Latest News from China - 02/02/2001

[Wuhan City, Hubei Province] The local authorities detain three nursing practitioners Three young, nursing practitioners are being forced to attend a "transformation class" in the Wuhan district of Jianghan. Two of them were previously arrested for going to Beijing to hold peaceful appeals for Falun Gong last year. They were allowed to go home to care for their five-months-old babies after serving a 24-day detention and paying a fine of 5,000 Yuan (5 months of an average salary) each. The third practitioner was detained in Beijing for 12 days and then in Wuhan for 15 days, and allowed to go home to care for her baby after paying a fine of 400 Yuan. All three practitioners were coerced into attending the class in January 2001, and they are still being detained there. The secretary general of the Jianghan District Political and Law Commission said that they would have to write pledges to "break away" from Falun Gong if they want to go back home, but the practitioners have refused to do so and are demanding to be released unconditionally. At this point, 59 practitioners are being illegally detained at the class. From the end of December 2000 to January 5, 2001, 15 practitioners from the district of Jianghan were sent to the labor camps. We would like to take this opportunity to urge the kind-hearted people everywhere to help secure the release of these three nursing practitioners, along with the other practitioners who are being illegally detained in China. [Fuzhou City, Fujian Province] A local judge arrested and detained for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong Lin Wangmao, the head judge at the Hongshan District Court in the city of Fuzhou City, was arrested when he went to Tiananmen Square to hold an appeal for Falun Gong on January 1, 2001. He was detained at the Chongwen Detention Center in Beijing for 20 days, during which time his physical and mental health was greatly damaged. Lin was sent back to Fuzhou on January 20, 2001, and he has been held at the Shuitou 1^st Detention Center since then. There is a high probability that he will be getting a prison term soon. Lin Wangmao has been a Falun Gong practitioner since February of 1997. Since then, he has become a much better person, and he quickly became completely healthy after having suffered from a number of diseases for years. After he started practicing Falun Gong, he received a number of prestigious awards for his outstanding job performance, including the Fujian Province Model Worker Award, one of the Top 10 Young Fujian Judges, and one of the Top 10 Law Enforcement Officers in the province. He also was honored with three special citations (one 1^st-class, one 2^nd-class, and one 3^rd-class) for his contributions to society, and his employer named him as an outstanding contributor for a number of years running. Lin is a well-known figure in the community, and he is respected and admired by many. Now he is behind bars just because he went to Beijing to speak four words from his heart "Falun Dafa is good!" [Sichuan Province] The authorities plan to conduct home searches of all local practitioners The police commission of the Sichuan Province announced plans to search the homes of all the local practitioners in the next few days. The goal is to seize and destroy all of their Falun Gong materials. The practitioners in Sichuan and all over China are asked to be prepared for such a search and use their righteousness to stop the authorities from accomplishing their evil goal. [Southern China] Local practitioners spread the message of Falun Gong during the Chinese New Year festival Right before the Chinese New Year, practitioners in a southern Chinese city hung many small Falun Gong banners on the trees next to all the major city streets. The banners had words such as "Falun Dafa is good" written on them. During the Chinese New Year, approximately 27 local practitioners were forced to attend a "class" located in Mingling, where they remain to this day (the "class" was just another name for house arrest). Those practitioners who have not been arrested yet are all being watched. [Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province] The authorities force local practitioners to attend "transformation classes" The city of Nanjing has divided local practitioners into groups and opened separate "classes" for practitioners in each group. The practitioners who were forced to attend such a class in November of 2000 conducted a group hunger strike in protest. Nine days later, those practitioners who were over 60 years old were released. However, many other practitioners were either sent to the Qinglongshan Mental Hospital, the local detention centers, or the labor camps. [Shenyang City, Liaoning Province] The local authorities persecute Falun Gong practitioners Many practitioners are being held in the Longshan Labor Camp in the city of Shenyang. The authorities have placed heavy financial burdens on their families by forcing them to pay 2,000 Yuan per month (2 months of an average salary) each in "living expenses." Before the Chinese New year, the local police stations and residential neighborhood commissions tried to force practitioners to write pledges promising to give up Falun Gon, and ordered them to curse Master Li and Falun Dafa. Those practitioners who refused to do so were told that they would be arrested and sent to the labor camps. In addition, the authorities ordered the family members of practitioners to watch them at all times and stop them from going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. [Xingji City, Hebei Province] The local authorities step up persecution of Falun Gong practitioners Shen Zhanqun, the newly appointed general secretary of the Xinjing City Communist Party, announced at the very beginning of his term that "suppression of Falun Gong is first and foremost on the city's political agenda." At a city meeting, Shen ordered the city officials to speak out against Falun Gong one by one, and he told them that any government employee who refused to do so would be fired on the spot. Before the Chinese New Year, several deputy department heads of the Xingji Police department were removed from their posts for "not doing enough to suppress Falun Gong." Shen then broke the chain of promotion and promoted a few captains from the local police stations who had been viciously persecuting local practitioners to fill these positions. The local TV stations in Xingji and in the nearby city of Zhenzhou openly announced that "In the future, anyone who dares to practice Falun Gong or goes to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong will be arrested and sent to the detention center or the labor camps. Any employee of the local companies who does so will be expelled from the Communist Party and fired before being sent to the detention center or the labor camps." During the Chinese New Year period, all the local governmental agencies and local companies kept tight watch over the homes of practitioners. The authorities even sent people to live in the homes of those practitioners who were considered as "key targets" or "key members" to watch over them, and took away their telephones to prevent them from "organizing themselves." According to the guards at the local detention center, a few practitioners are being held at the detention center for refusing to write pledges promising to give up Falun Gong. The authorities have cut off all contact between these practitioners and the outside world. Their families are not allowed to visit them or send anything to them. Four local practitioners have been sent to the labor camps recently. They are Cao Yingbing (male), Qi Yue (female), Bai Lihua (female), and Chen Yufeng (female). The terms of their sentences are all around 2 years. In addition, practitioners Wei Aixing, Geng Chunguang, and Cai Maolin have been officially arrested and charged with pending sentences. [Jingxing County, Hebei Province] Jinxing police torture Falun Gong practitioners The police from the Jingxing County Police Department Detective Squad and various local police stations have abused and brutalized many Falun Gong practitioners. 17 practitioners (13 female and 4 male) from the city of Wuhan, Jiangsu Province, Liaoning Province, and the city of Fujian were sent to Jinxing after they were arrested in Beijing for holding appeals for Falun Gong and refusing to tell the police their names and addresses. Acting as if they had gone mad, the local police applied a number of cruel methods to beat and torture these practitioners, including pressing wooden bats on their legs. In some cases, four or five police would surround a practitioner and hit him with electronic batons simultaneously. A few local practitioners are being held in the Jingxing Detention Center. They are: Bai Yumei (arrested for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on December 9, 2000), Liu Yanfen (arrested for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on December 21, 2000), Wang Shufeng (arrested for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on January 1, 2001. Her husband works at the Jinxing Veterinary Hospital), Kang Liying, and Wu Rongting (who was arrested for writing a letter to the head of the Jinxing County Police Department to tell him the truth about Falun Gong). [Maoming City, Guangdong Province] Dozens of local practitioners go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, including one who later dies at the hands of the police At the beginning of December, several dozen Maoming practitioners went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. In the middle of December, even more practitioners went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong as well. The local police (led by Lu Xiao) abused and tortured these practitioners after they were arrested and sent back to Maoming. As a result, more than a dozen practitioners were seriously injured, and one practitioner was persecuted to death. Even after the death of the practitioner, the police still went ahead with the plans to formally charge him or her. The following are the names of a few people in the Maoming area who have been viciously persecuting Falun Gong practitioners: Wang Zhaolin: the head of the Maoming City Communist Party who leads the persecution of Falun Gong in the city. Lu Xiao: a police officer at the Maoming City Police Department He Ping: the head of the Maoming City Police Department Peng Jian: the head of the Maoming City Police Department Political Security Division Ke Jiahao: a police officer at the Maoming City Police Department [Fengrun County, Hebei Province] The Fengrun Detention Center abuses the detained Falun Gong practitioners The police at the Fengrun County Detention Center have employed numerous cruel methods to torture and abuse the practitioners being detained there. They often held interrogation sessions for individual practitioners. During these sessions, the guards routinely stripped the practitioners down to their underwear, placed handcuffs on them, hung them up in the air, and hit them with steel chains. In many cases, the bodies of the practitioners were covered with blood streaming down from their arms, and the bones of their hands lay bare. The rumor is that the government has recently decided to kill these practitioners and fabricate stories about their death afterwards. [Leiyang City, Hunan Province] The local authorities persecute Falun Gong practitioners Chen Jiqi, male, in his 50s, is the head of the Politics and Law Commission in the city of Leiyang, Hunan Province. His home phone is 86-734-4332803. He has ordered the arrests of the local practitioners 38 times and forced them to pay fines totaling 168,200 Yuan (the average monthly salary is only 1000 Yuan) without giving any receipts. Five practitioners have been sent to the labor camps. Chen has also secretly accepted the bribes from the families of some practitioners. The following contains the names of local practitioners who have been sent to the labor camps: Li Meixiang, female, 34, was sentenced to two years at the labor camps and fined 8,000 Yuan. Wang Xiangling, female, 35, a former employee of the City Clothing Company, was sentenced to one and a half years at the labor camps and fined 6,000 Yuan. Ai Juying, female, 48, a former employee of the City Shopping Center, was sentenced to one and a half years at the labor camps and fined 8,000 Yuan. Wu Yongling, female, 52, was first detained at the local detention center for more than a month, and then sentenced to one and a half years at the labor camps on top of paying a fine of 8,000 Yuan. Ouyang Cuilan, female, 55, a former employee of the City Education Commission, was arrested twice and then sentenced to one and a half years at the labor camps on top of paying a fine of 8,000 Yuan.