Ms. Zhang Xuemei Sent to Harbin Forced Labour Camp

Ms. Zhang Xuemei's residence was broken into by the policemen from Jinshantun District, Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province; her computer and other personal belongings worth more than 10,000 yuan¹ were taken away on April 23rd, 2010. Additionally Ms. Zhang was arrested and detained in Jinshantun Detention Centre for more than 10 days. She was later sentenced to two-years of forced labour, and is currently detained in Harbin Forced Labour Camp.

Ms. Zhang is forty-four years old, and she resides in Jinshantun District. When she was little she was very thin, and when she was about ten years old, she was diagnosed with hysteria. She would become short of breath and her eyeballs would become motionless. Her father was a doctor of Chinese medicine and for many years she took the herbal medicines that he prescribed for her, but her diseases were not cured. They also visited some well-known doctors, but those doctors were unable to cure her diseases either.

Ms. Zhang Xuemei started to practise Falun Gong in 1997, and abides by the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. A few months after she practised Falun Gong, the episodes of hysteria which had bothered her for twenty years, completely disappeared.

During the decade long persecution of Falun Gong, Ms. Zhang has been persecuted several times. She has been monitored, and policemen frequently go to her residence to harass her. Her ID card was confiscated, and furthermore, she is obliged to report to the authorities if she needs to go out of town.

When she went to Jinshantun District Government to appeal against the persecution of Falun Gong on October 18th, 1999, she was pushed and dragged by the policemen so violently that her sleeves were torn. After that, she was detained in the local police station for over 40 days.

One day before the Chinese New Year in 2000, Ms. Zhang was arrested by some policemen from the police station, and once again detained for more than 40 days.

The Communist regime regards certain days of a year as sensitive dates. Ms. Zhang was arrested one more time on the eighth day of the fourth month of the year 2000 on the Chinese lunar calendar. The head of Jinshantun City Detention Centre, Meng Xianhua ordered that all practitioners detained in the centre were to be given only two bowls of broth a day. Not having enough food to eat, Ms. Zhang was nothing but skin and bone. At the end of each month, Zhang Xinguo from the Political and Security Office wrote release tickets for practitioners who had been detained in the centre for a month, and then these practitioners would be escorted to the local police station where they stayed in a meeting room overnight. The next day, the authorities at the local police station would write tickets to detain the practitioners who were then escorted back to the detention centre. In this way, Ms. Zhang was detained for three months, and forced to pay 500 yuan.

Ms. Zhang went to Beijing to appeal in December 2000. On Tiananmen Square, Ms. Zhang was surrounded and beaten by policemen with plastic pipes filled with sand. She was later taken to the Tiananmen Square Police Station. After that, a handful of policemen from Jinshantun District, among them Xiao Jingyu, escorted Ms. Zhang to Yichun City liaison office in Beijing where she was body searched, and handcuffed. A few days later, she was transferred back to Jinshantun Detention Centre and detained for more than ten days. This time, she was given two years of forced labour and locked up in Harbin City Drug Rehab Centre.

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://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/6/19/225645.html