(Minghui.org) A 78-year-old retired Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, was arrested on October 9, 2024, for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
The Luojiashan Police Station never notified Ms. Gao Bizhen’s family of her detention location. Her loved ones still do not know her whereabouts three months later.
This is not the first time that Ms. Gao has been targeted for her faith. She took up Falun Gong in August 1996 and soon recovered from a 30-year-long strange illness (which caused her to feel being pricked by a thorn-like foreign object in her nose and head). Her two daughters also joined her in the practice.
After the persecution began, Ms. Gao held firm in her faith and was arrested at least ten times, resulting in multiple detentions at brainwashing centers and two forced-labor terms totaling two and a half years.
Ms. Gao was given one year of forced labor in 2001. While being held at the Hewan Labor Camp, she developed scabies due to the poor living conditions and the forced labor (that required her to unravel cotton yarn for long hours). Her skin festered and the blood and pus stuck to her clothes. It was tortuous every time she needed to remove her clothes to wash herself. She felt extremely itchy and painful but was not given any medical care.
Ms. Gao went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on February 5, 2002, and was arrested. She was given one and a half years of forced labor on March 26, 2002, and sent to the same labor camp. She again developed scabies and her skin festered. She requested parole but was denied. The guards didn’t take her to see a dermatologist until months later. The doctor recommended she be admitted to inpatient care but the guards took her back to the labor camp instead.
During her labor camp detention, Ms. Gao’s older daughter graduated high school and was admitted to Ground Force Command College in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province. A supposedly exciting time for the college freshman was marred by the persecution of her mother and the young woman had a mental breakdown in November 2002, at the age of 20. She was later diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia. In the years that followed, she was hospitalized more than ten times. Ms. Gao and her family struggled to cover the medical bills and care for her. Whenever she had an episode, she’d hit people and throw things around. She was also triggered every time the police came to harass or arrest her mother again.
Ms. Gao was caring for her daughter in Nanjing in late March 2005 when the Wuhan police deceived her into returning to her own home. They arrested her upon her arrival and held her at the Yangyuan Brainwashing Center for 48 days.
At around 9 p.m. on May 28, 2008, a group of people shut off the power supply to Ms. Gao’s apartment unit. Her husband thought there was a power outage and stepped out to take a look. The agents broke in and fortunately, Ms. Gao was not around and thus escaped arrest.
The police arrested Ms. Gao months later on July 14, 2008, and took her to the Yangyuan Brainwashing Center for three months and three weeks. The guards there laced her food with unknown drugs. After she was released on November 5, 2008, she felt pain in her legs and feet, eventually causing her to have difficulty walking and lose balance easily.
In 2010, the police harassed Ms. Gao on the phone and in person multiple times using the excuse of conducting a census. She was arrested again on September 18, 2012, and detained for five days.
From April 21 to May 19, 2017, the police harassed her numerous times. Take May 19 for an example. A migrant worker knocked on her door to say he was there to check the water meter. But he didn’t come inside. One hour later, the local community head led a group of people to ring the doorbell. Ms. Gao didn’t open the door. To not terrify her mentally ill daughter, she removed the doorbell. The uninvited visitors however began to bang on her door repeatedly. They later claimed that they were there to do a welfare check on her daughter. They used the same excuse days earlier when they summoned Ms. Gao to the community office. She told a staffer surnamed Huang that their repeated persecution of her was the root cause of her daughter’s mental illness. She urged them to stop the persecution, only to see them harass her again on May 19.
Starting in October 2019, the police harassed Ms. Gao at home frequently. She was forced to live away from home for a while.
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