(Clearwisdom.net) In Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, there is a family where five of its members practice Falun Dafa. Before July 20, 1999 these family members all tried to be good people in accordance with the universal principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance." As a result, the family was happy and had little conflict.
The elderly parents became free of serious health problems after starting to practice Falun Dafa. The father had suffered from a slipped disc. When it flared up, he was virtually paralyzed and confined to his bed. The mother had suffered from tracheitis. They had spent thousands of yuan for medical expenses each year, but had no relief from their symptoms. These costs had been a huge burden to a family that was already less than well off.
After starting their Falun Dafa practice, this couple, both over 70, saw the tracheitis and slipped disc disappear. They have not spent a penny on medical expenses in the past nine years. The family is very harmonious, and the children have become even more respectful toward their parents. Everyone is amazed that the mother, who had never learned to read and write, has now learned to do so through studying Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Dafa teachings.
In August 2001, the old man suffered from a stroke. His mouth was twisted and one of the hands was paralyzed. He also had a high fever and suffered from diarrhea. Without taking a single pill, he was able to go to the beach with his children five days later. His son-in-law, who had not practiced Falun Dafa, witnessed this wonder of Dafa and gained a better understanding of his wife, a Falun Dafa practitioner, as a result. After witnessing what happened, he told all of his friends and relatives that Falun Dafa was wonderful. The old couple's daughter suffered from numerous illnesses, but all of them were miraculously cured. She also had abnormal pigment deposits on the skin, caused by pregnancy, which disappeared. These occurrences led the family to be ever more steadfast toward Falun Dafa.
Cruel persecution, however, has brought great pain and disaster to the family.
The younger son Mr. Bi Jiumin, 34 years old, was a volunteer assistant of the Qinhuangdao Falun Dafa Assistance Center. His employer tried to force him to give up practicing Falun Gong by threatening him with his job. Without any hesitation, Mr. Bi Jiumin remained steadfast in the cultivation of Falun Gong and went to Beijing to appeal to the government to stop the persecution on July 20, 1999. At the end of 1999, a few days after his wedding ceremony, he and his wife Ms. Luo Zhiyuan went to Beijing together to validate the Fa. Their family has suffered from enormous pressure ever since. The local police station sent officers to their home many times to look for the newlyweds. Their house was ransacked, and both the Wenhua Road Police Station and the Wenhua Road Neighborhood Committee frequently sent their staff there to harass the family. Their parents were in a state of constant anxiety, and often had trouble sleeping.
After Mr. Bi Jiumin and his wife were escorted back from Beijing, they were detained for one month. During Mr. Bi Jiumin's confinement at the Qinhuangdao No. 2 Detention Center, prison guards beat him with rubber batons until he fell unconscious. In October 2001, Mr. Bi Jiumin was again detained by the police and sent to the Xiaowan Brainwashing Center in Shanhaiguan, Qinhuangdao City. By keeping strong righteous thoughts, Mr. Bi Jiumin was able to walk away from the center. He was then forced to leave home, becoming homeless for several months, in order to avoid being arrested and persecuted further.
The daughter of the family, 40-year-old Ms. Bi Yanzhen, was an accountant at the Qinhuangdao City Industrial and Commercial Bank. She did a remarkable job there. Once she was able to recover a loss of nearly 200,000 yuan from a loan the bank had made.
During the harsh persecution of Falun Gong, Ms. Bi Yanzhen has suffered the most persecution in the family. After July 20, 1999 she was followed wherever she went, and was summoned to both the Hongqi Road Police Station and the Development Zone Police Department on many occasions simply because she was in charge of teaching the daily Falun Dafa exercises. When her parents' house was ransacked, Ms. Bi Yanzhen was summoned to the police department because she had lodged an appeal with the city government. She was required to report daily to the police department. Later, she was arrested and taken to a guesthouse, where she was placed under police surveillance. Fortunately when she was arrested, her husband was out on an errand, and their young son was not at home. She was under a great deal of pressure. In October 1999, Ms. Bi Yanzhen was again detained for one month. This time she was sent to a brainwashing center for having gone to Beijing to appeal. She was fired from her job because she refused to renounce Falun Dafa. Following that, she was abducted from her home and taken to the Qinhuangdao No. 1 Detention Center by Liu Zhicun, the Head of the Hongqi Road Police Station in Qinhuangdao City. During this 15-day detention, she was badly beaten by inmates and prison guards alike while handcuffed with her hands behind her back.
In 2000, when Ms. Bi Yanzhen went again to Beijing to petition for Falun Dafa, she was detained once more. This confinement was illegally extended to a four-month term. During this detention at the No. 1 Detention Center, she was beaten both by prison guards and inmates Liu Yan and Lin Xia. The police then extorted ten thousand yuan from Ms. Bi Yanzhen and demanded that she write a statement guaranteeing she would neither practice Falun Gong nor return to Beijing. She wrote the statement because at that time she could not let go of her attachments. In July 2000, when she was released, she went to Tiananmen Square to do the five sets of Falun Gong exercises after realizing the serious mistake she had made in writing the statement. She was arrested and locked up first at the Tongxian County Detention Center in Beijing, and then later taken to the Xianghe Detention Center in Hebei Province. During this period of incarceration, prison guards attacked her with electric batons and tortured her using various other cruel methods. Ms. Bi Yanzhen was then transferred to the Qinhuangdao No. 2 Detention Center. Ten days later she was sentenced to three years of forced labor and sent to Kaiping District Forced Labor Camp in Tangshan City, Hebei Province. During this period she suffered many kinds of inhumane torture. During her nine-month imprisonment, she was on a hunger strike for six of those months. During the bloody suppression of Falun Dafa practitioners on January 16-19, 2001, Ms. Bi Yanzhen went again on a hunger strike. As punishment for this, she was hung from a persimmon tree for more than ten hours. In June 2001, she suffered from temporary heart failure. As a result of her persecution, her weight had dropped from 60 to 35 kilograms (from nearly 130 pounds to less than 80). When she was critically ill, she was unconditionally released. Not long after her release, however, the Qinhuangdao City 610 Office instructed Zhou Lianguo, from the Second Division of the City Police Department, and Shan Hui'e and Song Jinchuan, from the City Industrial and Commercial Bank, to go to Bi Yanzhen's home on many occasions to harass the family.
In December 2001 when Bi Yanzhen had not yet fully recovered, she was arrested by policeman Yu Xiaojun, from the First Division of the Qinhuangdao City Police Department, and was locked up at the City No. 2 Detention Center. Her house was ransacked, and a cassette recorder was confiscated as a "tool for committing crimes." Teacher's portraits and Falun Dafa books were confiscated as well. The policemen also stole 180 yuan in cash and 20 yuan worth of stamps from her purse.
The police next sought revenge against Ms. Bi Yanzhen for an article she wrote exposing the inhumane torture in the Kaiping Forced Labor Camp that was published on the Minghui website. On the second day after this arrest, because of protests lodged by her parents, husband and other family members, the police still had not sent her to the forced labor camp. On the third day, however, the police sent her to the Kaiping Forced Labor Camp in Dangshan City without notifying her family. They refused to let Bi Yanzhen sleep for 18 consecutive days and nights. To protest she went on another hunger strike. More than 100 collaborators (1), taking turns, tried to make her renounce Falun Dafa. In order to make her eat and also renounce Dafa, the collaborators were on their knees encircling Bi Yanzhen. One month later, when she was on the verge of death, she was allowed to be taken back home.
In June 2003, Ms. Bi Yanzhen was arrested by police from both the Hongqi Road Police Station and the First Section of the Harbor District Police Department, and then locked up at the Qinhuangdao No. 2 Detention Center. Five days later, she was transferred to Kaiping Forced Labor Camp in Tangshan City. On this occasion, she was released on the day of arrival due to her poor state of health.
On November 10, 2004, Ms. Bi Yanzhen was abducted by Lu Ping, from the Harbor District Police Department of Qinhuangdao City, and Yu Xiaojun, from the National Security Division, while walking in the street. These police officers also grabbed her purse and mobile phone. They then ransacked Ms. Bi Yanzhen's house and searched it thoroughly. The police took away her computer, printer and Falun Dafa books. Ms. Bi Yanzhen was locked up at the Qinhuangdao No. 2 Detention Center. During her interrogation, Yu Xiaojun, from the Qinhuangdao National Security Division, said, "Since I do not practice Falun Gong, I don't need to speak the truth." The Section Head of the Qinhuangdao National Security Division Lu Ping threatened Bi Yanzhen. He told her that if she did not confess, her husband would be treated as her accomplice, which would affect both his Party membership and his employment status. He also threatened to go to visit her child's teacher. Lu Ping asked Ms. Bi to think seriously about her actions. On the third day, the Qinhuangdao City 610 Office and the Harbor District Police Department escorted Ms. Bi Yanzhen to the Kaiping Forced Labor Camp for further persecution, again without notifying her family. Ms. Bi Yanzhen suffered from barbaric forced feeding and forced infusion of liquids. Here she suffered from heart and kidney failure, hallucinations, and was near death. The Qinhuangdao Harbor District Police Department sent people to get her husband to take her home from Kaiping Hospital.
Later, these perpetrators went to harass Ms. Bi's mother. The City 610 Office also phoned her husband after an account of her persecution was published on the Minghui website. She was at the brink of death as a result of repeated persecution, and her mother was bed-ridden because she could no longer bear the constant harassment. This deprived her son of their care, and her husband spoke out sternly to the police, "You have nearly persecuted my wife to death, and you still won't even allow her to say anything!" The perpetrators said that practicing Falun Gong is illegal. The husband replied, "How could being a good person violate the law? The police beating and torturing my wife is the real violation of the law!"
The above ordeal is one suffered by a Qinhuangdao family that practices Falun Gong. There are many such cases in Qinhuandao City. Numerous Falun Gong practitioners and their family members have suffered from physical and mental persecution. Ms. Yu Shuyun lives at the Linheli Residential Area of Qinhuangdao City. Eight members of her family practice Falun Gong. Of these, three (Ms. Yu Shu Rong, Ms. Yu Shumei and her daughter) have been sentenced to time in forced labor camps. One of their husbands has also been imprisoned (Ms. Yu Shurong's husband Wei Qishan). Ms. Yu Shuyun has been frequently arrested. She was spared from being sentenced to forced labor only because she was nursing a baby at the time. There are instances where under-aged children have been detained. One grandmother over 70 was kicked so hard in the chest that it nearly killed her. Throughout China persecution cases like these are commonplace. More than one thousand practitioners have been tortured to death so far, with countless others either crippled or injured.
Note:
(1) Collaborators are former Falun Gong practitioners who have gone astray due to brainwashing and torture.