The Persecution of Song Xincun and His Family in Wendeng City, Shandong Province

Mr. Song Xincun, fifty-four years old, is a peasant from Zhouge Village, Songcun Town, Wendeng City, Shandong Province. His wife, Yao Qiuhong, is fifty-two. They have a daughter and a younger son. During the past ten years of the persecution of Falun Gong, their family has been together for only two New Year celebrations. The rest of time they have had to stay in different places. They have been arrested and their belongings ransacked. The family's direct financial loss has exceeded two hundred thousand yuan¹.

When the persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20th, 1999, Ms. Yao went to Beijing alone to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong. She was arrested. Xiang Hongping, political instructor in Songcun Town, Wendeng City, and Yu Lanming, director of the Women's Department in Zhouge Village, Songcun Town, brought her home to the Songcun Police Station. Soon after, they took her to an old match factory, where she was subjected to forced labour. They notified her family to pay 2,000 yuan as a bond and promised to return it if Ms. Yao would not go to Beijing to appeal within one year. They gave a receipt but she has yet to get this 2,000 yuan back. Being the main target of police monitoring and arrest, Ms. Yao was forced to leave home and move from place to place.

In September 2001, she managed to find her husband, Song Xincun, who was in another city doing manual labour. Her husband helped her get settled. Their son was 12 years old then. Because of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implication policy, their son was the target of prejudice and was bullied at school. Yao Qiuhong asked her daughter to secretly go get her brother and send him to her. Thus the son followed his mother to live a nomadic life. The 610 Office² in Wendeng City kept looking for them, forcing them to move again and again. They lived a very hard life due to having no source of income. They dug wild vegetables for food and collected rubbish for a living. Finally they settled down in a small village and lived for several years there in seclusion.

In August 2008, the Police Department of Wendeng City wantonly arrested Falun Dafa practitioners on a large scale under the pretense "security" for the Beijing Olympics. Yu Lanming, Director of the Women's Department in Zhouge Village, Songcun Town, Wendeng City, led police to Yantai and managed to get the address of Mr. Song Xincun by means of deceit. During the evening on August 5th, more than thirty police officers, headed by Xiang Hongping from the police department of Wendeng City, along with Xu, Wang Ling, Yu Jianguang, and Li Yinglin from the Domestic Security Division and another two local policemen from Xiejiazhuang Town, Laishan District, Yantai City, Shandong Province, swarmed into Mr. Song's home. They didn't show any identification and were in plain clothes. They arrested Mr. Song's family and ransacked his house without showing any arrest warrant or search warrant. They took Mr. Song, his wife, and their daughter to the Wendeng City Detention Centre. Their son escaped this arrest because he was not at home at the time.

This happened in the summer. Mr Song was dragged out without a shirt on. His shoes ended up missing and his feet were injured and bled badly. The police handcuffed him and pushed him into a police car. He demanded that he be allowed to put on his clothes and shoes but the police ignored him, so he was taken away in only his underwear. Fifteen days later he and his daughter were released, but his wife was sentenced to two years in the Zibo Forced Labour Camp without going through any legal procedures.

Ms. Yao went on a protest hunger strike for more than twenty days in the detention centre and then was transferred to the Fourth Brigade of the Shandong Women's Second Forced Labour Camp. Policewomen Yang Jinhong, Wu Xiuli, Liu Qing, and Fan Naifeng from the Fourth Brigade pinned Ms. Yao down and beat and kicked her. They kicked her between her legs until she bled.

On September 19th, 2008, because Ms. Yao continued to practise Falun Gong, policewomen Fan Naifeng, Wu Xiuli, Liu Qing, and Sun Hua beat her so badly that she lost consciousness. They then told a doctor to give her a check up. The doctor warned them not to beat her again because she was suffering from liver disease. The doctor told them that if they beat her, she would die. It wasn't until then that the police stopped beating her. But they continued torturing her in other ways. They didn't allow her to sleep day or night and ordered inmates to watch over her 24 hours a day. She ate, slept, and used the toilet in the same room. She was deprived of any sleep for 43 days.

A physical examination showed that Mrs. Yao had hepatitis B when she was sent to the forced labour camp. She was unable to eat. Three days later, policewomen Wu Xiuli and other guards forcibly took her to the hospital. Six or seven officers kicked her belly and force-fed her. They didn't pull out the feeding tube until the evening, when they sent her to a toilet in the Fourth Brigade and arranged for someone to watch over her. They used this method of brutal forced-feeding to torture Ms. Yao. Every time they force fed her, they ordered her to pay 200 yuan. Ms. Yao refused to be "transformed³". Wu Xiuli then told her to go to the guards' toilet. Wu tied her to a chair with her legs far apart. She couldn't walk when she was sent back to the cell. On May 9th, 2009, she had been detained 240 days. She still hasn't been released.

Their daughter, Song Yuxian, is 27 years old. She started to practise Falun Gong in 1998. She has been arrested three times since the persecution of Falun Gong began. In January 2001, Ms. Song went to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong. She was arrested on the way at the railway station in Haiyang City. The police detained her at the Dongcun Police Station because she didn't have her ID card with her. In the police station, the police strip-searched her. It was winter and she was only 17 years old. Policewoman Xiang Hongping and other officers from the Songcun Police Station in Wendeng City brought her back to Wendeng and detained her at the Songcun Town match factory. She was made to work in the factory with no pay for over ten days. Because the Chinese New Year was approaching and the police didn't want to be on duty at the match factory, they told the incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners that they could go spend the Chinese New Year at home if they each paid 1,500 yuan. Since the detention was illegal to begin with, none of the practitioners wanted to pay the money. The police then tricked them into paying by "promising" that they could get the money back in a year if they presented their receipt and if they did not go to Beijing again within the year. The practitioners believed them, gave them the money, and got their receipts. One year later when they went to ask for their money back, the police refused them, saying that the officers who issued receipts no longer worked in the police department. The practitioners haven't gotten the money back yet.

On May 22nd, 2002, Ms. Song Yuxian was arrested again. 610 Office personnel Wang Yongjian, Yu Jianguang, and Li Yinglin arrested her and detained her at the Wendeng Police Department. In the 610 Office, Miss Song refused to obey their demands. Five or six policemen beat her and kicked her. She was only 18 years old at the time. At night she was locked up in a cell in an area of Wendeng Prison that detained prisoners who had committed serious offences. During her detention, every Monday and Friday the police interrogated her. When they were not able to get what they wanted, they then tortured her using various methods. Li Yinglin kicked her and beat her legs with a large plank one metre long (it was summer and she only wore thin trousers). He also forced her lower jaw upward with his fist several times. As a result she couldn't open her mouth and was unable to eat or drink or even to speak. Yu Jianguang and Li Yinglin grabbed her hair and hit her head against the wall. Lots of her hair fell out. One day when Li Yinglin was savagely beating Miss Song with a plank, they saw someone passing by. Wang Yongjian signalled to Li Yinglin, who then stopped the beating. Because the police didn't get anything from Miss Song by beating her, they allowed a relative to come see her. Her relative gave Wang Yongjian 500 yuan and they released Miss Song. She stayed with her relatives after she was released, but the police came to harass her relatives many times. Miss Song had to move away and she became homeless again. Wang Yongjian was the head of the 610 Office in 2002. He is now no longer the head.

Not long after Song Yuxian managed to find her family after much effort, she and her parents were arrested again on August 5th, 2008. She was detained for fifteen days at the Wendeng Detention Centre. She was sentenced to one year of forced labour without any trial. She was then sent to the Wangcun Women's Prison with her mother, and was then sent back to the Wendeng Detention Centre after a physical examination showed that she suffered from hepatitis. The detention centre dared not to accept her. Ms. Song is now back home.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

2. "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.

3. "Reform or Transform" Implementation of brainwashing and torture in order to force a practitioner to renounce Falun Gong. (Variations: "reform", "transform", "reformed", "reforming", "transformed", "transforming", and "transformation")

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/5/18/201134.html