Falun Gong Practitioner and Former Anchor for Heilongjiang TV Station Zhao Xidong Arrested

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Zhao Xidong was an anchor for the Russian channel and a reporter for the Heilongjiang Province Television Station. He was arrested on December 31st, 2011, and has been detained ever since.

Mr. Zhao was born on August 27th, 1962. He previously worked in the Third Division of the Technical Investigation Bureau of the Shenyang Military Region. He has a wide range of skills, including speaking Russian fluently, writing articles very well, and is great at dubbing, video-recording, and anchoring. In 1993, the Shenyang Military Region allowed him to go to the Heilongjiang Television Station as a special talent. At the station, he worked in the Russian Compile Centre as a translator, editor, reporter, and chief anchor. He was well-known for his talents.

However, Mr. Zhao later became an alcoholic, which created significant problems in his marriage. He wanted to quit drinking but was unable.

In 1998, Mr. Zhao heard about Falun Gong and how the practice helped people cultivate their minds and that many had quit their bad habits from practising. With sobriety in mind, he became a Falun Gong practitioner. Through studying the Falun Gong teachings, he was shocked to discover that all the answers for which he had been searching were in Falun Gong. The mental suffering he had struggled with for so long was replaced by a state of ease and happiness that were beyond description. He began to follow Falun Gong's standards. In the competitive environment of the TV station, where everyone fought for fame and personal interests, he was always calm and content. He always thought of others first and tried to help everyone else. In his apartment building, he frequently cleaned the stairs and hallways. Without even having to work at it, he was able to quit drinking as well. His mind was at peace and his health returned. His family was again happy.

On July 20th, 1999, ex-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) head Jiang Zemin started the irrational persecution of Falun Gong. In many workplaces in China, people had to say that they did not practice Falun Gong. The management of the TV station ordered the practitioners there to quit practising. Mr. Zhao, his wife, and several other practitioners in the station refused to compromise and were held for several months in the “combat readiness unit,” which was directly under the Heilongjiang Province Radio and Television Bureau and located deep in the mountains. That same year, Mr. Zhao was expelled from the CCP by the Party committee of his workplace.

In January 2000, Mr. Zhao was fired and “retained and observed” for a year. His salary was cut by three levels and he was relegated to a janitorial position in a local TV station.

In November 2000, Mr. Zhao went to appeal in Beijing to ask the regime to grant him freedom to practise Falun Gong. He was arrested by the Harbin City Nangang District Police Station. In January 2001, after being held in the detention centre, the Heilongjiang TV station said that he had missed too much work and fired him. The management at the TV station, in fact, refused to sign his release notice when his detention period was complete, so that they could fire him for failure to return to work. As a result, Mr. Zhao was detained for almost another half a year.

By order of the TV station, in April 2001, Mr. Zhao was sent from the detention centre directly to a brainwashing session hosted at the provincial drug treatment center. He was detained there for one month.

Even after the management at the TV station fired Mr. Zhao, they harassed him at his home. In a “division level and above” meeting, they openly announced that they would ask the provincial public security department to arrest Mr. Zhao and his wife.

In 2002, after Changchun City practitioners tapped into the cable TV network to broadcast the facts about the persecution of Falun Gong, practitioners in other regions in China, such as Harbin, followed suit. In the middle of the night, officials from the local 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) and some managers from the TV station went to harass Mr. Zhao at his home. Mr. Zhao did not open the door because it was very late. They thought that no one was home and called a locksmith to break the lock and discovered that Mr. Zhao was home. The police asked to check if there were other people there and left when they saw no one else. The next day Mr. Zhao found that the lock was broken. He went to the police station and the police there said, “You've got to repair that yourself. You would have been in trouble if you weren't home.” (They thought that people who worked in a TV station were the only ones who knew how to tap into cable networks).

On September 23rd, 2005, Luo Gan personally supervised a group of officers in an impromptu arrest of many Falun Gong practitioners in Harbin. A little past 8 p.m. on November 4th, Mr. Zhao was arrested by Haping Road Police Station under the Harbin City Dongli District Police Department. Mr. Zhao's home was ransacked and his personal computer, video camera, blank tapes, and other personal belongings were taken. When Mr. Zhao's family members went to ask for the return of their personal property with the “goods withheld list” issued to them by the police, the state security captain, Yang Shouyi, acknowledged that the police department had confiscated their belongings but would not give them any legal documents. Mr. Zhao's family asked to see him and their request was denied without any reason being given. They did not even know where Mr. Zhao was being held or whether he was safe.

On October 27th, 2006, Mr. Zhao was sentenced to four years in prison and was put in Daqing City Jail. During his detention, there were times when he was not given any food and denied visitation. Because his wife was also a practitioner, the jail's “Education Division” (610 Office) director, Guo Chuntang, and “Jail Politics Division” director Zhuang purposely made things difficult for her and would not sign off on her forms. Many times, she left home to see Mr. Zhao at 5 a.m. and didn't get back home until 8 p.m., while still never having seen her husband. Mr. Zhao did not wear the prison uniform, so the staff instigated other prisoners to tear Mr. Zhao's clothes to shreds.

Mr. Zhao suffered both mentally and physically. He aged quickly in jail and looked to be a lot older, much different from the young and energetic figure that he used be. His family and friends who visited him felt very sad. The long four years destroyed the once beautiful family that many admired. His young daughter used to do very well at school, but after learning about the violent manner in which her father had been treated, she became unfocused and her grades at school fell dramatically. Moreover, CCP personnel went to her school to harass her. They tried to brainwash her as well as her teacher by slandering Falun Gong, hoping to turn them against the practice.

During Mr. Zhao's imprisonment, the responsibility for the family fell entirely on his wife's shoulders. She had also worked for the TV station but was fired as well. She ended up having to take odd jobs here and there and her income was only several hundred yuan¹ every month. She had to take care of their child as well as visit her husband. Her life was very difficult.

Because of all the family stress brought on by the CCP's despicable acts, Mr. Zhao's child was only accepted at a mid-level college, although she once would have been accepted into a top tier school.

In 2009, Mr. Zhao was released from jail. He was not able to find steady work and instead relied on sporadic work making video recordings.

In October 2011, Mr. Zhao finally found a translation job. He continued making videos to supplement their income and thus their financial situation improved a bit.

On December 31st, 2011, Mr. Zhao went to have a few photos printed in a photo shop run by two sisters, who were also practitioners. Just as he arrived, the practitioners were being arrested. Once the police found out that Mr. Zhao was also a practitioner, they arrested him, too and then ransacked his home. They took the following items: his Falun Gong books, two computers (one was for the child to make videos and the other one was for doing translation), two color printers (the child used it to make DVD covers), a video camera (he had ended up getting this back), a telescope, two books of stamp collections, two hard drives, an mp3 player, an mp5 player, a Sony digital camera, a set of high-end nail-cutters, a small speaker, a memory stick, a pair of scissors, a paper knife, a stapler, 3,000 yuan and 10,000 yin in cash from the child's drawer, 3,900 yuan in cash, which included the family's living expenses, such as the money for the gas bill that Mr. Zhao was going to submit, and a black briefcase, which held documents such as Mr. Zhao's apartment's purchase document, gas card, shopping receipts, etc.

Mr. Zhao is currently being held in the Nangang Police Department Detention Centre, Harbin City. His family has hired an honest and kind lawyer to defend him.

We ask practitioners inside and outside of China to help support Mr. Zhao.

Primary people responsible for persecuting Mr. Zhao from 2011 to 2012:

Hou Weiming, Xiangfang District Heping Police Station director
Shi Jisheng and Li Yunmin, Police officers who oversaw the pretrial case against Mr. Zhao
Wang Dianbin, Xiangfang District State Security
Zhang Chi, Xiangfang District Procuratorate First Division (Prosecution Division)
Wang Baolong, Nangang District Procuratorate Prosecution Division
Yu Li, Nangang District Court First Criminal Court judge

Primary people responsible for persecuting Mr. Zhao while he was in Daqing Jail:

Li Weilong, deputy jail director
Guo Chuntang, “Education Division” (610 Office) director
Zhuang Shuben, Jail Politics Division
Wang Yalong, Third Section instructor

Primary people responsible for persecuting Mr. Zhao from 2005 to 2006:

Yang Shouyi, Dongli District State Security captain
Wang Wuwei, Dongli District Court judge
Ning, Dongli District Procuratorate prosecutor

Primary people responsible for persecuting Mr. Zhao in the Heilongjiang Province Drug Treatment Centre:

Zhang Ping
Ning Lixin

Primary people responsible for persecuting Mr. Zhao at the Heilongjiang TV Station:

Li Wei, Ex-secretary of the Committee of Discipline Monitoring
Wang Yueren, Ex-Heilongjiang TV Station director
Cui Bin, Ex-deputy director
Zhang Kezhong, Ex-director of the Department of Radio and TV
(The above three people have all retired. They were noted in Minghui's list of evil people in 2001)

Wang Songjian, Nangang District Wenlin Police Station Police

Note

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