Ms. Wei Hong's Personal Account of the Persecution She Suffered

Name: Ms. Wei Hong
Gender: Female
Age: 29
Address: Raohe County, Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province
Occupation: Unknown

Date of Most Recent Arrest: June 12th, 2007
Most Recent Place of Detention: Jiamusi Forced Labour Camp
City: Jiamusi
Province: Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered: Interrogation, detention, forced labour, brainwashing, beatings, being hung up, torture, denial of toilet use, extortion, home ransacked

Ms. Wei Hong is from Raohe County, Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials from the 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) have continuously persecuted her and her mother since the year 2000. The following is her first-hand account of the persecution she has suffered to date.

Unjustly Detained

The local police from Raohe County came to my home at 1:00 p.m. on March 27th, 2002. They lied to me, saying that they wanted to talk to me and would let me come home shortly, and took me to the State Security Bureau. They ransacked my home and interrogated me thereafter. In the evening, they took me to a hotel opposite a stationary store. I was escorted to the Dongfanghong Detention Centre for temporary detention thereafter.

I was taken to the Raohe Detention Centre on April 30th. Other detained Falun Gong practitioners in the centre were Ms. Sun Shuying and Ms. Zhang Ying.

On May 13th, which is World Falun Gong Day, all of the practitioners were taken to a room that served as the venue for brainwashing. Officials from the detention centre called in “education assistants” from their respective workplaces. Officers from the 610 office, State Security Bureau and Domestic Security Division forced us to watch video programmes that slandered Falun Gong and forced us to write essays talking about our thoughts on the subject. In order to intimidate us into giving up our faith, soldiers guarded the entry in the corridor, and they pointed their guns at us.

I was sentenced to one year of forced labour in August 2002 and detained at the Raohe Detention Centre for more than a month after sentencing. One day, guard Hongzhong came with a lot of papers and ordered me to write a guarantee statement to renounce my belief in Falun Gong. Since I could not bear the ever increasing pressure of the persecution, I wrote this statement against my will. However, the 610 Office still refused to release me with an excuse that my statement failed to pass their requirements.

When I was washing my trousers one day, Zhang Jiguang and Liu Lixin from the 610 Office harassed and threatened me.

One day in the autumn, guards Wang Shuhe and Zheng Yan took practitioners Ms. Zhao Qiaoning, Ms. Liu Cuiyun and me to a hospital to perform a blood test. They handcuffed us, and a lot of other guards pointed their guns at us, fearing that we might escape.

Zhao Yunpeng, the wife of the prison doctor, and Xu Zaijiu, the wife of the detention centre head, were in charge of cooking the meals at the centre. The kitchen was infested with rats, and some of the food had teeth marks on them from being gnawed on by the rats before it was given to us.

Wang Jinzhuo from the Raohe County government and Liu Lixin, Wang Weiqiang and Zhang Jiguang from the 610 Office printed a document, which was several pages long, and asked me to sign it, saying that they would then release me. I signed the document, but Xu Zaijiu, head of the detention centre, still extorted 1,500 yuan¹ from my family.

Crippled by Constant Harassment

After my mother was arrested and taken to a forced labour camp, I felt very lonely and did not have enough money to cover living expenses. I had to work as a nanny to make ends meet. Two officials from Raohe County often harassed and followed me. Life was very difficult, and I lived in a state of anxiety.

Wang Jinzhuo, Zhang Jiguang and Liu Lixin came to my home in the summer of 2003. They searched around and asked me whether I still practised Falun Gong. One person took notes, photos and finger prints and asked me to sign the notes. I was told that the document would be kept in the computer archives.

Liu Lixin, Zhang Jiguang and another person from Shuangyashan City pressured me to appear on television and slander Falun Gong. They also forced my family members to persuade me to do so, but I refused to cooperate.

Tortured by Police from Raohe County

Zhang Jiguang, Li Xiaohong, Wang Tao, Wang Jiangjun, Wang Weiqiang and Liu Jianjun, in collaboration with the neighbourhood committee and staff from the Raohe County government, came to my home in a white minibus to arrest my mother and me. Then they confiscated personal property from my home, including DVDs exposing the persecution, Falun Gong books and materials. They also ripped open our wooden floor and looked for what they called “evidence.”

I was taken to a room on the right side of the second floor of the Dongfang Hotel. They interrogated me and pressured me to tell them where I got my USB drive. I refused to answer and they began to torture me. They cuffed my hands behind my back and hung me up with straps onto the pipe of the central heating system. The straps tightened around my arms, as the officers repeatedly pulled on one end to raise me until my legs couldn't touch the ground. They repeatedly asked me where I got the USB drive and the computer from, how I browsed the Internet, and where I got the printing paper from.

They did not let me use the toilet and I could not hold it in any longer. Since I could not bear the torture anymore, I told them that the things they wanted were at my sister-in-law's house. Only then did they allow me to go to the toilet. The police ransacked my sister-in-law's home and confiscated her property, including staplers, USB drives, computer hard drives, as well as Falun Gong books, and 8,000 self-adhesive posters exposing the persecution.

I did not eat and drink for 16 days starting on June 14th, 2007, to protest the persecution. I lost consciousness in the afternoon of June 30th. I was carrthied into a car and taken to a hospital. Liu Jianjun from the detention centre told the doctor that my illness was faked. I was diagnosed with poisoning, and the doctor pricked my fingers with a needle. Zheng Yan (female) used the opportunity to pinch my thighs so hard that they turned black and blue. They scratched the arches of my feet. When I was having an intravenous drip, Liu Lixin kicked and shook the bed. Finally, I could not bear it anymore and stopped the intravenous drip.

The written judgment arrived on August 7th. They told my mother and me to sign it, but we refused. A few days later, Liu Lixin told my mother and me that we were sentenced to one and a half years of forced labour.

Subjected to Forced Labour

Officers escorted my mother Liu Yajun and me to the Jiamusi Forced Labour Camp in the early morning of August 8th, 2007. We were handcuffed and shackled. A guard at the detention centre said, “There is not a single seal on the document of your case.”

I was forced to do manual labour at the No. 7 Division. We had to made chopsticks and work from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

My father and police officers Li Xiaohong and Zhang Qiang came to the detention centre to pick me up around 2 p.m. on June 4th, 2008. Officials from the 610 office told me in the afternoon of June 5th to sign a guarantee statement to stop practising Falun Gong.

They repeatedly harassed me from June to December 2008. Policemen Liu Lixin, Fan Wentao and Li Xiaohong often came to my home to monitor me. They wanted to scare me into giving up my beliefs.

Officers from the 610 Office followed me all the time during the period of the Beijing Olympic Games.

During the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, a white van followed me wherever I went.

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/2011/2/24/236719.html