Mr. Pan Mingzhi and His Wife Unable to Attend His Father's Funeral Due to the Persecution

There is a family in Zhongchang Village, Jinzhou District, Dalian City, of which the eldest son, Pan Mingzhi and his wife Yuan Yuchun, both love and respect their parents. Yet why were they absent at Mr. Pan Hongju's funeral while all his other sons and daughters were there paying their final tributes to him when he passed away?

It turned out that the daughter-in-law, Ms. Yuan, has been arrested many times for telling people the facts about Falun Gong since the government began its persecution in 1999. Worse yet, when she was released from jail, the local police still kept harassing her and her family. They followed her relatives around hoping to catch her. Ms. Yuan and her immediate family were forced to stay away from their home, and not contact any of her other family members or relatives.

What has enabled Ms. Yuan to maintain her steadfast belief in Falun Gong despite such hardship?

When she was young, she did not get proper rest after giving birth. She eventually fell ill and collapsed under the burdens of life, and suffered from rheumatism throughout her whole body, including her heart. She tried all kinds of medications, but they all failed. All she could do was to lie uselessly on the couch, suffering from her pain. After being paralyzed for four months, she was introduced to Falun Gong through a friend.

Miraculously, she was able to walk the first day she began to read the Falun Gong book, Zhuan Falun. Soon, she was able to clean the house and prepare meals. However, because of her belief in Falun Gong, she
suffered persecution by the Chinese Communist Party when they began suppressing Falun Gong.

In July 1999, Ms. Yuan went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and was arrested and jailed in Jinzhou Jail.

To help people to see through the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) lies, Ms. Yuan distributed fliers with information about the persecution of Falun Gong. She was arrested and jailed again in the same jail in November 2000, when someone reported her. In the jail, she was cuffed, shackled and tortured. They called the special cuffing and shackling apparatus "Benz", and would not take it off her, even while she slept, forcing her to stay in a crouching position. To protest this abuse, Ms. Yuan went on a hunger strike, so she was forced fed with salt water. The warden Mr. Du yelled that they would not let her drink water even if she died of thirst, while adding handfuls of salt into the already salty water. She was finally released a month after she began to exhibit life-threatening symptoms. After her release, she kept discharging foul-smelling pus from her mouth and nose for over a month.

Ms. Yuan was arrested by the plainclothes police in August 2001 because she was overheard saying "Falun Gong is good." They took her to an unknown hospital. The doctor persecuted her by sticking needles into
her acupuncture points. The police labelled her as mentally disordered, which incited the hospital staff to berate her. Later, after Ms. Yuan told them the facts, the staff realized that she was normal and stopped
their mistreatment of her.

After her release, Ms. Yuan stayed away from home, but she learned that the police went to her home to harass her family members. In the meantime they lied to the elders at her home, saying that they would stop bothering them and that Ms. Yuan and her child could go home without problems. In February, 2001, Ms. Yuan's child and her sister went home to get some clothing and were spotted by the village Women's Director, Wang Yanhua. A few minutes later the police car from Zhongchang Police station arrived and took the two to the police station. The police interrogated them individually trying to find out the whereabouts of Ms. Yuan. The child was so scared that he dared not go home any more.

Under such a situation, how could Ms. Yuan and her family members go home? How could they still fulfil their filial piety? It is the CCP and its police force that have caused them to not be able to go home and pay their respect to their elders.

When Mr. Pan Hongyu was dying, the only people missing were his eldest son and daughter-in-law, even though they truly missed and cared about their father. They were also absent for his funeral, but they were grieving and missing him away from home.

One has one's home, but cannot return to it. One has a family, but cannot be with them. When will the bright moon shine on my way home? When will China restore its past glory?

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/5/24/201538.html