(Minghui.org) On the morning of January10, 2014, Ms. Zhao Xingmei was ambushed by police as soon as she stepped out of her house. She was taken by force to Zhoujiaba Detention Center in Wanzhou District. She was notified by the local Procuratorate on February 21, 2014 that she was being prosecuted and facing trial.
Like numerous Falun Gong practitioners, Ms. Zhao has suffered repeated persecution by the local authorities simply because she refuses to renounce her faith.
The local police department and the 610 Office at her workplace dismissed her from her job, suspended her salary, and forced her to undergo brainwashing and torture on numerous occasions.
She was twice sentenced to forced labor, and her elderly mother and young daughter also experienced enormous hardship and suffering over the years. In spite of all this, Ms. Zhao has remained steadfast in her belief in Falun Gong and its principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
Ms. Zhao was a typist at Wanzhou District Finance Bureau in Chongqing City. She has been suspended from work without just cause since 2002. The local police and her employer used deceit and threats to keep her from being reinstated.
One day in 2002, Ms. Zhao was illegally arrested for talking to people about Falun Gong. The police brutally beat her, demanding that she report on her fellow practitioners and write a “guarantee statement” to renounce Falun Gong.
Under tremendous pressure and the fear of losing her job, Ms. Zhao, the only breadwinner in her family, agreed to write a “guarantee statement” if the police promised to keep her job intact.
Ms. Zhao complied with the police's demands, only to quickly discover that they never intended to keep their promise. A group of officers next went to ransack her office and made her arrest known at her workplace. One of her superiors immediately called bureau chief Cui Fang, who then told the finance section to inform her not to come to work any more, without giving any justification.
Already suffering the pain and guilt for having written the “guarantee statement,” the loss of her job drove Ms. Zhao to the limit and she even thought of ending her life. But she knew better and dropped the idea. “If I died, the perpetrators would have shifted the blame on Falun Gong. I knew I must keep going and seek justice,” wrote Ms. Zhao in her personal account that she submitted to the Minghui website.
When she mustered the courage to request her job back, bureau chief Cui Fang threatened to call 110 (equivalent of 911 emergency services). In the years that followed, she appealed her unfair dismissal numerous times, but was met with indifference and discrimination. Her employer even called in the police to threaten her.
In August 2012, after another attempt to reason with her employer to get her job back, she was illegally sentenced to forced labor for one and a half years. She was released a year later when forced labor camps in China were being dismantled. Thinking that the situation had changed for the better, Ms. Zhao went to talk to the new management of the finance bureau about her job, but they gave her the runaround. They promised to give her a response by the end of last year, but nothing ever happened.
Ms. Zhao's husband was laid off shortly before she lost her job in 2002. Unable to withstand the constant harassment from the local police and the neighborhood committee, he left home later that year, leaving his wife behind with their four-month-old baby girl. He didn't come back home until 10 years later.
When he realized that there was no chance for his wife to get her job back, he sold their home behind her back. Ms. Zhao had no choice but to agree to a divorce in January this year.
Her husband left home when their daughter was only four months old. On one occasion, the police took both Ms. Zhao and her baby to the police station. Another time the police came to arrest her again at home. The baby, still less than a year old, screamed and cried as the police took Ms. Zhao away and left her all alone. Ms. Zhao was horrified when she returned to find that her daughter had put her own excrement in her mouth.
Over the years, Ms. Zhao's repeated arrests took a toll on her daughter's mental health. She was easily frightened, often walked in her sleep, and had trouble focusing on her schoolwork.
Ms. Zhao's elderly mother started to pick through garbage day and night to help make ends meet. She never complained, but kept herself busy all the year round gleaning and collecting scraps for a tiny bit of return to help keep the family going. The family has battled along for twelve long years, and the misery continues even today. Her mother is 80 years old now and has developed Alzheimer's disease. Her stepfather has been bedridden for some time. “Whenever I think of the hardship my parents have been through, I feel as if a knife were being twisted in my heart. They need me badly to take care of them,” lamented Ms. Zhao.
Ms. Zhao said that when she was young, she used to have many beautiful dreams of a happy family filled with warmth and love, an ideal job envied by others, an adorable child and an ideal husband. Things did not turn out that way. She lost her father when she was 12; her four sisters died one after another due to medical malpractice; she went through two divorces and death of her child. Having suffered so much tragedy, she had lost all hope and was on the verge of mental collapse. It was at this point that she came across Falun Gong, in 1999.
Through practicing Falun Gong, she regained good health and her life took a dramatic turn for the better.
“All my stubborn illnesses that had caused me great pain and suffering for decades disappeared, including stomach pain, headache, heart disease and arthritis. I felt extremely fortunate to have found Falun Gong,” she recalled.
It is also her belief in Falun Gong and faith that goodness will ultimately prevail that carried her through these many years of suffering at the hands of local authorities and her employer.
The local Procuratorate charged her with “using a cult organization obstruct the law” on February 21 this year. This is the typical trumped-up charge the authorities use against Falun Gong practitioners. Defense attorneys for practitioners have pointed out that nowhere in Chinese law is Falun Gong identified as a cult, and that freedom of belief is protected by the Chinese constitution.
Ms. Zhao stated with conviction, “I've done nothing wrong by believing in the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and I will not comply with any injustice or persecution.”
Parties involved in the persecution of Ms. Zhao:
Deng Xuxue (邓绪学), CCP secretary of the local political and judiciary committee: +86-023-58155201（Office）+86-13908263188 (mobile)
Gao Zonglin (高宗林), deputy CCP secretary of the political and judiciary committee: +86-023-58155301（Office）+86-023-58546999（Home）+86-13709459758
Zhang Jun (张骏), deputy CCP secretary of Wanzhou Police Department: +86-023-58293002（Office）+86-023-58293888（Home）+86-13908261888 (mobile)
Zhang Chengchun (张成春), head of Wanzhou District National Security Bureau: +86-23-58961831（Office）+86-023-58965678（Home）+86-13709450288 (mobile)
Li Hua (李华), deputy head of Wanzhou District National Security Bureau: +86-023-58962218（Office）+86-023-58963258（Home）+86-13908372365 (mobile)
Wang Zhongwei (王中伟), head of Wanzhou No. 2 Intermediate Court: +86-023-58552899（Office）+86-023-58202099（Home）+86-13509439009 (mobile)
Wang Dingshun(王定顺), head of the Second Branch of Wanzhou Procuratorate Office: +86- 023-58207288（Office）+86-13908267138 (mobile)
Mo Wenfang (莫文方), head of Wanzhou District Court: +86-023-87666002（Office）+86-023-58128655（Home）+86-13908261596 (mobile)
Zhang Yalin (张亚林), head of Wanzhou District Procuratorate Office: +86-023-58532188（Office） +86-023-58121333（Home） +86-13908263978 (mobile)
Yang Qiudong (阳秋冬), head of Wanzhou District Bureau of Justice: +86-023-58569818（Office）+86-023-58151195（Home）+86-13609434108 (mobile)
(Please refer to the Chinese version for contact details of more perpetrators.)