(Minghui.org) Mr. Lian Huayou of Tianjin and his family suffered unspeakable ordeals because he and his wife are practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime over the past 16 years. Mr. Lian filed a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese leader who ordered the suppression, with the Supreme People's Procuratorate in June 2015.
Mr. Lian has been arrested four times since the persecution started in 1999. In 2001 he was sentenced to five years in prison, and in 2012 he was sentenced to seven years. His wife and his daughter were denied visitation many times because the couple refused to give up their faith. When Mr. Lian was released from prison, both times he was incoherent and near death because he had been so severely tortured and injected with nerve-damaging drugs.
Mr. Lian went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution in May 2012 during his second imprisonment. After being on a 617-day hunger strike, he was transferred to a hospital and given intravenous injections of unknown drugs on January 28, 2014. His breathing became very rapid, and he fell unconscious. That night the authorities sent him home to avoid being held responsible in the event of his death in their custody.
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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.