Mother Arrested, Daughter Unable Find Justice

On September 19th, 2008, Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Guo Changyu, a resident from Jidong County, Heilongjiang Province, was arrested by police officers from the 8510 Agriculture Administration Bureau because she talked about Falun Gong to someone at the Red Flag Mine. That night Ms. Guo was held at the Jidong County Detention Centre.

Ms. Guo Changyu, 48, began practising Falun Gong in 1998. She had previously always been very weak and thin, suffering from tuberculosis. Especially in the wintertime, she coughed constantly. After she started to practise Falun Gong and acted according to the principles of "Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance," she became more energetic and healthy and much more thoughtful toward others. However, after the Jiang [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] regime started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999, Ms. Guo was frequently mistreated. She was arrested and detained because she went to Beijing to appeal for the restoration of the rights of Falun Gong. In mid-March 2003, she was sentenced to three years in prison because she disclosed to others how severe the persecution was. She was detained at the Jixi City Second Detention Centre where she was tortured in a variety of ways.

Ms. Guo's daughter, who is in her twenties, recently graduated from college and is preparing for the postgraduate entrance exam. One day, her mother left the house and didn't come back for two days, which made her very anxious. She later found out that her mother had been arrested again because she had been talking to someone about Falun Gong.

The daughter was worried about her mother's safety, and on September 21st, 2008, she went to the Jidong County Police Department to ask for her mother's release. She said to the police officers, "My mum has been healthy ever since she started practising Falun Gong. She cares about others. It is not wrong to be a good person. Mum didn't commit any crimes. There is no law saying that it's a crime to practise Falun Gong. It is you who are breaking the laws, although you should be the ones enforcing them. This is not good for you. You must release my mother immediately."

At that moment, a slight woman with a one-year-old baby on her back joined the discussion. She said that her husband had also been sentenced to seven years in prison simply because he practised Falun Gong and tried to be a good person. She was finding it hard to make a living on her own with her baby son. At this point, a police officer started shoving the woman around. Fortunately, another person was nice enough to step in and the baby was not hurt.

When Ms. Guo's daughter saw what was happening, she started to cry and left the police department. She tearfully said,"Police officers in China don't act according to the law. The law is just a meaningless piece of paper in China. For a person in China, there are no human rights at all. I wonder if there is any place left where I can appeal for justice for my mother!"

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/9/26/186601.html