(Minghui.org)

Name: Fu ChuanmeiChinese Name: 付传美Gender: FemaleAge: 65City: DongyingProvince: ShandongOccupation: N/ADate of Death: October 23, 2022Date of Most Recent Arrest: May 2015Most Recent Place of Detention: Hekou Lockup

A 65-year-old woman in Xianhe Town, Dongying City, Shandong Province died on October 23, 2022, after enduring decades of arrest and harassment for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since July 1999.

Posthumous photo of Ms. Fu Chuanmei

Both Ms. Fu Chuanmei and her husband, Mr. Bu Qingjin, used to suffer from poor health and struggled to pay their medical expenses every year. After they started practicing Falun Gong in October 1995, Ms. Fu recovered from her heart condition, high blood pressure, and kidney disease, and Mr. Bu’s heart disease, arthritis, and stomach ulcer were also gone. Ms. Fu later volunteered to be a coordinator for local Falun Gong practitioners in Xianhe Town. However, she and her husband became targets after the persecution began four years later. 

The local police arrested the couple on multiple occasions and once gave them both three years of forced labor. Both were brutally tortured in detention and forced to ingest toxic drugs. Mr. Bu became disabled and Ms. Fu developed high blood pressure as a result. Ms. Fu’s heart once stopped beating while she was in detention and she had to be resuscitated. 

The couple also endured ongoing persecution at the hands of Mr. Bu’s employer, the Gudong Oil Production Plant of Shengli Oil Field in Dongying City. The employer held the couple in detention many times and arranged people to monitor them around the clock. Their son and other relatives were also implicated as part of the CCP’s persecution of the couple. Their daughter-in-law couldn’t bear the pressure and divorced their son. The son remarried, only to see himself and his new wife face the same intimidation and pressure.

Months before Ms. Fu’s passing, her husband’s employer was still trying to force her to renounce her belief. 

Held in Extralegal Detention Facilities for Appealing in Beijing

Ms. Fu and Mr. Bu went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on July 21, 1999, the day after the CCP openly announced the suppression of the practice. After they came back, they were seized by agents from Mr. Bu’s workplace, who moved them around between different brainwashing centers run by the Gudong Oil Production Plant. At each brainwashing center, the couple were ordered to write statements to renounce Falun Gong. Mr. Bu’s pay and bonuses were suspended, causing great financial difficulty to his family (Ms. Fu was a housewife with no income). 

The couple went to Beijing again on September 23, 1999 and were seized on Tiananmen Square by Mr. Bu’s coworkers who had been dispatched to apprehend them there. They were taken back and not given any food for two days. Each was given 15 days of administrative detention. Instructor Wang Lianjie and team lead Li Guangming at Team Two of Gudong Oil Production Plant initially attempted to detain both husband and wife in an abandoned apartment owned by the company. Ms. Fu firmly refused to comply, but Mr. Bu was held there for nearly two months.

Mr. Bu’s pay and bonuses were suspended again in May 2000, and his family had to rely on their meager savings to get by.

Hui Chenglong, Party secretary of Gudong Oil Production Plant, gave the order to turn the company’s security department and training school into “black jails” (unlisted detention centers) to hold employees who refused to renounce Falun Gong. While the black jails were being set up, he ordered different divisions within the company to arrest their practitioner-employees, totaling several dozen. As soon as the black jails were set up, these practitioners were taken there. 

Mr. Bu were held in both black jails for a total of more than three months beginning in December 2000. Hui then moved him between various brainwashing centers, including the Dongying Education School brainwashing center, the Xianhe Town Brainwashing Center and a brainwashing center run by Jinan Prison. After that, Hui took Mr. Bu back to the company’s black jails. Mr. Bu was finally released in late April 2001, after nearly five months of detention.

Ms. Fu was also held in the black jail in the company’s training school and later at the Xianhe Town Brainwashing Center.

Father Passes Away

After both Ms. Fu and Mr. Bu were arrested in December 2000, her father came to their home in Xianhe Town to care for their then-14-year-old son. The elderly man also needed to go to Jinan City, Shandong Province from time to time to care for his son’s two daughters (13 and 15 at the time), as both of their parents were also being detained for practicing Falun Gong. 

Wang Lianjie and Li Guangming from Team Two of Gudong Oil Production Plant kept harassing Ms. Fu’s father and ordered him to leave Xianhe Town. The once healthy man became bedridden in less than six months. Shortly after Ms. Fu and her husband were released, he passed away on June 25, 2001, at the age of 76.

Husband Arrested on Mother’s Birthday

After the Chinese New Year in 2002, Ms. Fu went to her husband’s hometown in Jinzhuang Town, Sishui County, Shandong Province (more than 250 miles away) to celebrate her mother-in-law’s 75 ^th birthday, which fell on the 16^th day of the first lunar month (February 28, 2002). While she was away, Party secretary Hui of Gudong Oil Production Plant colluded with the police from the Binhai Police Department and arrested Mr. Bu on his mother’s birthday. 

The police next went to Mr. Bu’s son’s school and said to the teen, “Your father locked himself outside your home.” The boy believed them and gave them the house key. The police proceeded to raid Mr. Bu’s home. They even took apart the washing machine to search for Falun Gong materials. They confiscated a Falun Gong book, a computer, a printer, a recorder, and household tools such as wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, and many other valuables, including a necklace of Ms. Fu’s.

After seizing Mr. Bu, Team Two lead Li Guangmin of Gudong Oil Production Plant led a group of people and drove more than 250 miles to his hometown to try to apprehend Ms. Fu. As they didn’t find her when they got there, they threatened Ms. Fu's mother-in-law on her birthday. The older woman was so traumatized that she passed out. Li left with his people and proceeded to raid Mr. Bu’s relatives’ homes in his hometown.

Mr. Bu went on a hunger strike in protest while being held in a black jail at his company. He was force-fed and given unknown drugs. Less than two weeks later, his company took him to the Shandong Provincial Legal Education Center (a brainwashing center) to continue the persecution. Liu Kai and Xing Shizhong from Gudong Oil Production Plant took him to the hospital affiliated to a local labor camp every day for force-feeding. After the force-feeding, they drove him to the labor camp before bringing him back to the brainwashing center at night.

Both Husband and Wife Given Three Years of Forced Labor

Upon learning of Mr. Bu’s ordeal, Ms. Fu went to deliver clothes to him. She was seized by a person from Gudong Oil Production Plant assigned to monitor her husband in detention. She was held at the company’s black jail for more than one month before being given three years of forced labor. Mr. Bu received the same forced labor term around the same time.

Mr. Bu was subjected to brutal torture during his labor camp detention. In less than one year, he lost his ability to talk or walk. The guards, however, never stopped torturing him even after Jinan Hospital determined that he had become totally disabled. They even extended his term by three months.

Ms. Fu was held in Wangcun Women’s Labor Camp. She refused to acknowledge that had broken any laws. After several failed attempts to make her renounce her faith, the labor camp guards stopped their brainwashing efforts. They said that those assigned to “work” on her all started to believe in Falun Gong. 

The guards injected Ms. Fu with various unknown drugs. She later developed a variety of symptoms, including extremely high blood pressure. At one point her heart stopped beating and she was taken to a hospital.

Ms. Fu struggled to live a normal life after she was released early in 2002. As a result of the involuntary drug administration in the labor camp, her limbs were weak and numb. She had difficulty controlling her motions and she couldn’t hold chopsticks properly. She gradually lost feeling in her legs below her knees. She didn’t even know when her shoes fell off her feet or feel pain if she was pinched on the legs. She later broke an ankle and became incontinent. She also had heart and kidney failure.

The couple’s son was 15 when Ms. Fu and her husband were arrested in 2002 and sent to forced labor. The teen was about to take the high school entrance exam, but had to fend for himself after his parents’ arrests. When a coworker of Mr. Bu’s bought the boy a box of instant noodles, he was reprimanded by Team Two instructor Li Guangming.

Since Mr. Bu was the sole breadwinner, his labor camp detention put the family in a dire financial situation. His son had planned to attend high school and later college, but decided to enroll in a vocational school instead. Before Ms. Fu got a chance to see her son off to his new school, she was arrested on September 2, 2002 by Party Secretary Hui and instructor Li. She learned later that Li had also emptied all the money in her husband’s housing stipend account (in China, employers may choose to make contributions to such accounts to help their employees with home purchase). 

Li and Hui also drove Ms. Fu out of Xianhe Town, and she had to move from place to place over the next two years, all the while taking care of her son and elderly mother-in-law. Sometimes she only ate two steamed buns, which cost less than one yuan, for the entire day in order to save money.

In late May 2005, Ms. Fu went to the labor camp to pick up her husband. Mr. Bu was carried out by several people. He was emaciated, and could not stand, walk or talk.

Mr. Bu made significant process upon returning home, thanks to Ms. Fu’s meticulous care. However, due to the toxic drugs given to him in the labor camp, all of his teeth were loose and he struggled with excruciating headaches. There were pea-sized blisters all over his body that oozed yellow pus. The blisters later turned into thick layers of dark spots. Many blood blisters appeared on his toes and the soles of his feet, and there were two or three blood blisters on each toe pad.

Nonstop Harassment in Final Years

After Mr. Bu’s release from the labor camp, he and Ms. Fu faced continued harassment from his employer and the local 610 Office, an extra-legal agency tasked with the sole purpose of persecuting Falun Gong. Every time a sensitive date (such as a major political meeting or anniversary related to Falun Gong) came up, there would be cars following Ms. Fu. Her son and his family were also harassed.

In January 2006, the couple went to Mr. Bu’s hometown to celebrate the Chinese New Year with his parents. As soon as they arrived, they received a phone call from Mr. Bu’s supervisor at Team Six (the new name for the old Team Two) of Gudong Oil Production Plant. The supervisor insisted that he and another manager were coming to visit his hometown. The next morning they showed up and made sure Ms. Fu was there before leaving. 

In 2007, Yang Shangning replaced Li Guangming as the instructor for Team Six. He rented an apartment unit across from Ms. Fu’s and used it as a base from which to maintain surveillance of Ms. Fu. He arranged a group of employees to take turns monitoring her around the clock. As soon as she stepped out, there would be people shadowing her, either on foot or in a car. 

Yang also harassed the couple’s son and his family all the time. Ms. Fu’s daughter-in-law could no longer bear the pressure and divorced her son. The young woman was given custody of their one-year-old daughter and moved in with her own parents in Xintai City, Shandong Province. 

In May 2015, when the wave of lawsuits against former CCP leader Jiang Zemin started, Mr. Bu and Ms. Fu also filed complaints against Jiang for launching the persecution of Falun Gong and causing their family tremendous harm. The complaints were mailed to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Supreme People’s Court. They received confirmation that both agencies had received their complaints. However, they were soon arrested and given 15 days of detention. Eight other local practitioners were also arrested at the same time. The ten practitioners went on a hunger strike in protest and were released after three days at Hekou Lockup.

While Mr. Bu and Ms. Fu were detained, the police raided their home. In the meantime, another group of officers summoned the couple’s son to his workplace. They, along with his supervisors and 610 Office agents, surrounded him and criticized him for being the son of a Falun Gong practitioner. Their son quit his job on the spot and became depressed after that.

On July 6, 2017, Ma Yuqiang, captain of the Binghai Police Department Domestic Security Office, led eight officers from the Zhuangxi Police Station and Gudong Police Station to Mr. Bu’s workplace. They told his supervisor that they needed to take him back to his home to search it. Since he had already left for the day, they ordered his supervisor to bring them to his home and pry the door open. His supervisor refused.

The next morning, Ma led eight people, including Wang Guoqing, Li Hongjun, and Jiang Haiying, to Ms. Fu’s apartment building and tried to intimidate her and deceive her into letting them in. They didn’t succeed. At around 2 p.m., Ma and his gang came again and called in a security guard from Mr. Bu’s company. They told the security guard to knock on the door. The security guard promised Ms. Fu that he’d leave after a five-minute talk with her. She still refused to open the door.

Ma then had a locksmith try different master keys. When the keys failed to work, the locksmith used an electric drill to open the door.

After breaking in, Ma and his officers, none of whom were in uniform, dragged Mr. Bu and Ms. Fu to their living room. The police quickly flashed a piece of paper which they claimed to be a search warrant, but put it away when the couple asked to see it. The officers later left without arresting the couple. 

During the CCP’s two annual political meetings in March 2018, Gudong Oil Production Plant ordered all of its divisions to monitor their practitioner-employees around the clock. 

The sixteenth day of the first lunar month in 2018 was the 91 ^st birthday of Ms. Fu’s mother-in-law. Ms. Fu’s son offered to drive his mother to his grandmother’s home for the celebration. Mr. Bu’s employer called the young man and tried to pressure him to not drive his mother out of town. The young man refused to comply.

To avoid further harassment, Ms. Fu moved to a rural area in April 2018. By then, she had lost a significant amount of weight as a result of years of persecution. She stood at 5’7’’ tall yet weighed just a bit over 120 pounds. She continued to suffer complications of the health conditions she’d developed in the labor camp. She also had chronic vertigo. 

Ms. Fu later returned to her own home and again found herself monitored around the clock.

In May 2020, Ms. Fu slipped and fell, breaking her ankle. Her son remarried that year and later had a son. Her husband’s employer harassed their son, his new wife, and his parents-in-law, and threatened to jeopardize her grandson’s future education and career if Ms. Fu continued to practice Falun Gong. 

Mr. Bu’s employer kept pressuring the couple to renounce Falun Gong because the local 610 Office posted a reward of 50,000 yuan for anyone who managed to make a practitioner sign a statement renouncing Falun Gong.

Even in the first half of 2022, the company was still trying to make Ms. Fu renounce her faith. The relentless persecution eventually took her life on October 23, 2022.

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