Qu Mingzhu Sentenced to One Year of Forced Labour, Her Family Broken Up

Name: Qu Mingzhu
Gender: Female
Age: 37
Address: Guang'en Village, Chang'an Town, Bin County, Heilongjiang Province
Occupation: Gas station clerk
Date of Most Recent Arrest: July 3rd, 2008
Most recent place of detention: Qianjin Forced Labour Camp of Harbin City
City: Harbin
Province: Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered: Electric Shock, Forced Labour, Beatings, Torture, Home Ransacked, Detention

Ms. Qu Mingzhu started practising Falun Gong in October 1998. Before that, she suffered from gynaecological diseases and frequent migraines. Due to her poor health, her family was in debt and her relationship with her husband was not good. After she began cultivating, her heart and mind opened up, her diseases all disappeared, her family life became happy, and her friends and relatives all praised her as a good wife and a good mother.

After the Chinese Communist Party started persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999, the local police and other government officials harassed her many times, attempting to force her to give up practising Falun Gong. She insisted that there was nothing wrong with conducting oneself according to the principles of Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance and therefore has remained steadfast in her practice. At about two o'clock in the afternoon on July 3rd, 2008, while Ms. Qu was working at the petrol station operated by her family, Lou Wei, the chief of Chang'an Town Police Station in Bin County, arrived at the gas station in a police vehicle. Officer Liu Shoufa was with him. The two officers ransacked the petrol station. When they found ten Falun Gong DVDs, and pamphlets, they dragged Ms. Qu into the police vehicle and took her to Chang'an Town Police Station. At 6 p.m., the officers transferred her to Bin County Police Department, and she was detained at the Bin County Detention Centre.

After 21 days in detention, Ms. Qu was sentenced to one year of forced labour and taken to Qianjin Forced Labour Camp in Harbin City. Arriving at the forced labour camp, she was body searched and pressured to write the three statements to give up Falun Gong. Refusing to write the statements would be risking being tortured.

During her detention at the labour camp, Ms. Qu and other practitioners were forced to do hard labour every day for 12 to 13 hours. One time the work involved hand selecting toothpicks. If the workload was not finished at the end of the day, captain Huo Shuping ordered everyone to bring their work back to their cells and continue to work on it until midnight. Practitioner Ms. Liu Yu from Harbin City was over 60 years old and was not able to do the toothpick selection work. The authorities then ordered her and 66-year-old practitioner Ms. Liang Chunrong from Wuchang City to stack up heavy bags. As a result of the heavy labour, Ms. Liu Yu coughed up blood.

One time the labour camp authorities forced practitioners detained there to do military marching drills. Ms. Qu refused to shout the slogan that was designed to go with the marching, so Guard Zhang Aihui called her out of the group and kicked her brutally.

During Ms. Qu's detention at the labour camp, her husband could not stand the pressure from various authorities and left home with their child to live in another city. The persecution of Ms. Qu resulted in breaking up an otherwise happy and normal family.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/9/13/208239.html