(Minghui.org) In a recent interview in Toronto, Canada, Ms. Li Eying, a Falun Gong practitioner originally from Jiangsu Province, spoke from her personal experience about the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the past two decades.
Ms. Li Eying doing the Falun Gong exercise during a rally commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong in front of the Chinese Embassy in Canada
Ms. Li took up Falun Gong in 1996, during her college years. She realized that the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance were what she was seeking. She was in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, at the time, and she participated in the group exercises every morning.
Since the number of practitioners at her exercise site at Hanzhongmen was increasing, Eying and several other practitioners moved to a location on Phoenix Street and established a new exercise site. She actively organized the group study, group exercise and activities of spreading the practice, thus becoming the coordinator of this new exercise site.
When the CCP launched the persecution of Falun Gong three years later, she became a key target because she refused to renounce her faith. The persecution also made her a victim of and witness to the CCP’s crimes against humanity.
Evicted Shortly after Giving Birth
Eying was monitored and had her home raided by the police after the persecution began in July 1999. As the CCP’s hate propaganda flooded the state-controlled media, she asked herself why she practiced Falun Gong. Was Falun Gong like what was said on TV? She eventually realized that the CCP’s propaganda was a complete fabrication. The physical and mental changes she experienced through practicing Falun Gong were enough to convince her that it is a righteous practice. Eying decided to follow her heart and continue on the path of cultivation no matter what the future situation would be, and never give up.
After several volunteer coordinators from local exercise sites were arrested, she and many other practitioners went to the provincial government to appeal for their release. She recalled, “We were all standing there peacefully and quietly. But many police officers came in less than half an hour. After a carload of riot police arrived, they took us all away. The police rudely dragged us into the bus, and one officer scratched my hands. Since there were so many practitioners, we were all taken to a middle school for detention. The police took everyone’s pictures in the classrooms. We had to give them our names and addresses in order to be released.”
After Eying became pregnant, the police continued to harass her and raided her home often. She was forced to report to the police station, whenever the police summoned her. There, they shouted and verbally abused her.
“Not only did they harass me during the day, but they often called me at around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., with no one speaking on the other end of the line. Instead, I heard all kinds of frightening and piercing noises. They even harassed me when I was just a week away from giving birth, by following me to the hospital to monitor me.” She recalled, “The staff from the local residential committee came to my home every day when I was about to give birth. When I went to the hospital to give birth, they and the police all followed me there. I had no freedom at all.”
After she returned home from the hospital, staff from the residential committee immediately came to her home to harass and intimidate her. Before the baby was one month old, the police threatened her landlord, ordering him to evict her. They also came to her home every day to try to drive her away. The landlord helplessly told Eying, “I know you are a good person, but I have no choice. If I let you stay here, I will be threatened. Please move out quickly.”
Eying recalled, “No one would dare to rent their place to a Falun Gong practitioner under that circumstance. We had to move out. A kindhearted friend was willing to lend us his extra house, and we were able to have a temporary place to live.”
“When my child was two years old, in August 2002, I was arrested for distributing materials about the persecution. My brother, who was living in a foreign country, returned to China. He asked a friend to help bail me out. I was released after about ten days of detention.”
Euying said, “After I returned home, the police lived in our house for about half a month. They took away my printer, computer, and many Falun Gong books from our house. My whole family was not allowed to go out. When the nanny went out to buy groceries, the police followed her. My husband, who was not a Falun Gong practitioner at the time, was also arrested.”
Blood Sample Collected
Eying’s daughter, then a 7th grader, was reported to the authorities in October 2014 by her teacher for talking to other students about the persecution of Falun Gong at school. Officers from the National Security Agency went to the school to threaten and intimidate her. A week later, Eying was arrested.
On the morning of her arrest, when Eying came back home after dropping her daughter off at school as usual, the police broke into her home and raided it. “The police from the Wuxi City Police Department and the Binhu District 610 Office all came. They told me that they were going to send me to prison. I was taken to the Dongjiang Police Station.”
When she arrived at the police station, the police took her blood sample. The blood sample was labeled and put under her file. Eying saw several Falun Gong practitioners’ files there, with their detailed personal information, including information of their distant relatives. She noticed at the police station that only Falun Gong practitioners had their blood drawn, although there were many detainees in her cell.
After Eying moved to Canada around December 2019, police from the Domestic Security Office of Zixing, Hunan Province, threatened her family that they would raid Eying’s residence in Zixing and confiscate her belongings there. They also threatened her family in an attempt to get her contact information.
A Family of Three Disappeared
When Eying took a taxi from Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province to nearby Shanghai in March 2019, the driver, in his early 30s, told her a story about the family of one of his elementary school classmates. The driver was from Anhui Province and his classmate’s family all practiced Falun Gong. Both the driver and his classmate were 10 years old when the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. One day, a teacher told the class that the classmate had dropped out of school because he was under too much mental pressure.
Eying said, “But I don’t think that was a logical reason. Chinese parents value education greatly, and it is unlikely for parents to pull their child out of school at that age, or allow their child to drop out on their own because of stress. This taxi driver said that his friend’s whole family disappeared after that, and nobody ever returned to their home.”
Eying said that she learned about the live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners by the CCP after she moved out of China, which made her suspect whether the driver’s friends had been victimized.
Eying recalled a Minghui.org report of a whistleblower from Shanghai who currently works in a home remodeling business in the United States. The whistleblower, Mr. Lu Shuheng, detailed what he knew about the organ harvesting chain. He said that his sister-in-law’s sister, Zhou Qing, was directly involved in harvesting Falun Gong practitioners’ organs when they were still alive. According to Zhou, during the live harvesting process, Falun Gong practitioners shouted “Falun Dafa is good” at the beginning, but they later cried and screamed in pain. Four to five military doctors were present for the operation with armed police officers standing aside to safeguard the place.
Eying said Falun Gong practitioners living in rural China are more likely to be targets of live organ harvesting because they have no money or power, much less the ability to seek justice for themselves and their families.
On June 17, 2019, the Independent China Tribunal, presided over by Sir Geoffrey Nice from the United Kingdom, handed down its judgment in London after months of investigation into the issue of live organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. The members of the Tribunal were unanimous in their conviction that there is no doubt that the CCP has forcibly harvested organs from prisoners of conscience over a long period of time and that the number of victims is huge; Falun Gong practitioners are the primary source of organs; and the CCP has committed crimes against humanity and crimes of torture.
The tribunal released for the first time the full 160-page Judgment Report on March 1, 2020, accompanied by 300 pages of witness testimony and statements. Sir Geoffrey said that no one has refuted or challenged the details of the tribunal’s judgment since it was first announced to date.
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