place to stay.

Kong Qian got to know practitioner Li Jiangang during that time, and they got engaged. They decided to get married on May 13th. This has once again brought my daughter the warmth of a happy family. However, just as they were preparing for marriage, we suffered another misfortune. At around 1:30 a.m. on April 25th, 2004, while my daughter and I were asleep, a stranger's knock on the door woke us up. My daughter opened the door and saw many people crowded outside around our place. It turned out that National Security agents had surrounded our temporary residence. They had already opened our outside security door. At this most critical moment, my daughter and I escaped by climbing over the outside wall.

A few days later we found out that my daughter's husband-to-be, Li Jiangang, was chased while driving and arrested a little past 11:00 p.m. that night.

Li Jiangang returned home at the beginning of 2007, after nearly three years in prison. By then, although he and Kong Qian had already registered to marry, and they were in their 30s, they could not hold their wedding ceremony because the authorities were still trying to arrest us. We chose to wander about to avoid further persecution, living a destitute life.

Since 2008, the CCP has intensified the persecution of Falun Gong on the pretext of "maintaining the stability of the Olympics." The Weifang persecutors openly broke into Falun Gong practitioners' homes in broad daylight, unscrupulously arresting people, confiscating their belongings, and implicating and persecuting their relatives. On July 9th, just a month before the beginning of the Olympics, Weifang government agents carried out an organized, unconstitutional mass arrest of Falun Gong practitioners. As of 6:00 a.m., 12 counties and districts acted together, and within one day, 124 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in 101 incidents.

My daughter was one of those.

At around 6:30 a.m. on July 9th, 2008, more than ten people from the Weifang 610 Office, the police station and the development zone police department sneaked into our temporary rental residence. A woman tricked my daughter into opening the door by saying she needed to read the electric meter. The police rushed in without showing any documents or giving us any chance to speak. They put us in handcuffs and took us away in our pyjamas and slippers. We pleaded with them to allow us to put on our clothes, but our request was refused. They confiscated all our personal belongings and money. Kong Qian was sent to the Weifang Detention Centre that very day.

Falun Gong gave my daughter a healthy body and enabled her to improve her moral standards. The practice also gave us a happy family. But the Communist regime is persecuting Falun Gong, causing countless kind-hearted people to suffer miserably, and this was the reason for our family's breakup. My daughter is now in great danger. I call on all people with a sense of justice to lend us a helping hand, to rescue my daughter, and help her and hundreds of thousands of innocent Falun Gong practitioners be free from persecution and to restore justice to the suffering Chinese people.

Note

1. "The 610 office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

2. "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://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/9/24/186453.html