The Facts of the Persecution of Falun Gong -- September 10, 2008

Issued by Clearwisdom Net

Content


  • World Record Breaking Handicapped Athlete Suffers Brutal Persecution
  • Mr Zhang Qingyuan, a champion handicapped athelete, has been repeatedly imprisoned and tortured. Since 2006, Mr Zhang has been in hiding to avoid arrest and imprisonment and has been forced to move about despite his handicapped condition. As the Olympics approached, police came searching for him, harrassed his relatives, and detained his younger sister in August of 2008.
  • 70-Year-Old Mr. Wei Yingxin Tortured at Yangjiang Prison
  • A retired medical scientist is imprisoned and his family harassed.


    World Record Breaking Handicapped Athlete Suffers Brutal Persecution

    A champion handicapped athlete, a world record holder, has been tortured and otherwise persecuted for many years in China--persecuted for his belief in Falun Gong.

    Mr. Zhang Qingyuan, 40 years old, is from Wuhan City, Hubei Province. His left forearm was injured when he was young. In 1980, he started to participate in sports events for disabled people. He achieved great results in numerous national competitions. In 1994, he won the triple jump championship in the 4th Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled, while breaking the world record. At the end of 1995, he became a member of the national team, in preparation for the 1996 Los Angeles Disabled Olympics, although in the end, he did not attend the games. But unlike so many other former Chinese athletes, Mr. Zhang was not invited to attend the Beijing Olympics as a guest of honor. Instead, he was persecuted for his practice of Falun Gong, for his firm belief in Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance.

    Mr. Zhang Qingyuan had been taken into custody numerous times since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. He was brutally tortured and in the end, forced to leave town. More about the history of his plight follows.

    On November 5, 2001, officers of the 1st Division of Wuhan City Police Department took Mr. Zhang against his will to the 2nd Station of the 7th Division in Wuhan City (also called the 2nd Detention Center of Wuhan City. On December 3, he was taken to Erdaopeng brainwashing center in Jianghan District, Wuhan City. At the end of June 2002, Mr. Zhang was deprived of sleep and forced to stand for extended hours facing a wall. The brainwashing center officials also prevented him from washing his face or brushing his teeth. Mr. Zhang was taken to the Jianghan District Detention Center, which is located in Huangjiadawan area, in Jianghan District. Officials were secretly planning to send him to a labor camp. Mr. Zhang went on a hunger strike in protest. He was released on the eighteenth day of the hunger strike.

    On July 19, 2005, officers from the 1st of Wuhan City Police Department arrested him again. The officers confiscated various Falun Gong materials, a personal computer, a printer and some personal items. Mr. Zhang was taken to Wuhan City No. 2 Detention Center. He was held in a cell with inmates who had been arrested on charges of homicide and other serious misconduct. Mr. Zhang went on a hunger strike and was brutally force-fed. Officials gave orders to insert a tube through his nostril into his stomach. The tube was about the size of a finger, and when it was pulled out, it was filled with blood. After several force-feeding sessions, Zhang Qingyuan still refused to give in. The detention guards then tied him onto a wooden bed. They stretched out his four limbs, and shackled his hands and feet to the board. They left the feeding tube in his stomach. During each force feeding session, they injected liquid through the tube. This cruelty continued until his release on August 9th.

    After he returned home, Mr. Zhang recovered within a month of resuming his study and practice of Falun Gong. At the end of September 2005, he took part in the 7th Wuhan City Sports Games and the 1st Sports Games for the Disabled. He won two gold and one silver medals.

    However, the persecution did not stop. Officers of the 1st Division of Wuhan City Police Department transferred so-called "case materials" on Mr. Zhang to Wuhan City Procuratorate. In December 2005, officers from Wuhan City Procuratorate came to search his home. Mr. Zhang did not cooperate, and instead began to clarify the facts about the persecution to them. In March 2006, Wuhan City Intermediate Court sent people to his home. Mr. Zhang was not at home when they came to take him into custody. On April 5, 2006, during the Qingming Festival, a day to tend the graves, Mr. Zhang was on his way to his hometown in the countryside to visit his ancestors' tomb. Officers from the 1st Division of Wuhan City Police Department took him to the 2nd Detention Center. On April 7, Mr. Zhang was unlawfully placed on trial at Wuhan City Intermediate Court.

    On June 1, 2006, officials from Wuhan City Intermediate Court delivered a court document to Mr. Zhang's home. It was a notice sentencing him to 4 years in prison on charges with no legal basis. Officials asked whether Mr. Zhang would file an appeal, saying that he had to sign the court document if he was going to do so. Mr. Zhang refused to sign. He was told that he had ten days to launch an appeal. Mr. Zhang knows that the Communist regime does not follow the law when it comes to the persecution of Falun Gong. He was forced to leave town. For over two years, Mr. Zhang, a disabled person, had no place to live, while facing arrest wherever he went.

    At the end of May 2008, just before the Olympic torch relay took place in Wuhan City, officials were looking for Mr. Zhang Qingyuan. They threatened his family, trying to find out where he was. They even searched the homes of his relatives, and certain family members were followed and placed under surveillance.

    On August 2, 2008, less than a week before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Mr. Zhang's younger sister, Ms. Zhang Zhen, a practitioner, was arrested in front of Zhongshan Park. Her mother and father are in their 60's and 70's. Both were left at home. Her father suffers from mental illness and cannot care for himself. After a relentless search, Ms. Zhang's mother found that she was being held at the 1st Women's Administrative Detention Center. Her detention was to end on August 17, 2008. Her elderly mother left Ms. Zhang's ill father at home. She was full of hope and went to the detention center to take her daughter home. However, she watched in pain while her daughter was taken away. The CCP police from Jianghan District Police took Ms. Zhang Zhen to Erdaopeng brainwashing center.



    70-Year-Old Mr. Wei Yingxin Tortured at Yangjiang Prison

    Mr. Wei Yingxin is 70 years old, and a retired medical scientist at the Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Company in Guangzhou City. He continued to live in the company's dormitory following retirement. Below is an account of persecution he was subjected to over the past three years under the Communist regime.

    1. Arrested and home ransacked

    Police officers from Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City arrested Mr. Wei Yingxin at Xincheng Bus Station in Wuyang at 11:00 a.m. on September 12, 2005. They took him to Daxin Street Police Station. Yuexiu District 610 Office agents, and officers from the Daxin Street and Tonghe Police Stations ransacked his home at 2:40 p.m. that same day. At first they tried to open his front door with a master key, but the door was locked from the inside. Wei's family heard the noise. The police demanded they open the door but the family refused. The police pried the door open with a metal bar that was more than 3.3 feet long. They broke the locks on two stainless steel burglar-proof doors, then all of the officers forced their way in. When the family asked to see their police badge numbers, five officers turned around and left, and the others began turning everything upside down. Following this incident, the police lied to Wei Yingxin, who was in their custody at the time, saying that no one would go near his home. They transferred him to the Yuexiu District Detention Center in the afternoon of the day of the arrest.

    2. Mistreatment in the detention center

    The authorities abused Wei Yingxin at the detention center. He suffered a fever and vomited blood. His hands shook so violently that he could not hold a pen. His salt-and-pepper hair turned completely white. Once, a Yuexiu District police officer handcuffed him and forced him to sit on the floor, then told Wei to sign a document to renounce his belief. Wei refused, and the officer shoved him against a sharp corner. Mr. Wei immediately lost consciousness from the pain and sustained lower back injuries. He was bedridden for two weeks.

    3. Unconstitutional trial

    Yuexiu District Court agents subjected Wei Yingxin to an unconstitutional trial on January 25, 2006. Local officials forbade his wife to audit the trial. Wei Yingxin insisted he did not commit any crime by practicing Falun Dafa and shouted, "Falun Dafa is good!" His 95-year-old mother, who was in the courtroom, burst into tears and yelled, "My son is wronged!" The judge sentenced Wei Yingxin to four years in prison on May 25, 2006. He was taken to the Yangjiang Prison in Guangdong Province on August 16, 2006, where he remains incarcerated to this day.

    4. Torture at Yangjiang Prison

    The prison officials forced Mr. Wei to watch slanderous Falun Gong propaganda on a daily basis. He protested. The guards tortured him by forcing him to bend over at a 90-degree angle, with his arms behind his back, raised toward the ceiling. They made him do this for two hours each time and put a pair of 55 lb. shackles on his feet. His Falun Gong practitioner wife protested. The authorities put her under surveillance and denied her visitation rights for seven months. Even when she was finally allowed to meet with Wei, the guards would pick fault with her and restrict each visit to 15 minutes.

    5. Harassment of family

    Wei Yingxin's wife and a relative went to visit him at the detention center on September 27, 2007. The day before they made the trip, street Party committee officials went to their home and interrogated them. When the family members arrived at the detention center, swarms of police officers greeted them and kept them under surveillance at all times, from two steps in front and behind. They made the family go through the security checks twice and monitored them during meals and the actual meeting. After they left the facility, officials followed them in a small, unmarked car over a long distance. Once at home, the family members realized some plainclothes agents were watching them from nearby. The street Party committee head led a group of officials. They harassed the family again early the next morning, doing so because they claimed the family did not notify them prior to the visit, though they clearly knew everything about the trip even before it took place. These persecutors threatened to arrest the family at any time if they "dared to stir up trouble." This seven-day-a-week, 24-hour surveillance has continued to this day.

    6. 610 Office agents forbid meeting between elderly mother and son

    Wei Yingxin's 97-year-old mother fell ill in March 2008 during his incarceration. Wei's son applied with the officials to grant a meeting between Wei and his mother, but the officials refused. Wei's mother passed away one month later, in April 2008. Unfortunately, her last, simple wish before her death was unfulfilled.

    7. Further persecution

    When Wei Yingxin's wife saw him in November 2007, Wei told her that prison officials agreed to reduce his sentence by one year. Yet in August 2008, the same officials told his wife that Wei would be held at least until the winter of 2008 or 2009.