(Minghui.org) Ms. Zhao Lingru, who started practicing Falun Gong in July 1999, used to work in Jizhong Prison, Hebei Province. She was illegally monitored, arrested, and sentenced to seven years in prison. She was brutally tortured and given unknown drugs.
Ms. Zhao filed a criminal complaint with the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate in June 2015 against former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, who launched the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999.
Ms. Zhao has followed the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to be a good wife and mother and a model employee ever since she became a practitioner 17 years ago.
After the persecution started, her supervisors at work pressured her to give up her practice. Her husband was pressured to force her to give up practicing Falun Gong. Ms. Zhao’s mother and sisters were also brought in from their hometown by her employer to lean on her.
Ms. Zhao was monitored closely and pressured to write a guarantee statement at work, so she had to leave home to avoid further persecution.
She was arrested in April 2002 and sent to Taihang Prison. She was brutally tortured and deprived of sleep. They dumped a container of ants on her as a form of torture. Late at night, someone held her down, and a guard unbuttoned her shirt and poured white powder on her neck, which soon began to itch. Then the guard poured cold water on her neck where the powder was, making it very painful and even itchier.
Ms. Zhao went on hunger strike to protest and was force-fed. She was sent to the Mancheng County Detention Center, where she was hung up in the interrogation room and pushed back and forth with her hands handcuffed tightly to a rail. Without going through formal legal procedures, she was held in the detention center for nine months. She appealed, but never received any response.
Later, Ms. Zhao was transferred to Baoding Detention Center, where she was subjected to forced labor. Her family was not allowed to visit her. She was detained there for close to ten months.
Later, Nanshiqu District Court sentenced her seven years in prison. She appealed to the Baoding Intermediate Court, but Jia Zhihui, the presiding judge of the 2nd Court, upheld the original sentence.
Ms. Zhao went on a hunger strike again to protest the persecution. In response, the guards and inmates force-fed her and tortured her.
Ms. Zhao was sent to Taihang Prison in June 2004. Then in July, she was transferred to Shijiazhuang Prison. She continued to be force-fed there.
The guards took turns trying to force Ms. Zhao to give up her practice. They deceived her, telling her that her husband would divorce her if she didn’t give it up. She thought about her elderly parents and young child and, under extreme pressure, signed the statements that they had prepared. She regretted it immediately and cried for an entire day.
Because of Ms. Zhao’s situation, her son’s teachers often found fault with him. He was looked down upon and even beaten. Ms. Zhao was fired from her job because of her practice. Her home was ransacked. Over 1,000 yuan in cash and other personal belongings were taken away.
Related Article:Practitioner and Prison Worker Zhao Lingru Tortured to the Verge of Death
Background
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 over 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.
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