Chinese Woman Appeals Mother's Freedom

On Tuesday, this 22-year old woman protested in front of the Chinese Consulate in New York. She's urging Chinese officials to release information about her mother's whereabouts.

[Han Yi, Daughter of Jailed Falun Gong Practitioner]:
"Today I came here for my mom. The police arrested her last December illegally. She was sentenced to one-and-a-half years in jail."

For more than a decade, Han Yi's mother—Wu Shunzhen—has been persecuted simply for doing this in China. It's a meditation practice called Falun Gong.

For that—she's been tortured in Chinese labor camps more than once.

[Han Yi, Daughter of Jailed Falun Gong Practitioner]:
"One time, they didn't let her sleep for a month. What's worse is that the male guards sexually abused her, and then they [brought in] snakes and scorpions to bite her."

Yi practices Falun Gong, too. She came to America on a student visa. But her mother and millions of other practitioners in China face severe persecution.

[Levi Browde, Falun Dafa Information Center Spokesman]:
"The Chinese Communist Party, which rules China today, uses all these instruments—governmental and nongovernmental—to try and get every single person who practices Falun Gong to relinquish their beliefs. And again, you have to keep in mind we're talking about literally tens of millions of people inside China."

And to force them to stop practicing Falun Gong, the Communist Party uses a variety of methods—including putting them in labor camps to be tortured.

[Levi Browde, Falun Dafa Information Center Spokesman]:
“They are coerced, physically and mentally, until they give up the practice, a lot of people have died in these situations.”

In fact, the Falun Dafa Information Center has documented the deaths of more than three thousand Falun Gong practitioners from torture and abuse.

That's why Han Yi is worried. She doesn't know where her mother is now—or even if she's still alive.

[Yi Han, Daughter of Jailed Falun Gong Practitioner]:
"They don't even tell us where my mom is... They don't allow us to contact her."

But she's determined to do what she can to see her again—and to help stop the persecution of millions of other people in China, too.

[Yi Han, Daughter of Jailed Falun Gong Practitioner]:
"I want to reveal this brutal persecution my mom [has been suffering] for 10 years and let more people know about the CCP's brutal persecution of Falun Gong."

Milene Fernandez, NTD News, New York.