Belated News: 73-Year-Old Heilongjiang Woman Dies in 2018 After 11 Years in Displacement to Avoid Persecution for Her Faith

(Minghui.org)

Name: Pan YuxiangChinese Name: 潘玉香Gender: FemaleAge: 73City: JiansanjiangProvince: HeilongjiangOccupation: retired government employeeDate of Death: November 2018Date of Most Recent Arrest: August 22, 2007Most Recent Place of Detention: a lockup

Minghui.org recently learned that a 73-year-old woman in Heilongjiang Province died in November 2018, after living in displacement for 11 years to avoid being arrested for her faith in Falun Gong.

Ms. Pan Yuxiang, born in 1945, retired from the Jiansanjiang Materials Department in Heilongjiang Province. Jiansanjiang is located in eastern Heilongjiang Province and comprises 15 state farms. It has its own government departments.

Ms. Pan took up Falun Gong in 1996 and soon recovered from Meniere’s syndrome and other diseases. Her bad temper was also gone. Her daughter, mother, sister, and brother-in-law all joined her in practicing Falun Gong. All of them were repeatedly targeted after the persecution of Falun Gong began in July 1999.

With Jiansanjiang TV Station employees in tow, several officers scaled the fence of Ms. Pan’s home in August 1999. She refused to be video-recorded and was dragged into a cruiser by eight officers. Her clothes were torn and her shoes fell off. An officer sat on her legs at one point. She was held in the Jiansanjiang Detention Center for seven months.

In the summer of 2000, Ms. Pan went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. As soon as she took out a “Falun Dafa Is Good” banner on Tiananmen Square, a plainclothes officer snatched it and pushed her into a police car. He drove her to a detention center, where about 60 other Falun Gong practitioners were already being held. They were interrogated separately, and many screamed in pain when they were tortured.

Ms. Pan was escorted back to Heilongjiang and given one year in the Jiamusi City Forced Labor Camp. She went on a hunger strike and was force-fed. Four guards held her down and sat on her limbs. One grabbed her head, and another tried to insert a feeding tube into her stomach. She resisted with all her might, and they couldn’t force-feed her. Other practitioners died after being force-fed high-concentration saline water mixed with powdered milk.

When Ms. Pan later resumed eating, she was only given potato soup, napa cabbage, and moldy steamed buns.

Once when Ms. Pan did the Falun Gong exercises, guard Wang Guili slapped her in the face and verbally abused her. Ms. Wu Dongsheng, another practitioner, called out for help. Wang said, “Who saw me hit anyone?” Ms. Wu said she did, but Wang said she’d just “touched” Ms. Pan’s face by accident.

On the day of Ms. Pan’s scheduled release, Yu Hongbo from the Jiansanjiang 610 Office and Fan Yongjun from her workplace, showed up at the labor camp to take her away, but her family refused to let them. After an hour, Yu and Fan relented and allowed Ms. Pan to go home with her family.

The 610 Office put Ms. Pan under close surveillance. Whenever she left home, several people followed her closely.

Ms. Pan went to live with her daughter Ms. Zheng Guoying, also a Falun Gong practitioner, in Guilin City, Guangxi Province, in 2004. One night in August 2005, more than two dozen officers from the Guilin City 610 Office broke in and raided Ms. Zheng’s home until around 3 a.m. They confiscated her laptop, printer, and other items.

Ms. Pan was released the next day, but her daughter was taken to the Guilin City First Detention Center. About three weeks later, Ms. Zheng was given an unknown forced labor term in the Nanning Women’s Labor Camp. For seven months straight, she was forced to watch, read, and/or listen to materials slandering Falun Gong. She was often deprived of sleep and restricted from using the restroom. She was later forced to do hard labor. Her cosmetic company and beauty salon had to be shut down during her detention, resulting in over 300,000 yuan in financial loss.

Ms. Pan later moved back to Jiansanjiang. On July 22, 2007, she was arrested at the Jiansanjiang Train Station while talking to people about Falun Gong. The police took her to the Jiamusi Railway Detention Center the next day.

Learning of her arrest, many practitioners inside and outside of China called Wang Fengjun, a section chief at the Jiamusi Railway Domestic Security Office, condemning him for persecuting Ms. Pan. She was released 19 days later, after being given one year of forced labor to be served at home.

Not long afterwards, on August 22, 2007, Ms. Pan was arrested again along with seven other practitioners. Her sister and brother-in-law, Ms. Pan Yuqin and Mr. Yu Yingzhi, both practitioners, were arrested the next day. The couple’s child, a college student, was also held in custody. Wang directed the arrests of the family.

Ms. Pan Yuxiang was soon released but was forced to go into hiding as the Jiansanjiang authorities installed surveillance cameras at every major interaction and hired a large number of jobless people to monitor practitioners. The police promised rewards to anyone who helped get practitioners arrested.

Peng Yong, captain of the Jiansanjiang Domestic Security Office, and other officers went to Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, to raid the home of Ms. Pan’s son, Mr. Zheng Guotong. They also raided the home of Mr. Zheng’s neighbor Ms. Guo and held her for one day. A week later, Peng raided the home of Ms. Pan’s niece Ms. Ti Yanping’s father-in-law and detained Ms. Ti’s husband for one day. Ms. Pan’s cousin Mr. Pan Hongben was harassed.

Peng also threatened to arrest Ms. Pan’s daughter Ms. Zheng, who was visiting her family in Heilongjiang after being released from the labor camp. He later went to Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, to submit an application to put Ms. Pan on the wanted list.

Ms. Pan spent her last nine years in displacement and died in November 2018. She was predeceased by her mother, who died in December 2017 at 94, and her brother-in-law, Mr. Yu, who died in his 50s after losing his job for his faith and struggling to make ends meet.

Ms. Pan’s daughter Ms. Zheng was arrested again on August 28, 2015, for filing a complaint against former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin for launching the persecution of Falun Gong. She was sentenced to two years by the Xiangshan District Court in Guilin City on October 17, 2016. She was released from the Nanning City Women’s Prison in August 2018, only to lose her mother three months later.