Remembering Older Falun Gong Practitioner Ms. Qu Jie

Ms. Qu Jie was employed at the Jiefanglu Department Store in the Gongnong District of Hegang City, Heilongjiang Province. She had suffered from numerous illnesses and had gone to other cities to find a cure, but to no avail. In 1993, Ms. Qu Jie attended a Falun Gong lecture by the founder of Falun Gong, Teacher Li.

Falun Gong helped Qu Jie experience tremendous physical and spiritual changes. Her illnesses went away without a trace, and she felt very good.

Qu Jie left us with many touching stories. She had a brother and sister-in-law, yet she shouldered the main responsibility of caring for her elderly parents. Once a car knocked her elderly father down, and the driver offered to take him to the hospital. When Qu Jie saw that her father only had scrapes, she dismissed the driver without asking for any money. When her father commented on how the driver got off easy, she replied, "The driver didn't run into you on purpose. It's not easy for him to make a living. Would you feel right using his hard-earned money? We have to live with our conscience."

After the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, Qu Jie, who was close to 60 at the time, was persecuted numerous times. She was first held in the Hegang City Second Detention Centre, where she treated everyone with kindness, including those who abused her. One inmate said, "It would be great if I had known you earlier. Had I been tolerant in the first place, I would never have ended up in this place." Qu Jie told her the principles for being a human being based on the Falun Gong teachings and planted the seeds of kindness in her heart. The inmate was really moved and told Qu Jie that she would behave like a kind hearted person after her release.

Wherever Qu Jie went, she brought information about Falun Gong to everyone. Agents from the police station and street office harassed her frequently and demanded that she give up her practice of Falun Gong. She never gave in. She said that Falun Gong had cured her otherwise incurable illnesses. Now that the practice was being libelled, how could she not defend Falun Gong?

While in detention, her blood pressure shot up to 220-280. The police had to taken her to a hospital, where they continued to pressure her to abandon her belief. She firmly refused. In 2002, she was sentenced to five years in prison. The police snatched her from the hospital ward and took her to the Heilongjiang Women's Prison the next day.

According to prison rules, a person that fails the medical exam cannot be admitted. Based on Qu Jie's health, there was no way the prison should have taken her. However, the police bribed the prison administrators and had her admitted anyway. She was held in Team Three of Division Two. In the winter of 2003, the guards forced detained practitioners, including Ms. Qu, to stand outside in the freezing weather for a whole day. Then they forced her to do hard labour.

Due to the mistreatment and abuse, Qu Jie's health deteriorated day by day. She was eventually transferred to a division for sick detainees. The guards directed inmates to abuse her. Any inmate able to force practitioners to write statements giving up their practice would be rewarded with sentence reductions. Despite the ordeal, she never wavered in her belief in Falun Gong.

Qu Jie suffered a massive brain aneurysm in the summer of 2004 and passed away, but her efforts to plant the seeds of kindness in people's hearts will undoubtedly bear fruit.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/3/22/197583.html