(Minghui.org) Last June I filed a lawsuit against former dictator Jiang Zemin with the People's Procuratorate and Supreme Court.
After Jiang started the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, my family was torn apart. My father died four months after being tortured in prison for his belief. My grandmother died out of fear and sorrow following my father's arrest. Their deaths left my mother and me grief-stricken.
I used to be terrified of my father. He had a terrible temper, and no one in the family even dared to talk to him. He found life boring and liked to drink, smoke, and gamble.
1999 was our lucky year. My father Mr. Wu Ruixiang began to practice Falun Gong. He gave up all his bad habits. He spoke quietly and did all the hard work on the farm. Everyone who knew him said that he had become a good person. He helped just about everyone in the village when they were in need, no matter how busy he was.
In the beginning of 2001 the Nanguan Village officials in Baoding City, Hebei Province, locked him up for seven days and only gave him a few bites of food.
The Li County police broke into our home and took my father away in April 2012. They ransacked our home and terrified my grandmother. She became mentally unstable and was always frightened. She eventually died.
The morning we visited my father at the police station, he was in handcuffs and shackles meant for felons. My father gave the food we brought him to the other inmates because he didn't feel well. Still, he consoled us and asked us not to worry. We went back to see him that afternoon and were told that he wasn't available.
My mother went to the supervising police department to demand my father's release. That was when we learned that he had been given a year in a forced labor camp.
After about a month, someone from Handan Forced Labor Camp called us and wanted us to talk my father into giving up his practice. The person threatened to take away my father’s visiting and calling privileges and to extend his sentence by two to three years if we refused.
Worried about my father's safety, my husband and I went to see him. His eyes were red and cloudy, and his face bony and pale. He seemed calm and kind. He told me not to cry and to take good care of my mother.
He then said that I should leave. “There are other people waiting to talk to their families. If I use up all the time, they won't be able to visit,” he said. He was always considerate of others, even in a situation like that. After seeing him for only a few minutes, I realized how much I had missed him. I couldn't stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks on the train home.
My father suffered unspeakably cruel torture and humiliation in the camp. Initially he was forced to do hard labor with little time to rest each day. To try to force my father to give up Falun Gong, the chief of the camp had a guard specifically target my father.
The guard ordered other inmates to watch my father and keep him awake around the clock. They forced him to sit still on a short stool for a long time and insulted him and tried to brainwash him. On hot summer days they wouldn't let him shower or change clothes.
My father refused to sign the so-called repentance statement that the guards wrote up for him declaring that he renounced Falun Gong. They held him down, stuck his fingers into electrical outlets to shock him, and placed scorching objects on his face. If he moved, they beat him.
My father went on a hunger strike to protest the abuse. They tied him down and force-fed him until he mentally and physically broke down. They gave him injections and forced him to ingest unknown drugs. My father's health quickly deteriorated, and he couldn't keep food down anymore.
The camp authorities took my father to a hospital for a checkup. Soon we were told to pick him up and take him home because “he has problems with his lungs.”
On our way to Handan City, the camp authorities called us several times and told us to hurry. When we arrived the next morning, they complained that we should have been there the night before.
They wouldn't let us see my father until we signed a waiver that said that his lung disease made him eligible for bail, and that we were responsible for all his expenses and everything that happened to him after we left.
Because my father was too weak to walk, two men had to carry him out. They dumped him on the ground and slammed the gate shut.
My father said that we shouldn't have come. He said that those who got bailed out for medical reasons were either super rich or dying, and the camp didn't want to be held responsible for causing anyone's death. My father said that he hadn't been able to keep any food down for days. Before he left the camp, he gave everything we had given him to an inmate who never had any visitors.
We got home on September 5, 2012. Someone from the camp called twice asking about my father, but refused to answer any questions. Each time after learning that they had called, my father shook visibly.
Nonetheless, he told me not to hate them. “They were deceived by the Chinese regime's lies about Falun Gong and pressured by their superiors. They were scared. Don't blame them,” he said.
My father died on January 18, 2013. Before he was put in the camp, he'd had a thorough health exam and passed with flying colors. After four months of torture and drugs, he was dead.
Almost everyone in the village came to say goodbye the day he was cremated. Before he was cremated, my mother pulled his shirt up and showed everyone the red marks covering his chest and abdomen. We believe that injections with toxic drugs are what killed him.
Background
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners over the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.
Related report:Kind Villager in Hebei Province Dies as a Result of Persecution in Handan Labor Camp
