Introducing Falun Gong at a Polish Multicultural Festival (Photos)

By a practitioner in Poland
 
(Clearwisdom.net) The multicultural festival in Warsaw, Poland was held on August 28, 2011. At 1 p.m., spectators stood along the float parade path from bank square downtown to old town. On the eye-catching Falun Dafa float, practitioners demonstrated the exercises, while many spectators waved their hands and shouted: popierram (support)!

Falun Gong practitioners participate in parade at the Warsaw Multicultural Festival

Watching Falun Gong practitioners’ float in front of the Presidential Office

Polish people watch the Falun Gong exercise demonstration

After the parade ended, the practitioners’ float was parked across from the practitioners’ stand. Many spectators came to have a photo taken with the float. Some people followed the hand gestures of the practitioners demonstrating the exercises. Many of them picked up flyers and asked where they could learn Falun Gong and the website of Falun Dafa in polish.

When viewing the poster boards with information exposing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s persecution of Falun Gong, people were shocked and asked the Falun Gong practitioners on site, “Why? Why has this happened?” The practitioners explained the facts about Falun Gong again and again, and exposed the CCP’s lies and violence. Many people saw the signature collection form on the table and signed it without hesitation. Many people lined up to wait for signing the form.

People learn about Falun Gong

Viewing Falun Gong poster boards

Polish people sign the petition protesting the CCP’s brutal persecution of Falun Gong

One Chinese person viewed the posters and renounced the CCP and its affiliated organizations on the spot. Several groups of Chinese passed by and stopped to learn the facts.

When it became dark, many people were still learning the Falun Gong exercises in front of the float. Many others learned about folding paper lotus flowers and writing Chinese words inside the tent. People left slowly after the event concluded at 9 p.m.

Posting date: 9/4/2011
Category: Community Events
Chinese version available at  
http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2011/9/3/华沙多元文化节上介绍法轮功（图）-246213.html

Earth's Auroras Viewed From Space-SCIENCE VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Discovery Sees Aurora Borealis (NASA)

The space shuttle Discovery captured these awe-inspiring images of Earth, featuring the Aurora Borealis or Northern lights at our planet's North Pole, while docked at the International Space Station (ISS) last year.

Auroras happen when charged particles from the sun are attracted to Earth's magnetic field and strike the atmosphere, causing air molecules to glow.

They appear as green and red flickering lights, and are most often seen on Earth following solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) from the sun.

This time-lapse video also shows city night lights, the transition from night to day when the auroras disappear, and a beam of daylight illuminating the globe, as its surface revolves beneath the view of the space shuttle.

A Soyuz docked module and a solar panel from the ISS are visible in the foreground.

The footage was captured during mission STS-131, which ran for 15 days in April 2010. It was the 33rd shuttle mission to the ISS.

Discovery retired after its last trip to the space station in March as NASA's 30-year-long space shuttle program drew to a close. Atlantis made the final mission, STS-135, in July, and the program formally ended on Aug. 31.

An Artist's Response to 9/11 Tragedy

Flint Gennari: A CITY BURNING: Flint Gennari's "City Burning," photograph appears in the collection "9.11...NYC...The Days After." (Courtesy of Art for Healing NYC) 

 

NEW YORK—“I was angry, I wasdepressed. I didn't want to call anybody. I didn't know who to call or what to do. I just buried myself in my studio for like a week, and I wrote poetry and I did art,” recalled Loren Ellis, as she sat in her Upper West Side gallery nearly 10 years after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ellis founded a nonprofit organization called Art for Healing NYC. One of the organization's projects has been to compile art created by New Yorkers from all five boroughs, all walks of life, and all skill levels into an intimate little package—a book called “9.11...NYC...The Days After.”

One piece that struck Ellis as particularly powerful, and which is featured as a photograph in the book, is a bronze sculpture by Meredith Bergmann from Manhattan.

A woman stands nude, her hands held up in front of her face, her eyes closed—an airplane penetrates each of her hands.

The images range from a woodcut print of a rescue dog, to a photograph of tourists wearing masks that protect their lungs from the harmful dust, to a still shot from a film showing a Native American in front of the burning buildings.

Sarah Yuster of Staten Island painted a portrait of a firefighter. It was inspired by the words of her brother, who survived the attack on 2 World Trade Center.

“The firefighters kept everyone calm, guiding and assuring us that we would be fine. I tried to remember the face of each one as he passed us going up; they had to know they might never come down, even if you couldn't see it in their eyes. ... I felt that someone should look at their faces because it might be the last time anyone did," he told her.

Yuster chose battalion chief Ed Ellison because “he is seasoned, intelligent, and has a face that reflects experience and pathos.”

Staten Island has a proportionately high number of firefighters among its inhabitants, losing 80 first responders in the calamity. Yuster remembers the bagpipe funeral airs that played a constant soundtrack in her neighborhood for nearly a year.

THE DAYS AFTER: Artist and Director of Art for Healing NYC Loren Ellis sits in her gallery, holding a book she helped compile of art produced in reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (Tara MacIsaac/The Epoch Times)

While the buildings were “newly smoldering” says Yuster, she received requests en masse for reproductions of her landscape painting from 1985, “Victory Blvd. At Dawn.” The scene captures a happier time; looking out from the Staten Island vantage point onto a peaceful, quiet dawn and the twin towers standing tall on the horizon.

Her most recent work, “Staten Island, September,” will be on display at The National Lighthouse Museum on Staten Island in a multimedia exhibit commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11 Sept. 10 and 11, and Sept. 17 and 18.

It shows the blue towers of light that beam up from the World Trade Center site as a tribute each year on the anniversary 9/11. In the foreground is the Postcards Memorial on the shore of Staten Island, which pays tribute to the hundreds of men and women who never returned to the borough.

The bagpipes that haunted Yuster's days also reached the home of her fellow islander, poet Marguerite Rivas, who will curate the exhibit at the Light House Museum. She lived near a church at the time and would hear the pipers tuning their instruments to “Amazing Grace” as she wrote in her poem Witness.

“Amazing Grace bagpipes make everyone wince.
Empty firefighters’ helmets are placed
beside the Easter candle,
and borrowed coffins, flag-draped,
are borne upon brave shoulders,”

FACE OF COURAGE: Portrait of Battalion Chief Ed Ellison painted by Sarah Yuster. (Courtesy of Sarah Yuster)

Rivas pointed to the “omnipresent skyline” on Aug. 22 from the esplanade along Staten Island's shore. New structures now rise from the gaping holes left by the fall of the twin towers.

She cited the poet Ezra Pound, saying her role as a poet is to “tell the tale” of her “tribe.”

Rivas describes in her work the sorrow of the islanders who returned on the ferry from the wreckage, who watched the destruction from the shoreline, and who “carried upon their shoulders the yoke of a pulverized city: ash made of concrete, paper, and life.”

“I don’t remember writing much of anything right after 9/11 except for an e-mail to my best friend,” said Rivas. “She kept my e-mail for me, and sent it back to me when I recovered a bit, because that was basically all I wrote then.”

Her poem “Witness” was born of this exchange.

Rivas wrote another poem, “Aquehonga Night Chant,” on the ferry, surrounded by mourners returning from a firefighter's funeral.

She attended a reading of “Aquehonga Night Chant” and saw the reader choke on the words, heard sobs from the audience, and shed tears herself. Rivas felt the power of her words that night.

John Coburn of Toronto, Canada, did not tell the story of his “tribe” when he came to the city amid its hardship, but he had always had a love for New York City and depicted in his drawings a sorrow that crossed all geographical boundaries. 

Preserving memories

John Coburn began drawing New York City when he was a child. He had already published a book of Central Park drawings, and one of New York City hotels by the time the towers fell. Coburn says he “needed to do my own little journey there and feel the sadness in my own way.”

He slipped into the WTC site through a door left open on the periphery and began to draw.

Over the course of his time in the city, he drew rescue workers, chaplains, St. Paul's Chapel at Trinity Church—symbols of hope and unity in suffering as well as vestiges of a past that lay in ruins.

“Usually sitting down to draw is a beautiful and inspiring thing to do. This was just full of sadness and confusion,” said Coburn in a phone interview.

Coburn's studio burned down in 2006, and miraculously, the only surviving work was a portfolio of his 9/11 drawings. From Sept.1 to 15, he will display his work at Sciame Construction at 14 Wall Street to commemorate 10 years of sorrow and hope. Visitors can register for the free exhibit at rsvp@thehealingheartsproject.com.

Coburn printed 2,900 copies of his book, “Healing Hearts” to give to the families of those who perished on 9/11. He was able to do so for free with the help of many volunteers and donations. The mother of a 35-year-old firefighter who died at the WTC site told Coburn, “If your little book can help four people remember my son, George, I think it would be worthwhile sending the book out.”

Excellent Cast in Remake of Israeli Film

MOSSAD AGENTS: (L-R) Marton Csokas, Sam Worthington, and Jessica Chastain, star in "The Debt," a film about Mossad Nazi Hunters. (Laurie Sparham/Focus Features)

The Debt

Director: John Madden
Cast: Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds, Marton Csokas, Jessica Chastain

Running Time: 114 minutes
Rating: R

Rachel Singer understands the dark side of human nature. Her ex-husband Stephan Gold is a high-ranking cabinet official, and her daughter Sarah Gold is a journalist. In fact, Gold’s new book has reopened a number of old wounds for her parents.

Singer and Gold were part of a three-agent Mossad team charged with capturing “The Surgeon of Birkenau,” a National Socialist war criminal clearly modeled on Josef Mengele. Though they were supposedly forced to kill the doctor when he attempted to escape, we quickly discover that there is something wrong with the official story in John Madden’s restructured “The Debt.”

Based on Assaf Bernstein’s Israeli film of the same title, “The Debt” first presents the account of the fateful mission that made Singer a national icon in Israel. It is that story Sarah Gold told in her bestselling book, which Singer dutifully agrees to help publicize.

Yet, when press reports surface of a senile patient in a Ukrainian nursing home claiming to be the notorious surgeon, Dieter Vogel, she and her ex take it deadly seriously. So does David Peretz, the third member of the team, who was always too troubled by the events that transpired in 1965 East Berlin to enjoy their heroic celebrity.

Now a wheelchair-bound senior intelligence official, Gold’s field-operations days are behind him. Though the conscience-plagued Peretz has recently reappeared, he will be in no condition to deal with The Surgeon. It is up to Singer to covertly enter Ukraine and finish the job. While she cases the sanatorium, “The Debt” flashes back to East Berlin, showing how it all really went down.

As adapted by screenwriters Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Peter Straughan, Madden’s film closely hews to the plot and structure of the original. However, the new version plays up the three Mossad agents’ romantic triangle and also adds a bit of a moralizing “truth is important” spin to the ending.

However, like the source film, “The Debt” never suggests Singer’s team had the wrong man, only faulting their execution, the result of stress exacerbated by generational guilt. Indeed, The Surgeon is presented as evil incarnate, played with icy menace by Jesper Christensen.

When casting an actress of a certain age for a somewhat action-oriented film, Helen Mirren is pretty much the extent of the short list. Though she brings the appropriate presence and credibility to the 1997 Singer, the heart and guts of the film remain in 1965 (as was the case with its predecessor).

Madden cranks up the claustrophobic tension in their “safe” flat quite effectively, while making it vividly clear how the legacy of the Holocaust weighed on the team as first-generation children of survivors.

Frankly, Sam Worthington is compelling as the young but already too tightly wound Peretz, who just had the mixed luck to be in utterly terrible but hugely successful films, like “Avatar” and “Clash of the Titans.”

Yet, perhaps the greatest surprise is Jessica Chastain, who rises to the challenge of playing the same character as Dame Helen, in the same film. In fact, she might even get the better of her, investing the younger Gold with equal measures of strength and vulnerability.

Though it still has not fixed the problematic third-act showdown, “The Debt” remains a leanly muscular morality play-thriller. While the English-language version might be a bit more inclined to cast the Mossad in an unfavorable light, there is never any ambiguity as to The Surgeon’s truly malevolent nature.

A surprisingly faithful and well-executed remake, “The Debt” should definitely satisfy those who enjoy a John Le Carrré-esque story, who do not already know the twists and turns of the original. It opened on Wednesday (8/31) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.


Joe Bendel writes about independent film and jazz and lives in New York. To read his most recent articles, please visit http://jbspins.blogspot.com.

The Persecution in Guan County, Shandong Province (Photos)

By a Clearwisdom correspondent from Shandong Province
 
(Clearwisdom.net) There were approximately 10,000 people practicing Falun Gong in Guan County, Shandong Province before the persecution started in July 1999. However, since then the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been brutally persecuting practitioners.

CCP officials in Guan released an order to terminate 29 practitioners' wages on October 14, 2000. This notice was distributed to various government agencies, and was also broadcast on the county-wide television network for three consecutive days.

Announcement to terminate 29 practitioners’ wages

Six brainwashing centers have been set up by the Guan 610 Office since the persecution started, detaining thousands of practitioners over the years. The head of one of the brainwashing centers, Ma Wenchang, forced practitioners to pay for their meals.

When Ren Guangmin became the head of Guan 610 Office, he notified all government agencies in the area to arrest practitioners and take them to the brainwashing center whenever sensitive dates were approaching. Ren gave the instruction that starting from October 2000 all practitioners held in the brainwashing centers had to pay for their meals. Ren and an officer from Guan Police Department, with the last name of Li, also forced a large number of practitioners to do forced labor in the autumn of 2002. The work included paving roads, working at a welding plant and a printing factory. All payments for the completed work went to straight to Ren and other 610 Office agents.

Officials in Guan set up a fund to reward people who report practitioners to the police, or who help the authorities to persecute practitioners.

Document to set up funds to reward those who help persecute practitioners

Officials try to justify the persecution

The Political and Judicial Committee Party Secretary of Guan, Li Bailin, issued several policies urging the County 610 Offices to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Officers were told to confiscate practitioners’ ID cards and to closely monitor them. They were to force practitioners’ relatives to guarantee that the practitioners would not appeal for Falun Gong in the future, and to ensure officials at practitioners’ workplaces closely monitor their movements.

Government agencies in Guan instructed all employers on July 26, 2001 to closely monitor practitioners. If a practitioner went to the provincial capital or Beijing to appeal, their workplace would be fined 30,000 yuan. Any employer who omitted a practitioner's name from their list of practitioners working at their premises would be fined 10,000 yuan. More than 200 practitioners were arrested and detained between July 2001 to July 2002.

An announcement was issued on March 8, 2005, which was widely broadcast on local TV, claiming to reward anyone who reported practitioners to the police. A list of 11 practitioners' details were given, with a reward ranging from 500 to 5,000 yuan. Political and Judicial Committee Party Secretary, Xu Lanling, signed the document on March 9, 2005.

Announcement to report on practitioners

The signature of Xu Lanling

After becoming the head of Guan Police Department in August 2005, Diao Peichang actively participated in the arrest and detention of practitioners, by sending them to labor camps or sentencing them to other places for further persecution. Within one month of him taking his post, more than 100 practitioners were arrested and several dozen were sent to forced labor camps.

The Guan Party Committee honored more than 50 individuals from 13 government agencies on April 18, 2006, for persecuting practitioners.

A document from Guan County Party Committee slandering Falun Gong

Police began to arrest many practitioners and their family members as of July 1, 2007:

Document giving direction on the persecution of Falun Gong

At the beginning of 2008, officials from the Guan 610 Office intensified the persecution prior to the Beijing Olympics. Many plainclothes agents were ordered to put strict surveillance on practitioners. The heads of Guan government agencies held a meeting in the police department on the morning of January 3, where Guan Party secretary Liu Qiang gave a speech. He stressed the importance of the persecution and required each government agency to provide daily updates of their progress to the county 610 Office.

Guan Political and Judicial Committee Party secretary, Han Jinfang, chaired a meeting on March 4, 2008, in which officials from many government agencies attended, including police department head Diao Peichang, head of the court Zhang Xiaohui, and Procuratorate chief Li Chunguang. This meeting was broadcast several times on the Guan County news on March 6, 2008, on three local channels.

The head of Guan County, Hong Yuzhen, held a meeting with high level officials from the Political and Judicial Committee, 610 Office and other government agencies on April 25, 2008. Hong stated that practitioners should be treated as enemies of the state and be suppressed by any means. He stressed the importance of stepping up security for the Olympics and said that bonuses would be awarded to each agency's key officials for the persecution of practitioners.

Document No. 2008-015 was issued on June 6, 2008 to further accelerate the persecution, and a task force was launched by Han Jinfang. Liu Qiang and Hong Yuzhen held a meeting on the same day with the political and judicial officials, where they explicitly declared Falun Gong an enemy of the state and defamed it on TV.

No. 2008-015 document issued by Guan County officials

Two agents from the provincial 610 Office were sent to the Beihuanlu Brainwashing Center to inspect the premises on June 12. It was said that officials from the provincial 610 Office did not consider the persecution in Guan severe enough, and urged local officials to learn from other areas that had been persecuting practitioners more severely.

Following direct orders from Zhou Yongkang, a senior leader of the CCP, senior officials of the Guan 610 Office devised a strategy to intensify the persecution. Officials at Guan 610 Office held another meeting on June 25, in which they planned to arrest a large number of practitioners prior to July 20, the anniversary of the start of the persecution of Falun Gong, and detain them for at least one month.

Additional funding was provided on July 10 to 18 police stations throughout the county, totaling more than 4 million yuan. All of the heads of the police stations were promoted, ten patrol vehicles were added to the fleet, 2,430 closed circuit cameras were installed in the county, and many plainclothes agents were dispatched. Persecuting Falun Gong practitioners was put at the highest priority. As of July 23, anyone wishing to travel out of Guan needed to show their ID card to purchase travel tickets. Checkpoint procedures at the railway and bus stations were also intensified.

Practitioners arrested and detained

Mr. Zhang Guangbao was arrested by officer Li Hanqing when he went to appeal for Falun Gong in 2000. He was detained and tortured by officer Ma Guoqiang. On October 29, 2000, Mr. Zhang was taken to the 9^th Division of Wangcun Forced Labor Camp. During the three years he was held there, camp guards tied him up tightly while he was sitting in a meditation position and left him like that for up to five hours a day. They also rammed a sock into his mouth to prevent him from screaming. He was also forced to sit or stand sometimes while gripping a piece of paper with his legs. If the paper dropped, he would be severely beaten. He was deprived of sleep or use of the toilet for long periods of time. If he was seen dozing off, they would pour cold water on his head, rub spices into his eyes, or insert small twigs up his nostrils. Wang Yong and Zhao Wei once used a wooden stick to constantly beat his legs. Mr. Zhang was soon unable to walk.

When Mr. Feng Xuehui and Mr. Zhang Guangbao were arrested one time, officer Kong Weiping tortured Mr. Feng. His mother was even taken to the police station, and was forced to watch her son being tortured.

Mr. Zhang Guangbao was taken to a forced labor camp in August 2005, and was held in the 6^th Division. He started a hunger strike in September 2005 to protest his mistreatment, and became emaciated after several months. On March 9, 2006, he shouted, “Falun Dafa is good” in the hallway, and was immediately handcuffed to a bed. After enduring the long-term torture he became disabled. He was released in the summer of 2008, and his family had to take care of him. Mr. Zhang's story can be found in the article “Family of Dentists Subjected to Persecution”: http://www.clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/2/18/123313.html

In the evening of May 11, 2001, officers from Chengguan Police Station were dispatched to practitioners' homes to arrest them and anyone else that was there. Even a person who had arrived to collect the water and electricity fees was arrested. Tian Zeng and other officers tortured practitioners and their family members that evening.

When Ms. He Dian was taken to the Chengguan Police Station, her handbag was confiscated and she was interrogated overnight. Officer Chen Yuezhi strip-searched her at 11 p.m., but did not find anything. Ms. He was taken to the third floor of the police station, where her head was covered and she was handcuffed to two chair legs. Tian Zenghai swore at her and beat her with a baton. Other officers repeatedly shocked her face, head and other parts of her body with electric batons. This lasted for nearly two hours. The officers only left when they were tired. Ms. He was kept handcuffed with other detainees until the next morning.

The head of the police station, Han Hongguang, and officer Chen Yuezhi ordered five officers to search Ms. He's home. They confiscated many of her personal belongings. When she was interrogated again, her hands were cuffed behind her back and she was forced to bend down. After the interrogation Ms. He and a few other practitioners were taken to Guan Detention Center. Ms. He's family were forced to pay several thousand yuan for her release. Officers Xue Lianchun and Ma Benxiang interrogated her again a few days later.

More than 10 practitioners were arrested in the early morning of January 16, 2002 and were taken to Wangcun Brainwashing Center in Zibo City. Each of them was forced to pay over 3,000 yuan for their release. Wang Dongxing was sentenced to three years in a forced labor camp in late 2000 because he could not pay the money. Several dozen other practitioners were also taken to Wangcun Brainwashing Center.

The head of Xinji Town Police Station, Wang Baozhuang, was responsible for the persecution of the couple Mr. Li Fengjun and Ms. Shi Dongmin. He had Mr. Li sentenced to a forced labor camp for three years. He ransacked Mr. Li's family's home, confiscated their farm's crops and extorted 8,000 yuan from him. He also sent Ms. Shi to a forced labor camp for one year. Their 17-year-old daughter had to leave school and find a job to support her younger brother and pay for his school expenses.

Ms. Wan Yufen, a nurse at Guan Hospital, and her 20-year-old daughter Ms. Zhao Linian were under surveillance for a long time. Agents from the 610 Office arrested Ms. Zhao and kept her in solitary confinement in Xin County. She was sent to Wangcun Forced Labor Camp three weeks later.

Ms. Zhang Qiaohua was arrested and detained when she went to Beijing to appeal in late September 2000. When she was released, she overheard Political and Judicial Committee Party Secretary Li Bailin slandering Falun Gong. She said to him, “Defaming Falun Gong is not good for you.” Li was furious and had her sent to Wangcun Forced Labor Camp for three years.

Ms. Song Fenglan from Xuxin Village in Jia Town has been detained and tortured in a police station, detention center and brainwashing center many times. Her family was forced to pay large amounts of money for her release on numerous occasions, leaving them in an extremely difficult financial situation. Officials from the Guan 610 Office took Ms. Song to Jinan Women’s Forced Labor Camp on October 29, 2008, after being detained in a brainwashing center for more than three months.

Officials in Guan held a meeting in the Guanzhou Hotel in June 2009, to reward individuals that persecuted Falun Gong and those who organized signature collections from 10,000 students to defame the practice. This meeting was broadcast to the entire county on the evening of June 19, 2009.

Guan County authorities shut down all the Internet cafes in the area in October 2009 to prevent people from reaching the Minghui website and exposing the persecution.

Posting date: 9/4/2011
Category: Persecution Accounts
Chinese version available at
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2011/7/22/冠县——中国第一县的见证（图）-244193.html

Ms. Yu Yimin Persecuted to Mental Breakdown, Passes Away (Photos)

By a Clearwisdom correspondent from Hubei Province, China
 
Name: Yu Yimin (余毅敏)
Gender: Female
Age: 49
Address: Wuhan City, Hubei Province
Occupation: Account of Hydro Electric Power System Engineering Company
Date of Death: August 5, 2011
Date of Most Recent Arrest: November 2002
Most recent place of detention: Jianghan District Brainwashing Center (江汉区洗脑班)
City: Wuhan
Province: Hubei
Persecution Suffered: Detention, brainwashing, forced labor, sleep deprivation, beatings, long-term squatting, torture, forced injections, fired from workplace.
Key Persecutors: Head of the brainwashing center Hu Jiaxiang (胡家祥), chief of the Wansongyuan Police Station Zhou Zhiwei (周志卫), head of the local 610 Office Gu Jianqiao (顾建桥)

(Clearwisdom.net) Ms. Yu Yimin, a Falun Gong practitioner from Wuhan City, passed away in the early morning of August 5, 2011. She had been arrested five times, jailed in brainwashing centers three times, and sentenced to one year of forced labor for her belief. In detention, she was injected with unknown drugs, which along with the torture, caused her to suffer a mental breakdown. Ms. Yu was also fired by her company for her belief in Falun Gong. Without financial support, she became homeless and destitute. Her family was torn apart due to the persecution.

Ms. Yu Yimin before the persecution

Ms. Yu Yimin developed a mental disorder as a result of the persecution

Falun Gong Gave Ms. Yu a Second Life

In the early 1990s, when Ms. Yu was in her early 30s, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After surgery, she was very weak and had to rely on medication to sustain her life.

In 1996, Ms. Yu started to practice Falun Gong. Her physical and mental health greatly improved. Her husband was amazed by her dramatic changes and also started to practice. Before long, his lung ailment cleared up without any medical treatment. Witnessing her and her husband's improvements, her in-laws then also started to practice Falun Gong. The family lived in harmony, following Falun Gong's core principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.

Arrested Five Times

On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a brutal persecution of Falun Gong. Ms. Yu went to the regime's Appeal Bureau in Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong. However, she was illegally arrested and detained at the Qianmen Police Station. Her hands were cuffed behind her back such that the handcuffs cut into her flesh. Later, police from the Wansongyuan Police Department in the Jianghan District of Wuhan City took her back to Wuhan City. She was then sent to the Wuhan Women's Custodial Center, where she was detained for two weeks.

Torture re-enactment: cuffing behind the back

On February 20, 2000, the Jianghan District Police Department's 610 Office ordered all of the police officers to arrest Falun Gong practitioners on a large scale. Zhou Zhiwei, chief of the Wansongyuan Police Station, and many policemen, including Luo Yong and Tang Shuangxin, went to Ms. Yu's home, arrested her and detained her in the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center.

On February 9, 2001, Zhou led a group of policemen to break into Ms. Yu's home, handcuffed her, and then took her to the police station. Ms. Yu was sent to the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center again. She refused to watch videos that defamed Falun Gong and joined other detained practitioners to remove banners that slandered the spiritual practice. Practitioners also wrote words to clarify the facts about Falun Gong on the wall. The head of the 610 Office called in the police to investigate who had written these words. They ordered each practitioner to write down some words in order to compare their handwriting with the words written on the wall. Ms. Yu and the other practitioners, more than 10 of them, refused. In the end, the police were unable to identify the person who had written those words.

At the end of October 2001, Ms. Yu was transferred to the Wansongyuan Police Station for further persecution. She managed to escape, but had to become homeless to avoid further persecution. The director of the Wansongyuan Police Station led the police in a massive search to find her. They also offered a big reward to anyone who would turn her in.

After escaping from the police station, Ms. Yu went to Beijing to clarify the facts about Falun Gong. She was arrested again and imprisoned in the Yanshan Detention Center for 17 days. She was released after starting a hunger strike to protest the persecution.

Illegally Sentenced to Forced Labor

Ms. Yu Yimin was arrested for the sixth time when she was handing out materials to clarify the facts about Falun Gong. She was sentenced to one year of forced labor in the Hewan Drug Rehabilitation Center, serving as a forced labor camp, in Wuhan City. When she arrived there, the guards deprived her of sleep. They ordered several people to brainwash her with CCP propaganda around the clock. Ms. Yu ignored them. Then the guards incited the inmates to beat her, pinch her, and keep her awake for long periods of time. They also forced her to stand facing the wall or in a military-style squatting position for long periods. If she moved even a little, they would beat her severely. The guards also forced her to do manual labor for long hours. No matter how they tortured her, Ms. Yu Yimin always maintained her belief in Falun Gong.

Torture re-enactment: beating

Injected with Unknown Drugs in Brainwashing Center

In November 2002, on the day when Ms. Yu's sentence was completed, the police transferred her from the labor camp to the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center, instead of releasing her. This was the third time that Ms. Yun was locked in a brainwashing center. In the center, Ms. Yu was injected with unknown drugs. Initially, she felt pain radiating from her feet. Gradually, she lost her memory, lost the feeling in her feet, and lost the capability to walk. The guards at the center also severely beat her and hit her head against a wall.

Torture re-enactment: hitting the head against a wall

The agencies involved in persecuting Ms. Yu include: Jianghan District Political and Legal Committee, 610 Office, Jianghan District Police Department, Wansongyuan Police Station, and the Wansongyuan Neighborhood Association.

Persecuted to Mental Breakdown, Family Torn Apart

Ms. Yu was released from the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center on January 31, 2003. Her body was weak and swollen from the tortures. Unable to cope with the pressure from the CCP and long-term persecution, her husband, Wang Siqing, asked her to sign divorce documents several days later, giving her enough money to cover her living expenses for one month.

As Ms. Yu had been dismissed from her workplace while she was imprisoned, she had no income or other means of support from that point on. Her family was thus torn apart and she became homeless. Because of the effects of the torture and injections with unknown drugs while in detention, as well as the pressure of being homeless and destitute, she had a mental breakdown in 2003. Later she developed great difficulties in walking and could only crawl on ground. She could no longer take care of her daily needs.

Practitioners Arrested for Helping Ms. Yu

Two local Falun Gong practitioners wanted to help Ms. Yu recover. They took care of her, supported her financially and arranged for her to live in a welfare center. However, both of them were arrested by the CCP for their belief in Falun Gong and for helping a fellow practitioner.

Related article:

http://clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2006/1/22/69200.html

Posting date: 9/4/2011
Category: Death Cases
Chinese version available at  
http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2011/8/12/被迫害致精神失常八年-余毅敏含冤离世（图）-245241.html