The Persecution of Ms. Sun Rui, a Teacher from Yilan County, Heilongjiang Province

Name: Sun Rui
Gender: Female
Age: Unknown
Address: Dalianhe Town, Yilan County, Heilongjiang Province
Occupation: Teacher
Date of Most Recent Arrest: December 12th, 2000
Most recent place of detention: Wanjia Forced Labour Camp in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province
City: Harbin
Province: Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered: Detention, extortion, interrogation, beatings, physical constraint, food deprivation, denial of toilet use, force-feedings, solitary confinement, torture, hung up, electric shock.

Ms. Sun Rui is a teacher from Dalianhe Town, Yilan County, Heilongjiang Province. Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999, she has been detained four times and held in forced labour camps for two years. She has been extorted out of eight thousand yuan¹ while in custody. In addition her workplace didn't pay the salary owed to her, amounting to four thousand yuan, and they also demoted her pay by two levels, resulting in a loss of over ten thousand yuan. Her total economic loss reached thirty thousand yuan. The following is Sun Rui's account of her experiences.

Persecuted in Beijing for Appealing for Falun Gong

On July 20th, 1999, when the persecution began, the deputy principal of our school, Su Jinlong, found Yang Lihua and me at the school. He demanded that we hand in our {Falun Gong} books and write statements promising to not participate in group exercises. He threatened us that if we didn't submit signed statements, we would be sent to a brainwashing centre like the male Falun Gong teachers.

In August 1999, Principal Lu Zhanwen and Deputy Principal Su Jinlong stopped me from working for two months because I persisted in practising Falun Gong.

On February 15th, 2000, two other practitioners and I went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. We went to the Beijing Petition Office to tell the officials the facts about Falun Gong. We were taken to a police station and were forced to provide our names. We were then taken to the Beijing Liaison Office of Harbin City and were held in a room full of Falun Gong practitioners. We were not allowed to talk. We were subsequently taken to the Beijing Liaison Office of Yilan County. Eleven practitioners (male and female) were held in a room of about ten square metres with only one bed. Cheng Yanguo, the official in charge, extorted two hundred yuan each from four of the practitioners.

On February 21st, 2000, Yan Zhiyuan and Kong Xiangli, from the Dalianhe Public Security Bureau, handcuffed the eleven practitioners and took us to the Yilan Public Security Bureau where we were interrogated. They then detained us at the Yilan Second Detention Centre for thirty days. Every day we were given two meals consisting of smelly corn buns and a cabbage soup with tree leaves and mud at the bottom of the soup bowl.

On March 2nd, my family went to the Public Security Bureau to demand my release. Instead of releasing me they forced my family to pay five thousand yuan. Officials from the 610 Office [an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong] forced my family members to write a statement promising to give up Falun Gong, on my behalf. Deputy Principal Su Jinlong deducted one thousand yuan from my salary as his reimbursement for his claimed expenses to Beijing to look for me.

On May 5th, 2000, I again went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. I was arrested and sent to the Beijing Liaison Office of Harbin City. I was beaten for practising Falun Gong exercises there. During my detention at the Beijing Liaison office of Yilan County, the person in charge body searched me and another seven practitioners, and took fifty yuan from each of us. We were given two buns and a small dish of preserved vegetables each day. Several days later Zhang Yu from the Dalianhe Public Security Bureau sent us to the Yilan Public Security Bureau. Three days later I was held at the Yilan Second Detention Centre. Ten days later the Public Security Bureau extorted another three thousand yuan from my family and forced them to write statements promising to give up Falun Gong, on my behalf. Zhang Yu went to my family to ask for money to cover her expenses during her trip to Beijing. My family refused her. She then went to my school. The school principal deducted a total of one thousand nine hundred yuan from my four or five month's salary.

On the evening of July 18th, 2000, police officer Wang took me from my home to the Public Security Bureau to attend a brainwashing session. On July 21st, Qi Jianli, then-secretary of the Political and Legal Committee, made nine practitioners answer questions. Two other practitioners and I wrote that we would continue practising Falun Gong. The deputy directors, Jia Lin and Qi Jianli, then sent us to the Yilan Second Detention Centre and we were held there for sixty-eight days. We were not given enough food or bed linens. Practitioners refused to sit on the plank-style torture device, so guard Gu Haiying beat our backs with a leather belt. Zheng Jun, director of the detention centre, dragged us down from the wooden bed. Two months later our families were again forced to write statements guaranteeing that we would not practise Falun Gong.

In November 2000, then-principal Li Wendong deducted one hundred fifty yuan each month from mine and another three practitioners' salaries. Altogether this amounted to two thousand four hundred yuan. Principal Lu Zhanwen also deducted two hundred yuan each from us.

Extended Handcuffing Injured My Thumbs

On December 12th, 2000, I went to Beijing and shouted out to help Chinese people know that "Falun Gong is good!" in Tiananmen Square. For this the police dragged me to a police car and severely beat me. Policeman Yan Zhiyuan detained me with another male and some female practitioners in the same room in a hotel for two days and two nights. On the way to the train station, because I refused to listen to them, Yan Zhiyuan cuffed my thumbs for twenty-seven hours which resulted in both my thumbs festering and bleeding.

On the way back, the police tied two of us together with ropes. For nearly thirty hours we were not given any water or food. We were also not allowed to use the toilet. At the Yilan Public Security Bureau, officers body-searched us and interrogated us. I was then detained at the Second Detention Center. I held a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Deputy director Lin Zhong, along with four or five criminal inmates tied me into an iron chair. They brushed my throat with a toothbrush and pinched my nose until I had difficulty breathing. I was thus forced to open my mouth, and they force-fed me with salty water. I almost drowned. They also tried to take a photo of me, but I refused. They ordered criminal inmates to drag me around the cell, and when several practitioners didn't allow this, they stopped trying to take a photo of me.

Severely Beaten and Tortured in Wanjia Forced Labour Camp in Harbin

On January 18th, 2001, the Yilan Public Security Bureau sentenced me to two years of forced labour at Wanjia Forced Labour Camp. On January 31st, 2001, practitioners were reciting the Falun Gong teachings in the dining hall, so the guards beat the female practitioners. I stepped out to stop them. Guard Zhao Yuqing dragged me by the hair and put me into a small cell, where I was held for thirty-eight days. After I came back from Beijing, my thumb had festered and when police officer Wang Zhonghua noticed it he ordered Jiang Cao, a doctor from Wanjia Hospital, to rip off the skin of my thumb with a pincer. Jiang Cao then violently scratched my festered thumb. It was so painful.

Because I practised the Falun Gong exercises, police officer Wang Zhonghua tied me to an iron door of a small cell for several days. I was made to stand until midnight every day. I wasn't allowed to have my luggage and was forced to sleep on the cold floor. The meal was corn soup and preserved vegetables. The small cell was cold and damp with no sunlight. After thirty-eight days in that small cell, another five practitioners and I went on a hunger strike for four days before we were allowed to go back to the seventh team. Because we continued practising the Falun Gong exercises, policewoman Liu Ying held me and practitioners Lu Huiwen and Wen Yiling at the garage on the first floor. They tied our arms behinds our backs to the heating pipes, in a position where we weren't able to stand up or squat down. We went on a hunger strike and were finally sent back to the original team.

In the re-education department on the second floor, twelve practitioners recited the Falun Gong teachings together. Policewoman Sheng Liying sealed our mouths with yellow tape and tied our arms behind our backs. Policemen Liu Baibing and Ma Xiaoqian hung us up to the iron rails with our feet in the air and we were left like this for twenty four hours. When we were finally let down, we weren't able to move our arms. My right arm was dislocated and became very swollen. To this day my elbow joint is very painful and stressed.

In 2002 policewomen Zhang Hong, Li Hong and Wang Min beat me with wooden clubs, because I sat dwon to meditate. Team leader Zhang Bo locked us in a room and didn't allow us use the toilet at night. An official by the surname of Zhang from Yilan Public Security Bureau went to Wanjia Forced Labour Camp and tried to force all practitioners from Yilan County to provide fingerprints.

In September 2002, police officer Zhao Yuqing tortured practitioners and tried to force practitioners to write the statements to renounce Falun Gong. My arms were handcuffed behind my back and I was hung from the heating pipes on the roof with my feet barely touching the ground. I felt like my arms were going to break, and I was unable to raise my head. Zhao Yuqing shocked my jaw and the back of my hands with electric batons. My left wrist was left with a scar due to the handcuffs, and my jaw was blistered. They made me sit in a chair, write a "self confession," and penalized me with forced squatting and denied use of the toilet. They forced me to watch TV programmes that slandered Falun Gong, for which we were forced to pay ten yuan each. They also extended my sentence by three months.

In November 2002, Wang Jiaxiang from the 610 Office in Yilan, Wang Fude from the Discipline Inspection Committee, and Tang Xiaoping from the Education Committee came to Wanjia Forced Labour Camp to record my accounts of going to Beijing. Then they reduced my salary, which had not been increased in those two years.

In April 2003, I went back to work at the school. Principal Su Jinlong didn't allow me to give lectures in class because he said there were orders from above. He arranged me to do odd jobs and later to be a security guard. On politically sensitive days, they called me and my family to harass us.

In March 2008, a new principal named Wang Minkuan took over the position, and he came to harass my husband and me twice. My husband then started to hate me.

Ten years of insidious relentless persecution of innocent Falun Gong practitioners has not only done great harm to the Chinese people but done great harm to my family. During my detention in the forced labour camp, my husband had to do housework after working every day, as well as look after our eight-year-old son. He was exhausted. Our son didn't sleep at night and cried for his mother. He wasn't able to deal with him and cried together with our child. He also had to take our son to school and pick him up after school. He was laughed at and looked down on by other people. In the past two years, his hair turned grey because of the intense pressure of this vile persecution.

Note

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

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2010/1/13/216185.html