Latest News from China - 05/06/2001

[Henan Province] Heavy Fines Lead to the Death of a Practitioner's Family Member I am a Falun Gong practitioner in Henan Province. On December 24, 2000, officials from my village came to my home and tried to force me to "break away" from Falun Gong. I was left no choice but to flee from my home. I knew my family would be worried about me, so I asked someone to send them a message and tell them that I was OK. Somehow the officials from my village heard about it. They tracked me down and took me to the Baiquan Police Station in Hui County. The police there told me that I would have to pay a fine of 2,000 Yuan (the average monthly income in China is 500 Yuan per month) if I wanted to be released. My family was too poor to come up with that much money. So the police first locked me up at the Hui County Police Department, and then moved me to the local detention center. My mother-in-law fell apart when she heard the news. She suddenly collapsed, and died then and there. It has been three months now since I was first arrested. I am not allowed to go home simply because I cannot come up with the 2,000 Yuan. [Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province] Authorities Sentence Zhou Yongnian and Nine Other Practitioners to Long Prison Terms Zhou Yongnian, male, 40, was a resident of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. On February 19, 2000, Zhou and his wife were arrested and detained for a month for performing the Falun Gong exercises outdoors. At that time, Zhou's wife was two months pregnant. After they were released, the police began to harass them relentlessly. Facing constant harassment at home, they decided to leave for Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on October 1, 2000 (Chinese National Day). On December 8, more than a dozen policemen from the Tongzhou District Police Department surrounded the home where Zhou was staying temporarily in Beijing. They tricked the practitioners into opening the door. Once they got inside, the police arrested Zhou and several dozen practitioners there, including the parents of a 9-month-old baby. They also turned the entire home upside down, taking away all the valuables including personal computers, copy machines and more than 50,000 Yuan in cash. They prepared a receipt listing all of the items taken and insisted that Zhou's wife sign it. They then left, refusing to leave a copy of the receipt behind. The police ransacked the home of Mr. Zhou in the city of Yanzhou a total of three times. They seized virtually everything, including personal necessity items. His wife and their 28-day-old baby were forced to live under house arrest. She was not allowed to answer the phone, and was constantly followed. She had no choice but to take the first opportunity to flee from their home with the baby with no money at all. No one has heard from them since. On April 6, 2001, the Tongzhou District Court in Beijing handed down a 9-year sentence to Zhou Yongnian. Other practitioners who were sentenced along with him include: Wei Qishan, male, 43. His home address is #12 Linheli, Unit #3, Apartment #12, Haigang District, Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province. He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Ma You, male, 34 who had been employed at the Honglin Hotel His home address is the 4^th Hongshi Forestry Department Employee Residential Building, Unit #8, Apartment #7, Huadian, Jilin Province. He was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Wang Delong, male, 47, a retired worker from the Jilin City Train Station in Jilin Province. He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Zhu Nannan, male, 27, whose home address is 847 Yunlu Street, Lingbi County, Anhui Province. He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Ma Changfeng, male, 29, from Changqing County in Shandong Province. He was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Zhang Feng, male, 29. His home address is 134 Northwest Road, Shayibake District, Urumqi, Xinjiang Province. He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Jian Chunxia, female, 27, from Beige Village, Litianmu Division, Cang County, Hebei Province. She was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Wu Chunru, female, 24, a resident of Xiaohongshi Village, in Hongshi Township, Jilin Province. She was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Li Zhuhua, female, 48, whose home address is No. 5 Renhe Street, Unit 5, Apartment # 142, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province. She was an employee of the Longhua Pharmaceuticals Company. She was sentenced to three years in prison. All the above-mentioned practitioners were sent to prison for printing or distributing literature that clarifies the truth of Falun Gong. All of them have appealed to the 2^nd Appellate Court in Beijing. We ask people everywhere to please help them. [Mainland China] A Brave Child Who Dares to Speak the Truth On a Sunday in the winter of 2000, a child went to visit his mother who was detained at a local jail. The guard there asked the child if he knew why his mother was held captive. He said, "Yes, I know, because she practices Falun Dafa." The guard asked him, "Is it a good thing that your Mom practices Falun Dafa?" The child replied, "Yes." The guard asked again, "Is Falun Dafa good?" The child answered, "Falun Dafa is good." Then he asked the guard, "Why do you force other people to tell lies about Falun Dafa?" Shortly after the spring semester of 2001 began, the child came home from school one day and told his mother, "The school asked every student to sign his or her name to a petition against Falun Dafa. I told my teacher that I had been practicing Falun Dafa, and I knew that it's good, so I would not sign the petition." A few days later, he told his mother, "The school asked us to sign our names on the petition again. Cameramen came to film the whole thing. Instead of signing the petition, I wrote 'Falun Dafa is good.'" [Qianguo, Jilin Province] The Police Brutalize Practitioner Li Zhiguo Li Zhiguo, male, 34, was a villager from Tiande, in the Dongsanjiazi District of Qianguo County, Jilin Province. He went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on November 5, 2000. As he held up a Falun Gong banner, a policeman hit him in the head with a walkie-talkie (judging from the force of the hit, the policeman apparently didn't care whether the victim survived). Blood gushed out from a gaping wound near the temple, staining Li's clothes. The policemen shoved him into a van. When he tried to resist, he was kicked from the front of the van all the way to the back. The policemen at first did not want anyone to see how badly injured he was. They took him to the Xicheng District Detention Center, and when the bleeding would not stop, they reluctantly took him to the Red Cross Hospital. Four or five stitches were required to close the wound. Afterwards, the police took him back to the detention center. He was interrogated at midnight each day and beaten viciously because he refused to disclose his name and address. They kicked his chest with their heavy police boots and stepped on the back of his feet and his toes to cause him great pain. The daily beatings would each last more than an hour. Once, the police began to beat him at 11 PM and didn't finish until 3 AM. On the 10^th day of his imprisonment, Li asked the police to take him to the hospital to have his stitches removed. The police refused. On November 15, he was sent back to Changchun, where he managed to escape at the local train station. On November 16, he was arrested again at the home of a fellow practitioner and was detained for a further 15 days. After his release, he was forced to flee from his home. The police have placed him on the "most wanted" list. His wife and two children are being constantly harassed. The police often go to his home late at night to see whether he has returned. They even pointed their pistols at his wife and children to scare them. [Beijing] A Practitioner Makes A Narrow Escape A practitioner was passing out Falun Gong flyers to passersby while riding a bicycle. He handed a flyer to the cyclist next to him. The cyclist scanned through the flyer and then grabbed the practitioner, saying that he was a security guard at Beijing University and he was going to arrest the practitioner. A police van was parked nearby. The security guard grabbed the handlebar of the practitioner's bicycle and tried to shove him toward the van. When the practitioner sped up, the security guard lost his balance and fell down. The practitioner started to pedal furiously. He turned into a side street only realizing that it was a dead end. When he tried to turn around, the chain on his bicycle fell off. So he got off the bike and began to repair it. Then he heard the siren and saw the police van speed past the entrance to the ally. Realizing he hadn't been seen, the practitioner understood immediately why his bike chain had fallen off, and that it was the Teacher who had kept him safe. [Changchun, Jilin Province] Practitioners Arrested for Printing Dafa Materials On April 12, practitioners Xu Huijian, Tian Yingwei, Dong Chunyan, Sui Wenling, and Zhou Guoqing were busy printing literature that clarifies the truth of Falun Gong at a practitioner's home when the police arrived. They pried the door open, breaking into the home and arresting the four practitioners. They seized a portrait of Master Li and many valuable personal items, including copy machines, cell phones, beepers, a microwave oven, a water purifier and two leather suitcases (along with the nice clothes inside the suitcases. The rest of the clothes were thrown out onto the floor). The home was left in a state of disarray with everything turned upside down. [Changchun, Jilin Province] College Student Vanishes Without a Trace Lan Lihua, a 22 year old from Banshan City, was a student at the Changchun Transportation College. She was an excellent student, and well regarded by her peers. In December of 2000, she went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and was arrested for holding up a Falun Gong banner on Tiananmen Square. Nobody has seen or heard from her since. Her family has gone to look for her in every single jail in Changchun ever known to hold Falun Gong practitioners, but they could not find her. Lan's sister is now being held at the Heizuizi Female Labor Camp in Changchun. The police have not allowed her family to visit her there. [Shanghai] Practitioner Sentenced to Two Years in Prison Practitioner Ying Yu was a resident in the Shanghai Xinhuangpu District. He has been sentenced to two years in prison. His mother, who is also a practitioner, has been placed under house arrest. [Xinxiang, Henan Province] Woman Sent to Labor Camp Without Cause Niu Ruanzhi was a resident of Liu Village in the Nanzhai District of Hui County, Henan Province. She was a Falun Gong practitioner at one time, but had already written a pledge promising to give up Falun Gong. The local officials still would not leave her alone. They went to her home, and told her that they were taking her in for questioning. They locked her up overnight at the county jail and the next morning she was sent to the Henan Province Female Labor Camp. [Baoji, Shanxi Province] Officials at Baoji Fertilizer Factory Illegally Detain Falun Dafa Practitioners More than twenty Falun Dafa practitioners are being detained in the Baoji Fertilizer Factory dormitory in Baoji City, Shanxi Province. They are forced to attend a "transformation class." [Tianjin City] Authorities Send Practitioner Xiao Guilin to Labor Camp Xiao Guilin is the 57 year old wife of an employee of the Hangu District 3^rd Petrochemical Company in the city of Tianjin. She started to practice Falun Gong in February of 1997. She has been sentenced to one and a half years in a labor camp for refusing to give up her practice of Falun Gong. She is now detained at the Banqiao Female Labor Camp in the Dagang District of Tianjin. [Sanhe City] Police Ransack Falun Gong Practitioner's Home On April 30, 2001, Zhao Yongkang, captain of the Beicheng Police Station in Sanhe City, went to the home of practitioner Li Ronghui with three other officials (two of whom work at the City Tax Collector's Office). They neither knocked on the door nor bothered to check whether anybody was home. They simply pried open the steel security bars, and broke into the house. Li Ronghui, 77, happened to be home at the time. They fingerprinted Mr. Li, and began to ransack the home. Though they could not find anything incriminating, Zhao instructed the officials from the Tax Collector's Office to detain Mr. Li. When Mr. Li asked Wang Zhiyi (manager at the City Tax Collector's Office) how long they were going to detain him, Wang replied, "Until the day you die!" They finally left after Mr. Li lodged a strong protest.