(Minghui.org) Ms. Cui Shengyun, a Falun Gong practitioner in Jiamusi City, has recently filed a criminal complaint against former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin for initiating the persecution of Falun Gong that resulted in her family’s ordeals over the past 17 years.
In 1994, Ms. Cui and her husband, Mr. Cong Guoyou, took up the practice for its health benefits and saw miraculous results. However, they and their family have lived in constant fear since the persecution began in 1999, with Ms. Cui having been arrested and detained multiple times.
In spite of all this, Ms. Cui's family still supports her and her right to freedom of belief. And with the arrival of her first granddaughter, the family is finally beginning to see hope amid their suffering.
The new baby's mother, Xiaoxiao, is Ms. Cui's elder daughter. However, Xiaoxiao's journey to adulthood was not an easy one, due to the prejudice against her parents.
As a child, Xiaoxiao was known as a prodigy; she learned to talk at four months, and began to read at one year old.
She would have to learn to become even more self-sufficient in fourth grade, however, when her mother was taken from her to be detained. In order to save money and ease her mother's mind, she studied hard and was awarded a full scholarship to college.
While at college, she met her future husband. But his parents objected to their relationship after hearing that Xiaoxiao's parents were Falun Gong practitioners.
Xiaoxiao became despondent and even tried unsuccessfully to take her own life.
It took many years of tension and patience before the effects of the anti-Falun Gong propaganda wore off, and Xiaoxiao's in-laws were able to see that Falun Gong practitioners are blameless.
Xiaoxiao's sister, Xiaobao, was five when both their parents were arrested on the same day. She witnessed the police beat her father before her own eyes.
At six, one of her relatives helped Xiaobao compose a letter asking people to rescue her mother from torture in prison.
Xiaobao's cousin had also witnessed how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecuted Falun Gong practitioners. She told people how she came to a true understanding of the full weight of the word “persecution.”
She saw her aunt, Ms. Cui, get fired from her job as a teacher for her beliefs. She witnessed how her cousins Xiaoxiao and Xiaobao had to go homeless. She watched her aunt shrink into little more than a bag of bones, and her own mother crying on the floor after failing to convince the police to release Ms. Cui. She remembered as the whole family talked of her aunt in whispers, as Xiaoxiao and Xiaobao were passed from house to house every other day.
She didn't understand why all this was happening to her aunt, who was a kind person who had done nothing wrong.
Ms. Cui, born in 1963, was a talented child, was the best at everything she set her mind to. She has four younger brothers and sisters.
During the Cultural Revolution, her family lived in fear of the CCP. Her grandfather was labeled as a landowner and often dragged into the street to be publicly denounced.
After the Cultural Revolution was over, joy finally returned to the family of five. The siblings were kind and affectionate towards each other even after they grew up, left home, and started their own families.
Ms. Cui met Mr. Cong, a talented man, and they got married and had their first child. However, Ms. Cui's health was fragile; she often fell sick and her siblings had to take care of her.
It was only after she started practicing Falun Gong in late 1994 that all her illnesses disappeared. She introduced the practice to many of her friends and colleagues. Some of them also began practicing.
After the persecution of Falun Gong started, Ms. Cui, her husband, and 70 other practitioners tried to travel to Beijing to appeal. But they were intercepted at the Harbin train station and taken back to Jiamusi.
In the following years, she was often arrested and detained.
She was released from her first detention in 1999 after she went on a hunger strike that put her in critical condition. In the next three years, she was in and out of detention several more times. She had to go into hiding at the end of 2002, and the police put her on the wanted list.
She was arrested again on May 19, 2007, after being homeless for five years. The authorities sentenced her to five years of imprisonment. In prison, she was tortured brutally, had her movements restricted, and was locked in an icy cold solitary cell.
While she was in prison, her husband had to take care of their daughters with help from her siblings. Every month, her siblings traveled great distances to visit her, to deposit money for her use in prison, and to send clothes to her.
Ms. Cui's father slapped her when he learned that she was arrested for practicing Falun Gong. That was the first time he had ever done such a thing to her.
They were finally reunited after Ms. Cui was released from prison. However, the persecution brought back memories of the Cultural Revolution, and he worried about his daughter constantly. The psychological pressure aged him prematurely, and he passed away.
Ms. Cui's mother went to visit her after she was detained for six months, but she was not allowed to see her daughter. She worried about her and cried every night. Four months after Ms. Cui was sentenced, her mother died without any warning signs.
Despite all their suffering during these 17 years, the family never lost hope. Ms. Cui's younger sister said that she finally knows who the real criminals are and who the good people really are.
Jiang Zemin, as head of the CCP, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and initated the violent suppression of Falun Gong in July 1999.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners over the past 17 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the CCP established an extralegal security organ, the 610 Office, on June 10, 1999. This organization overrides the police and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's policy regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law now allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are exercising this right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.
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