 |
|
Committee
to Investigate the Crimes of China’s "610 Office"
in the Persecution of Falun Gong |
| Feb
23, 2003
1.
Background Information The “610 Office” is established within the Chinese Communist Central Committee. The director is former Vice-Premier Li Lanqing, and the deputy directors are Political-Legal Secretary Luo Gan and the Minister of Propaganda, Ding Guangen. On handling the issue of Falun Gong, the “610 Office” not only has authority above the law, Party and governmental organizations, public security organs, procuratorial organs and the people’s court, judicial departments, and all other governmental offices, it also has the authority to direct news and media institutions in every region. Spanning all levels of government, from the central to the local, from above to below, it was formed as an independent and tightly organized operating entity to act as the headquarters for Jiang Zemin’s regime to systematically persecute Falun Gong and the innocent public. The “610 Office” directly plots, manipulates, and participates in the regime’s illegal campaign that persecutes, defames, and fabricates rumors against Falun Gong and Falun Gong practitioners. In particular, the policies of the “610 Office,” implemented throughout the persecution, of “defaming their reputation, bankrupting them financially, destroying them physically,” “considering it suicide if beaten to death,” and “cremating the body on the spot without checking the identity” amount to coordinating, assisting, and directly carrying out the crime of genocide ordered by China’s leader, Jiang Zemin, in his oppression and persecution of Falun Gong. The destructive and devastating role carried out by the “610 Office” – an organization of terror – is no less than the crimes committed by the Gestapo, under Hitler’s direction, in their persecution of the Jewish people during the Holocaust in World War II. Once the “610 Office” was established, its first action was to control the official and mass media to carry out a propaganda campaign of defamation against Falun Gong, deceiving the general public and brainwashing the entire populace in China. As the propaganda began to come under increasing suspicion, the “610 Office” turned toward creating malicious incidents (such as the so-called “Tiananmen self-immolation” case that is currently being investigated by WOIPFG) and intensifying unbridled propaganda in the official media. By preying on people’s kind nature, it incites their hatred against Falun Gong, deceiving the public into condoning or participating in the persecution mobilized by Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan. At present, the “610 Office” persists in prohibiting independent international media bodies and other institutions to carry out independent investigations and verifications of the incidents it publicizes. Over the past three and a half years, the “610 Office” has relentlessly transmitted various kinds of secret orders from Jiang Zemin to suppress Falun Gong. For example, in early 2002, Liu Jing of the central “610 Office” held a meeting at the Nanhu Guesthouse in Changchun to discuss the region’s suppression of Falun Gong. It was at this meeting that Liu Jing issued the orders of “complete eradication” and “shoot to kill” against Falun Gong practitioners. These directives have led to the unrestrained brutal torture, even killing, of Falun Gong practitioners by local police. The provincial “610 Office” also directly determines the so-called “prosecution,” “trials,” and “sentencing” of Falun Gong practitioners. Over the last three plus years, the cases of 526 Falun Gong practitioners who have been persecuted to death have been verified by human rights groups and the Falun Dafa Information Center, yet according to internal reports from China’s Public Security Bureau, the actual death toll had already exceeded 1,600 by October 2001. Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been forcibly sent to mental institutions where they suffer physical and mental devastation from injections of large doses of drugs that destroy the central nervous system. Over 6,000 practitioners have been illegally sentenced, and over 100,000 practitioners are suffering illegal “re-education” through labor. At the same time, the “610 Office” orders various political-legal committees at the county and district levels to establish “brainwashing classes” that use force to brainwash those who refuse to renounce Falun Gong. Those who do not yield are sent to labor camps, mental hospitals, and drug rehabilitation facilities for further persecution. Furthermore, the “610 Office” is intensifying its economic persecution against Falun Gong practitioners, imposing large fines ranging from several thousand Yuan to several tens of thousand Yuan. The “610 Office” not only persecutes Falun Gong practitioners, but it also extends the persecution to include their family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. If one family member persists in practicing Falun Gong, other members of the family can lose their jobs, be expelled from school, or even be sent to “brainwashing classes.” If a workplace has Falun Gong practitioners who persist in the practice or go to Beijing to appeal, the management may suffer punitive measures, be removed from their positions, or be fined. Furthermore, it can even affect the performance evaluation, bonus, etc. of the entire workplace. The society has even adopted the system of guarantees by association; if Falun Gong practitioners leave their districts to appeal, police staff of the local police stations will be punished and may lose their jobs. Similarly, the local government officials will face punitive fines and may even be removed from their positions. The “610 Office” incites a nationwide mass movement in the style of the Cultural Revolution, forcing the entire populace to watch defamatory television programs that are broadcast at set times and to study newspapers and articles that slander and bring false charges against Falun Gong, thereby brainwashing the entire nation. It demands that every citizen demonstrate support for Jiang Zemin’s policy of suppression against Falun Gong; it conducts a nationwide signature campaign that includes even elementary school students; it coerces people at major roads and transportation stations to curse Falun Gong, and even to step on a portrait of the founder of Falun Gong, before allowing them to pass. The “610 Office” deprives all Chinese citizens of their right to information, not only blocking factual information about Falun Gong in newspapers, on radio, and on television without exception, but also establishing a system of Internet police to seal off overseas web sites and to block overseas news about Falun Gong. The “610 Office” creates a white terror within China. Anyone found visiting restricted web sites will be immediately taken away by police. Jiang Zemin directs the “610 Office” to extend the fabrications and persecution overseas, ordering Chinese embassies and consulates worldwide to hold exhibits and seminars that defame Falun Gong in their local regions, incite hatred against Falun Gong among the people within Chinese communities who are not aware of the facts, and even employ ruffians in various attempts to directly disrupt lawful Falun Gong activities overseas. The embassies and consulates in other countries monitor and follow overseas Falun Gong practitioners, hire ruffians to harass them, and cancel their passports at will. Through defamation and fabrications against Falun Gong practitioners overseas, the “610 Office” has deceived millions worldwide; the persecution of Falun Gong is in reality a terrorist persecution of all of humankind. For the aforementioned reasons, the “World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong” hereby announces the establishment of the “Committee to Investigate the Crimes of China’s ‘610 Office’ in the Persecution of Falun Gong,” to fully open investigations into the systematic persecution of Falun Gong by China’s “610 Office,” and furthermore to open key investigations into the “610 Offices” and the Political-Legal committees in Beijing, Hebei province, Shandong province, and Hubei province. This committee seeks to invite and coordinate all people of conscience in China and worldwide to systematically investigate all criminal conduct of involved individuals and institutions within China’s “610 Office” in the persecution of Falun Gong. We call on these people to provide us with evidence of the persecution, to cooperate with this investigation and ensure its smooth progress, and to uphold justice in society. Contact information: 2. Persecution Cases All levels of the Political-Legal Committee and the “610 Office” in Beijing city, Hebei province, Shandong province, and Hubei province have held many brainwashing classes in their jurisdictions since the beginning of 2000. They collude with the local Public Security Bureaus, procurators’ offices, courthouses, police stations, and neighborhood committees, using all manner of illegal means to deceive and abduct tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners to brainwashing classes. They illegally force Falun Gong practitioners to write the “Disassociation Statement,” the “Statement to Expose and Criticize [Falun Gong],” and the “Guarantee Statement” (the so-called “three statements”). Those who refuse to submit are directly and illegally sent to labor “re-education” camps or sentenced. Many people are tortured and abused in detention centers or labor camps; some have even been tortured to death. According to the latest verified report, the Political-Legal Committee and the “610 Office” in Wuhan city, Hubei province have formally issued orders to require all those who have ever practiced Falun Gong to be re-registered and to write the “three statements.” If they refuse, they will be arrested and sent to brainwashing classes for further persecution, including losing their personal freedom and even having their lives threatened. (The situation is extremely serious and involves severe criminal conduct that bears upon the internationally recognized crime of genocide. WOIPFG has decided to open a separate investigation into this situation immediately.) Case 1:
Wang Bo said to her father when she saw him later: “Father, I suffered tremendously when I was at the labor camp. I had no personal freedom at all, and I was not allowed to write letters or have relatives visit me. They abducted me to the Xinan Labor Camp in Beijing. On the way there, I almost jumped out of the train. I didn’t know if I would be able to endure the persecution that was to come. At the Xinan Labor Camp, to forcibly brainwash me, they deprived me of sleep for six consecutive days and forced me to watch videos that distorted Falun Gong and contained lies that reversed black and white. One policeman in the labor camp said these words to me: ‘We are simply using the methods that we use on spies to make your mind collapse!’ ... Father, do you know how I came through all of this? After being transformed, the internal turmoil and mental depression made me feel that I’d rather be dead. At times I felt like a person over 60 years old, and I felt as if I had already died mentally quite a number of times. Father, I missed you very much…” When Wang Bo’s father, Wang Xinzhong (also a Falun Gong practitioner), went home to visit his daughter, police who had lain in ambush abducted him as well. He was sent to the brainwashing class in Shijiazhuan city, Hebei province, where he was forcibly brainwashed using the same methods. His case was wantonly used as propaganda by the “610 Office” via the newspapers and television stations that it controls. (See Appendix 1 for details: Testimony of Wang Xinzhong) Because Wang Xinzhong’s testimony exposed the inside story of how the “610 Office” conducts forcible brainwashing against Falun Gong practitioners, he was abducted again in Shanxi in October 2002.
Key individuals and work units involved in the case for obtaining evidence: · Wang Yongzhi, head of the Hebei provincial “610 Office.” · Guo Suoshan, Deputy Director of the Public Security Bureau of Shijiazhuang city and head of its brainwashing center. · Li Aiguo, Kong Fanyun, Yuan Shuqian, and Cui Yanfang of Shijiazhuang “Law Education Training Center” (brainwashing center). · Production crew of the Focus Interview Program of Chinese Central Television Station, CCTV. · Wu Huanqing, Lu Guoqing, and Dong Zhiyong, Xinhua Net reporters in Beijing. · China's Central Music Conservatory · Lang Deqiang, Wang Bo’s teacher in senior high school. · Shijiazhuang Railroad Maintenance Section.
Chen Zixiu, female, 58 years old, of Weifang city, Shandong province, was brutally beaten to death by the staff of the Political-Legal Committee and the “610 Office” of Weifang city for refusing to give up her belief in Falun Gong. To expose this atrocity, Ian Johnson of the Wall Street Journal published an interview article on April 20, 2000, entitled “A Deadly Exercise: Practicing Falun Gong was a Right, Ms. Chen Said, to Her Last Day.” (See Appendix 2 for details.) In this article, Mr. Johnson wrote: The day before Chen Zixiu died, her captors again demanded that she renounce her faith in Falun Dafa. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a cattle prod, the 58-year-old stubbornly shook her head. Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood, said cellmates and other prisoners who witnessed the incident. She crawled outside, vomited and collapsed. She never regained consciousness, and died on Feb. 21. Chen Zixiu's daughter, Zhang Xueling, was sentenced without trial to a three-year term in a labor camp for attempting to expose the persecution and redress the injustice committed against her mother (see Appendix 3 for details).
Key individuals
for obtaining evidence: · Wang Jimei, male, over 50 years old, former Secretary of the Political-Legal Committee of Weichang district, Weifang city. · Gao Xingong, male, over 40 years old, Secretary of the Political-Legal Committee of Chengguanjie Office, Weichang district, Weifang city. · Deng Ping, female, over 40 years old, Director of Hujiapaifang Neighborhood Committee. · Liu Guangming, male, over 30 years old, former head of the Joint Defense Team at the Nanguan Police Station. According to incomplete statistics, 73 Falun Gong practitioners have already been persecuted to death in Shandong province, and 29 of these deaths occurred in Weifang city alone. This extremely severe situation will be a priority in our investigation. For a name list of those in charge of the Shandong provincial “610 Office” and Political-Legal Committee, including a name list of the “610 Office” staff, please see Appendix 4. 3. Subjects for
Investigation Key individuals responsible for the “610 Office” of the Central Committee of China
A partial list of individuals for obtaining evidence at the Beijing district “610 Office”:
Wang Zhenhua, Deputy Secretary of a district in Beijing; person in charge of the “610 Office.”
Wang Shuhe,
Standing Member of the District Committee, in charge of political-legal
affairs, concurrently Secretary of the District Political-Legal Cai Changmin, Deputy District Director of a district in Beijing; participates in “610”affairs. Hou Junshu, Deputy Secretary of the District Committee, in charge of the District Political-Legal Committee, Judicial Bureau. Wang Liming, head of the “610 Office” of the Beijing Municipal Committee. 4. Appendices On April 8, 2002,
the Focus Interview talk show of Chinese Central Television (CCTV) broadcast
a program called "From Destruction to Rebirth - Wang Bo and Her
Parents." I was one of the persons concerned?Wang Bo’s father.
My name is Wang Xinzhong. I am a former member of the Chinese Communist
Party and a supervisor at the Shijiazhuang railway maintenance section.
I was expelled from the Party and removed from my position at work simply
because I practice Falun Gong. I was forced into homelessness in May
2001 to avoid further persecution. In January 2002, I was abducted to
the so-called "Law Education and Training Center" in Hebei
Province. The center is nothing but a brainwashing center in disguise.
I was detained and forcibly brainwashed. There I suffered four months
of severe mental torture and anguish and finally escaped on May 12.
Here I am compelled to expose the lies broadcast by the Focus Interview
program and the Xinhua News Agency, to clarify the facts, and to tell
the truth to the public. Although I had fallen
into error due to being brainwashed at the time, afterwards I continued
to practice and never gave up Falun Gong. After Wang Bo’s
mental devastation, her young mind became distorted. She also said to
me: “Father, do you know how I came through all of this? After
being transformed, the internal turmoil and mental depression made me
feel that I’d rather be dead. At times I felt like a person over
60 years old, and I felt as if I had already died mentally quite a number
of times. Father, I missed you very much…” Appendix 2 WEIFANG, China -- The day before Chen Zixiu died, her captors again demanded that she renounce her faith in Falun Dafa. Barely conscious after repeated jolts from a cattle prod, the 58-year-old stubbornly shook her head. Enraged, the local officials ordered Ms. Chen to run barefoot in the snow. Two days of torture had left her legs bruised and her short black hair matted with pus and blood, said cellmates and other prisoners who witnessed the incident. She crawled outside, vomited and collapsed. She never regained consciousness, and died on Feb. 21. A year ago, few outside of China had heard of Falun Dafa and its regimen of practices, known as Falun Gong, which include breathing exercises, meditation and readings from the moralistic, and sometimes unusual, works of group founder Li Hongzhi. Although popular among millions of Chinese, Falun Gong didn't jump to international prominence until April 25 last year, when 10,000 of its believers converged on Beijing, surrounding the government's leadership compound in the Forbidden City and demanding an end to state press reports that portrayed them as a superstitious cult. The crowd cut an odd sight: Mostly middle-age, working-class people, they simply meditated quietly for the better part of a day before leaving the center of town to return to their homes across the country. But to a government that doesn't much tolerate open challenges to its power, the protest was an unforgivable provocation. The government arrested hundreds of Falun Gong organizers and discovered that some were officials in the central government, the police and even the military. Worried that a cancerous religion was infecting its atheist state, Beijing declared Falun Gong an "evil cult" last July and formally banned it. Confronted with the full weight of China's security apparatus, Falun Gong should have died a quick death. But unlike the dissidents who occasionally challenge the Communist Party, Falun Gong activists haven't been stopped, despite mass arrests, beatings and even killings. Instead, a hard core continues to protest, with several dozen arrested every day in downtown Beijing when they try to unfurl banners calling for their group's legalization. A year on, Falun Gong faithful have mustered what is arguably the most sustained challenge to authority in 50 years of Communist rule. Pyrrhic Victory? Ms. Chen's tale is one of extremes. On one end is the Communist Party, which is so determined to break Falun Gong that it has resorted to public-security measures on a scale not seen since 1989, when an antigovernment movement led by students was crushed in Tiananmen Square. The government's victory in this fight, should it come, may well be Pyrrhic; its heavy-handed approach has disillusioned millions of ordinary people, such as Ms. Chen's daughter, who were apolitical until last year's events. It has also damaged China's international standing just as it needs foreign help on an array of pressing economic issues. On the other end are people such as Ms. Chen, who in their simple, and perhaps naive, way are at the forefront of a slow trend to demand the freedoms guaranteed by China's laws and constitution. While many Falun Gong practitioners have compromised – by practicing secretly at home, for example – thousands have insisted openly on their right to freedom of belief and assembly. "We're good people," Ms. Chen's friends recall her telling officials from the Weifang city government who interrogated her in her barren concrete cell two days before she died. "Why shouldn't we practice what we want?" The story of Ms. Chen's last days is reconstructed from interviews with family, friends and prisoners, as well as two accounts written by cellmates and smuggled out of jail in recent weeks. Originals of these accounts were examined and shown to the authors' friends and relatives, who verified the documents as having been written by their loved ones. Allegations of mistreatment also are backed by more than two dozen separate interviews with Falun Gong adherents in other cities, who independently said they too were beaten with clubs and electric batons, chained to bars and made to disavow their faith. Local officials rejected efforts to interview them for this story, while Beijing's official position on all allegations of prison abuse is that no Falun Gong practitioner has been mistreated in custody. It says 35,000 adherents came to Beijing but were sent back safely, with only three dying accidentally when they tried to escape. International human-rights groups say it is likely that at least seven more deaths like Ms. Chen's occurred through mistreatment in prison. "All she had to do was say she renounced Falun Gong and they would have let her go," said Zhang Xueling, Ms. Chen's 32-year-old daughter. "But she refused." Three years ago, Ms. Chen hardly imagined that she would be risking her life by practicing Falun Gong. She was 55 and had taken early retirement from a state-run truck-repair garage where she had worked for 30 years making auto parts. One day while out walking in the neighborhood near her family's one-story brick bungalow, Ms. Chen noticed some practitioners of Falun Gong. A widow for 20 years whose her children grown, Ms. Chen had little to do during the day, so she started attending the exercise sessions regularly. "My mother was never anyone who believed in superstitious things," said Ms. Zhang, who doesn't practice Falun Gong herself. "Frankly, she had a bad temper because she felt she was getting old and had sacrificed so much to raise us alone. When she joined Falun Gong her temper improved a lot and she became a better person. We really supported her." Enthusiastic Follower Over the next two years, Ms. Chen became an enthusiastic participant, rising at 4:30 a.m. to exercise for 90 minutes in a small dirt lot with half a dozen other practitioners. After a day running errands for her children and grandchildren, Ms. Chen spent evenings reading the works of Mr. Li, the group's founder, and discussing his ideas with fellow members. Those beliefs incorporate traditional morality – do good works, speak honestly, never be evasive – as well as some idiosyncratic notions, such as the existence of extraterrestrial life and separate-but-equal heavens for people of different races. Gradually, Falun
Gong gained adherents in her neighborhood, Xu Family Hamlet, which is
located in an industrial suburb of Weifang, a city of 1.3 million in
eastern China's Shandong province. The hamlet is a dusty maze of poplar-lined
dirt roads and bungalows surrounded by crumbling brown brick walls –
a typical village being swallowed up by its urban neighbor. By last
year, her local group had doubled in size to a dozen regular members
– hardly a giant organization, but a regular presence in the community.
Practicing at Home lthough barely literate and never before interested in politics, Ms. Chen resisted the ban. She invited group members to practice at her home and refused to deny her affiliation with the group or her love for Mr. Li, whom she respectfully called "Master Li." Then, last November, several top organizers of Falun Gong were given long prison sentences. Shocked, Ms. Chen joined thousands of fellow practitioners by traveling to Beijing with the vague idea of protesting against the government. Since the ban in July, many had gone to Tiananmen Square and sat cross-legged with their arms stretched in an arc over their heads – the classic starting pose for Falun Gong exercises. Ms. Chen never made
it that far. On Dec. 4, the day after she arrived in Beijing, she was
walking through the Temple of Heaven park when a plain-clothes security
agent asked if she was a member. She answered truthfully and was arrested,
her daughter said. She was taken to the Weifang municipal government's
Beijing representative office, a sort of lobbying bureau-cum-dormitory
that scores of Chinese cities and provinces have set up in the capital
to house local officials visiting Beijing. "Administrative Detention" As punishment, officials from the Chengguan Street Committee (street committees are the lowest level in China's system of government) confined Ms. Chen to their offices, just 200 yards from her home. She stayed there for two weeks, in a form of "administrative detention" that the state can impose almost indefinitely. Ms. Zhang had to pay another $45 for her mother's room and board. On Jan. 3, Ms. Chen celebrated her 58th birthday. Despite being under day-and-night observation, she was in great spirits, Ms. Zhang said. "She knew she was right. All she wanted was to make the government not make a criminal out of her because she knew she wasn't a criminal." Then, on Chinese New Year, which this year fell on Feb. 4, hundreds of Falun Gong protesters were arrested and beaten in Beijing. (Though no longer under surveillance, Ms. Chen wasn't a protester.) Officials in the capital were stunned by the outbreak. On Feb. 16, the local district chief came to see Ms. Chen and told her that Beijing wanted to make sure no other Falun Gong adherents went to Beijing, especially since China's annual session of parliament was due to begin in a few days. He asked Ms. Chen to promise she wouldn't leave home. "My mother told them very clearly that she wouldn't guarantee that she wouldn't go anywhere. She said she had the right to go where she pleased," Ms. Zhang said. The officials left in a huff. Taken Into Custody Two days later, Ms. Zhang came home to find half a dozen officials in her living room. They said her mother had been spotted outside by a special squad of informants who roamed the neighborhood looking for Falun Gong participants who dared to leave home. Ms. Chen was taken into custody and never seen by her daughter again. She was held for a day in the Chengguan Street Committee offices, but then during the night she managed to escape – exactly how isn't clear, officials told Ms. Zhang. Ms. Chen was arrested the next day, Feb. 17, heading for the train station, apparently hoping to go to Beijing to plead her case before the Petitions and Appeals Office, a last resort for people who feel they have been wronged. This time, officials
from the local district Communist Party office sent Ms. Chen to a small,
unofficial prison run by the street committee, described to practitioners
as the Falun Gong Education Study Class. Another Fine While Ms. Chen was transferred to the detention center, officials called Ms. Zhang and said her mother would be released if she would pay a $241 fine. Ms. Zhang was fed up with the government's "fines" and, she said, her mother's insistence on standing up for her rights. She told the officials that their fines were illegal and that she would complain to the local procurator's office if they didn't release her mother. She rejected another call on Feb. 18 and again threatened legal action, though she didn't follow through. Meanwhile, Ms. Chen spent a night in the jail, listening to screams emanating from the squat building, according to two of her cellmates. Before she was led in, she was allowed another phone call. She called her daughter later on the 18th and asked her to bring the money. Irritated by the troubles brought on by her mother's uncompromising attitude, Ms. Zhang argued with her. Give in and come home, the daughter pleaded. Her mother quietly refused. Ms. Chen's ordeal began that night. Wrote an adherent who was in the next room of the squat building: "We heard her screaming. Our hearts were tortured and our spirits almost collapsed." Officials from the Chengguan Street Committee used plastic truncheons on her calves, feet and lower back, as well as a cattle prod on her head and neck, according to witnesses. They shouted at her repeatedly to give up Falun Gong and to curse Mr. Li, according to her cellmates. Each time, Ms. Chen refused. A Mother's Plea The next day, the 19th, Ms. Zhang got another call. Bring the money, she was told. Ms. Zhang hesitated. Her mother came on the line. Her voice, usually so strong and confident, was soft and pained. She pleaded with her daughter to bring the money. The caller came back on the phone. Bring the money, she said. Ms. Zhang got a sick feeling and rushed over with the money and some clothes. But the building was surrounded by agents who wouldn't let her see her mother. Suspicious that this was a ruse to get more money from her – and that her mother wasn't really in the building at all – she returned home. An hour later, a practitioner came to see Ms. Zhang. Falun Gong adherents were being beaten in the center, she was told. Ms. Zhang raced back with her brother, carrying fruit as a small bribe for the police. She was refused entrance and her money was refused as well. She noticed an old woman in a room and shouted up to her: "Is my mother being beaten?" The old woman waved her hand to signify "no," although Ms. Zhang wondered whether she might have been trying to wave her away from the prison, fearing she, too, would be arrested. Ms. Zhang and her brother went home for a fitful, sleepless night. Carte Blanche That night, Ms. Chen was taken back into the room. After again refusing to give up Falun Gong, she was beaten and jolted with the stun stick, according to two prisoners who heard the incident and one who caught glimpses of it through a door. Her cellmates heard her curse the officials, saying the central government would punish them once they were exposed. But in an answer that Falun Gong adherents say they heard repeatedly in different parts of the country, the Weifang officials told Ms. Chen that they had been told by the central government that "no measures are too excessive" to wipe out Falun Gong. The beatings continued and would stop only when Ms. Chen changed her thinking, according to two prisoners who say they overheard the incident. Two hours after
she went in, Ms. Chen was pushed back into her cell on the second story
of the main building, an unheated room with only a sheet of steel for
a bed. Her three cellmates tended to her wounds, but she fell into a
delirium. One of the cellmates remembers her moaning "mommy, mommy."
Denied Treatment "I was a medical major. When I saw her dying, I suggested moving her into another [heated] room," the cellmate wrote in her letter. Instead, local government officials gave her "sanqi," herbal pills for light internal bleeding. "But she couldn't swallow and spat them out." Cellmates implored the officials to send Ms. Chen to a hospital, but the officials -- who often criticize Falun Gong practitioners for forgoing modern medical treatment in favor of a superstitious belief in their exercises -- refused, her cellmates said. Eventually they brought in a doctor, who pronounced her healthy. But, wrote the cellmate: "She wasn't conscious and didn't talk, and only spat dark-colored sticky liquid. We guessed it was blood. Only the next morning did they confirm that she's dying." An employee of the local Public Security Bureau, Liu Guangming, "tried her pulse and his face froze." Ms. Chen was dead. That evening, officials went over to Ms. Zhang's house and said her mother was ill, according to Ms. Zhang and her brother. The two piled into a car and were driven to a hotel about a mile from the detention center. The hotel was surrounded by police. The local party secretary told them Ms. Chen had died of a heart attack, but they wouldn't allow them to see her body. After hours of arguing, the officials finally said they could see the body, but only the next day, and insisted they spend the night in the heavily guarded hotel. The siblings refused and finally were allowed to go home. A Bag of Clothes On the 22nd, Ms. Zhang and her brother were taken to the local hospital, which was also ringed by police. Their mother, they recalled, was laid out on a table in traditional mourning garb: a simple blue cotton tunic over pants. In a bag tossed in the corner of the room, Ms. Zhang said she spotted her mother's torn and bloodied clothes, the underwear badly soiled. Her calves were black. Six-inch welts streaked along her back. Her teeth were broken. Her ear was swollen and blue. Ms. Zhang fainted, and her brother, weeping, caught her. That day, the hospital issued a report on Ms. Chen. It said the cause of death was natural. The hospital declines to comment on the matter. Ms. Zhang said she challenged officials about the clothing she had seen, but they told her mother had become incontinent after the heart attack and that was why her clothes were soiled. Ms. Zhang and her
brother tried filing a lawsuit, but no lawyer would accept the case.
Meantime, her mother's body lay in refrigeration, until the threatened
litigation was resolved. Appendix 3 Wall Street Journal: Daughter of Falun Gong Member Is Sent Without Trial to Work Camp On May 10, 2001, Wall Street Journal reporter Charles Hutzler reported that Chen Zixiu’s daughter had been sent without trial to a labor camp for three years. May 10, 2001 Police in the eastern
city of Weifang ordered Zhang Xueling's punishment on April 24, sending
her to the Wang Village labor camp in the nearby city of Zibo, according
to a Falun Gong spokeswoman in New York and the Hong Kong-based Information
Center for Human Rights and Democracy. The Hong Kong group said Wednesday
that she was accused of "using a [term omitted] to undermine the
implementation of law" – a vague, catchall charge that has
been frequently used against Falun Gong followers to send them to labor
camps. Ms. Zhang's mother, Chen Zixiu, was an ardent Falun Gong follower who was detained twice for trying to protest the ban on the group that the government imposed in July 1999. During her second detention, in February of last year, fellow inmates and family members said police beat the 58-year-old woman to death as they tried to force her to recant. Police denied the mistreatment and said Ms. Chen died from natural causes. Initially supportive of the ban, Ms. Zhang grew doubtful about the government's crackdown in its first few months. After her mother's death, she repeatedly – and unsuccessfully – petitioned the police and government to issue a death certificate. Along the way, Ms. Zhang drew support from Falun Gong followers and became a practitioner herself. Ms. Chen's death and her daughter's quest for justice were chronicled by The Asian Wall Street Journal in a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in the U.S. last month. Appendix 4: Parial list of individuals in the “610 Office” and the Political-Legal Committee of Shandong province for obtaining evidence:
Liu Yuxiang,
“610 Office” of Shandong Provincial Committee Yantai district
“610 Office”: Zhang Jian, Wang Jian, Wang Chenghui, Ma
Daotang, Yu Yonglu, Qi Zhuangda, Jin Ruqi, Liu Xiaoli List of names for investigation in the Weifang region (partial): Yi Zhaojie, Ma Bo, Zhai Jiantao, Wei Tiankui, Gong Zhiqiang, Liu Jiesong, Guan Guofeng, Zhao Jie, Cui Xihui, Zhang Guanzhu, Wang Qinggui, Wei Qi, Zhang Mingli, Mao Youdong, Cheng Baotian, Ma Qingping, Guo Tinghe, Guo Liguang, Duan Zhaohuang, Zhang Guobao, Ma Ruifu, Wang Quanfeng, Liu Wenxue, Zhao Xinkun, Shao Weihua, Wang Chuanfeng, Wang Dongsheng, Guo Qijun, Li Jingwei, Li Chuansheng, Sun Yuexin, Wang Aizhi, Yu Mingchun, Zhang Yongjie, Wang Dequan, Wang Zuohua, Zhe Yusheng, Zhang Fengying, Wang Xinmin, Tan Chunqi, Guo Xingyue, Chen Longshan, Chen Yonghua, Dong Hongtao, Chen Qingchun, Ma Hongzhen, Wu Bin, Gao Shuzhen, Guo Wenjie, Wang Gesheng, Li Quanyu, Liu Yurui Appendix 5 France International Radio Station: Falun Gong practitioners launch a lawsuit in France against Li Lanqing, the Director of China's “610 Office” France International Radio Station: A Chinese-language morning news program broadcast on December 8, 2002 to Mainland China and to the Chinese community in Greater Paris: On “International Human Rights Day,” next Tuesday December 10, European Falun Gong Information Center will hold a press conference at 156, rue de Rivoli - 75001 Paris. At the appointed time, two lawyers representing four Falun Gong practitioners will introduce their lawsuit, submitted at the Court of Nice this Wednesday, against Vice Premier Li Lanqing of the People’s Republic of China. Among the four Falun Gong practitioners is one French woman. They accuse Li Lanqing, who recently visited France, of being the person in charge of China’s “610 Office” and of having responsibility in the brutal tortures inflicted upon practitioners of Falun Gong. According to reports from the European Falun Gong Information Center, the two lawyers are Mr. Bourdon and Mr. Beauthier. They have previously participated in the trials against former Chilean dictator Pinochet in Belgium and France. According to further reports from AFP, the two lawyers said that the charges against Li Lanqing are based on the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which France signed in 1984. Beauthier told AFP that he has gathered "overwhelming testimony" about the activities of the "610 Office." [AFP] AFP reported on December 8, 2002, that four Falun Gong practitioners from France, Ireland and Canada have recently launched legal action in France against Chinese Vice Premier Li Lanqing, accusing Li of responsibility for directing the suppression of Falun Gong in his position as head of the "610 Office," a government agency in China specifically established to severely deal with Falun Gong. [Mingbao] On December 9, Mingbao cited from AFP that four Falun Gong practitioners from France, Ireland, and Canada have launched a lawsuit in France, through two renowned human rights lawyers, against Chinese Vice-Premier Li Lanqing, pointing to Li’s position as head of China’s “610 Office” with specific responsibility for suppressing Falun Gong, and asserting that he must be held accountable. Legal counsel for the plaintiffs, noted human rights lawyer Georges-Henri Beauthier, said that legal action against Chinese government officials who abuse human rights will not stop here, as the work will continue until a number of these officials are brought to justice. Li Lanqing recently led a delegation to France on the issue of “China’s Application to Host the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.” |
