(Minghui.org) Ms. Ding Shuyun and her daughter, Ms. Dong Guixue, are both Falun Gong practitioners. Because of their faith in Falun Gong, Ms. Ding was arrested six times and given two years of forced labor. Ms. Dong was bullied and discriminated against as a student.
During the past 16 years they have been forced to move frequently to avoid further harassment and arrests when the mother was not in detention. Ms. Dong, now 30 and holding a degree in early childhood education, has trouble finding a full-time job because employers are afraid to hire Falun Gong practitioners. She tutors pupils to make ends meet. Her 59-year-old mother had long lost her job since her early arrests and now lives a difficult life.
The mother and daughter are now suing Jiang Zemin for launching the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and causing them endless emotional distress and financial losses.
Following is Ms. Dong's personal account of what she and her mother have gone through for more than a decade.
I began to practice Falun Gong with my mother when I was ten. We followed the Falun Gong teachings of “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance”.
Since Jiang launched the illegal persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, Mother has been detained in brainwashing and detention centers numerous times for appealing for Falun Gong, and incarcerated in a forced labor camp for helping people to learn about Falun Gong.
Mother was arrested in October 2001, but she walked out of the jail when the guards were asleep. The local police station later issued a warrant to arrest her. To avoid arrest, Mother has been homeless and destitute since.
In my teens I stayed with a practitioner who also did not have a regular income. Life was very difficult for them, too. I talked to Mom occasionally on the phone, but could not see her. When I realized I was being followed, I left that practitioner's residence and went to live with Mom.
The police found my mother after following me home from school one day and arrested her in January 2002. When I got home that evening, I found out that the lock on our door was broken, the apartment had been ransacked, and all our cash and my mother's two cell phones were stolen.
Two policemen were in our house but would not confirm if the authorities had taken my mother. They took all of our Falun Gong materials, and threatened that they could arrest me and send me to jail for five to ten years for hiding Falun Gong materials.
After Mother's arrest, I was not notified where she was incarcerated. I went to Shenyang City Detention Center to look, but was told to check Sujiatun District instead. With no money to buy a bus ticket, I walked there in heavy snow, only to find out that Mother had been transferred to yet another location.
The local police called me a month later and told me to go to a certain hospital to pick up my mother. I was very worried about her situation and wondered what had happened. They said that my mother had been on a hunger strike for nine days. When I saw her, she was on the verge of death. They had me sign on the document to bail my mother out for medical treatment.
After learning that my mother was a Falun Gong practitioner, my homeroom teacher tried to make me sign my name on a banner with anti-Falun Gong propaganda, but I refused.
She then sent me to the Moral Education Office, where the head tried to make me quit school, but I refused. The teacher then told my class to shun me, and made it clear to everyone that nobody should talk to me. The school administration instructed teachers not to call on me in their classes. I was made to sit in the back of the classroom by myself.
My parents divorced when I was just a little girl. My mother raised me alone without being given any child support from my father. We had trouble making a living after the persecution began, as my mother lost her regular income.
To avoid being arrested again, Mom could not stay in one place for an extended period of time. We lived in constant fear. I wished that we could go to a place where we would live in peace, and practice our faith with no fear. But in China, there is no such place for us to go.
Once, the owner of the apartment we rented told us that she was not permitted to rent to us anymore.
On my way home from school every day, I feared that the police had taken Mom away. If she was not home, I would become very anxious and worried about her.
We stayed in an elderly woman's home in 2002 when I was in ninth grade. When I came home one evening, Mother had been taken away. Scared, the old lady told me to move out that evening. With nowhere to go, I called my father, who had me stay in the repair room in his factory.
Father's factory was about one hour away from my school, so by the time I got home after evening study sessions, it was usually around 10 at night. The gatekeeper was my stepmother's father, who did not open the gate for me when it was late, so I was often locked out. The owner of an Internet bar nearby, however, was generous enough to let me stay there overnight.
Father did not give me any money, so sometimes my classmates bought me some food to eat. My friends also helped me pay for the evening study sessions, and with their support, I was able to finish high school.
After Mother was given a two-year forced labor sentence in September 2002, some policemen took me to Longshan Forced Labor Camp to see her. Before going there, however, they said that if I told Mother to write the “transform statement” to stop practicing Falun Gong, they would release her before Chinese New Year, so that we could spend the holiday together. I am proud of my mother for being a Falun Gong practitioner and following Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I would never ask her to stop practicing Falun Gong.
Although she has suffered so much, Mother often reminded me to always be a good person regardless of what other people would say or do to us. She is a person of virtue and integrity.
The Chinese Communist Party has mandated that job applications must have a question that asks if the applicants practice Falun Gong.
When I fill out job applications after college, I do not want to lie, but since I checked yes to the Falun Gong question, nobody wants to hire me. Because of that, I am unable to land a permanent job.
Falun Gong helps us to gain high moral standards, and after practicing Falun Gong, both my mother and I have become very healthy. These positive changes give us an even stronger faith and trust in Falun Gong. Although we are now homeless and have no money for rent, we will forever be Falun Gong practitioners.
Freedom of belief is a basic human right, but my mother and I have suffered tremendously because of our faith for more than a decade. Jiang Zemin is the primary perpetrator of the crime against Falun Gong, and so we have decided to file a legal complaint against him.
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners in the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.