(Minghui.org)
Name: Yang HuirongChinese Name: 杨慧荣Gender: FemaleAge: 83City: SanheProvince: HebeiOccupation: Retired teacherDate of Death: September 4, 2024Date of Most Recent Arrest: December 31, 2007Most Recent Place of Detention: Langfang City Brainwashing Center
A retired teacher in Sanhe City, Hebei Province, became blind and bedridden in 2015 due to repeated arrests, detention, and harassment for upholding her faith in Falun Gong. She passed away on September 4, 2024. She was 83.
Ms. Yang Huirong wasn’t the only one in her family that had been targeted for practicing Falun Gong, after the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution in 1999. Her older daughter was arrested in 2001 and 2002 and forced to rat out her own mother and other Falun Gong practitioners. The younger woman suffered a mental breakdown and fell to her death on June 24, 2003.
Ms. Yang went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, the day the persecution started. The police arrested her and threatened to throw her into a sewer manhole or bury her alive. She was taken to the Liyuan Police Station in Tongzhou District in suburban Beijing at around 10 p.m. The police yelled at her and questioned who instructed her to come to Beijing to appeal. They claimed that the practitioners who came to appeal marred the cityscape of Beijing, disrupted the traffic, and caused extremely serious consequences to the country. She was allowed to go home after three hours of interrogation.
Upon returning home, Ms. Yang was under strict surveillance of the local police and residential committee. Her husband was forced to report her daily activities to the authorities and prevent her from practicing Falun Gong at home or meeting with other practitioners. The police threatened to hold both Ms. Yang and her husband accountable if she was found to go to Beijing to appeal again.
On February 4, 2000, the eve of the Chinese New Year, Ms. Yang managed to return to Beijing to appeal. She was arrested again and taken to the Qiaozhuang Detention Center. A detainee named Fu Chunyan slapped her in the face with a shoe many times, while verbally abusing her. The guards threw her against the wall. She fell on several plastic containers, injuring her face. The guards also forced her to clean the restroom, empty chamber pots, and mop the floor. At night, she was forced to stand for three and a half hours, while being humiliated by the inmates. She was detained for 43 days and continued to face harassment after being released.
Ms. Yang went to visit her older daughter on June 5, 2001 and the police kept looking for her when they realized that she wasn’t home anymore. To avoid being arrested, she was forced to live away from home for a year. The police stayed outside of Ms. Yang’s home, attempting to arrest her as soon as she returned. Once, they saw an elderly woman passing by and pounced on her, only to find it wasn’t Ms. Yang. The woman was so terrified, she wet her pants.
Unable to bear the pressure from the persecution, Ms. Yang’s husband divorced her.
Ms. Yang’s older daughter, Ms. Liu Ying, was an engineer with the Taitan Machinery Equipment Company. She was arrested at work on February 4, 2002 and taken to the Daying Brainwashing Center. The guards taped paper slips on her face and forced her to squat under a table, with her hands on her head. They threatened to keep her in the squatting position forever if she didn’t renounce Falun Gong. Additionally, several people who practiced Falun Gong before but gave up in the persecution bombarded her with propaganda smearing Falun Gong. Unable to bear the mental pressure, she was forced to provide information about her mother, who had been forced to go into displacement, and other practitioners who had contact with her mother.
The police forced Ms. Liu to take them to Ms. Yang’s temporary residence in the middle of the night on March 5, 2002. She wasn’t there. The police then seized the husband of Ms. Yang’s second daughter at his workplace and forced him to take them to his home. Ms. Yang was arrested there and taken to the Daying Brainwashing Center.
Dai Mingxiang, an officer of the Liyuan Police Station, told Ms. Liu that the government spent 200,000 yuan arresting her mother; each officer who was involved in the case received 6,000 yuan bonus and the police chief Zhang Zhichen was given 50,000 yuan.
To maintain the control of Ms. Liu, the police often called her several times a day, including when she was at work or sleeping in the middle of the night. The intensive harassment caused her to suffer a mental breakdown. She was often seen walking in circles on an empty lot for two or three hours non-stop, irresponsive to things around her.
The 610 Office agents attempted to force Ms. Liu to help them transform other practitioners in June 2003. She didn’t want to cooperate and was in despair. She fell to her death on June 24, 2003, at the age of 35. She was survived by a young son.
Ms. Yang was arrested again by officers of the Sanhe City Domestic Security Division on February 27, 2003 and held in a brainwashing center for over two months. In the same year, her second daughter, Ms. Liu Jing, was also arrested and detained for 15 days.
Ms. Yang’s next arrest was on December 31, 2007, after being reported for putting up a poster bearing information about Falun Gong. She refused to answer the police’s questions during three interrogation sessions. The police then gave her a two-year forced labor camp term. When she refused to sign the paperwork for it, they forced her second son-in-law to sign it on her behalf, threatening to have his workplace fire him if he didn’t comply. Yet when the police took her to the labor camp, she was denied admission multiple times during a two-month period, due to her poor health. The police later took her to the Langfang City Brainwashing Center and held her there for three months.
For seeking Ms. Yang’s release, Ms. Liu was arrested and detained at the Sanhe City Detention Center for 25 days. The police also threatened to give her a two-year labor camp term.
After Ms. Yang was released, she still faced constant harassment. Two people often followed her when she went out. Succumbing to the mental pressure, she became blind in 2015 and also lost the ability to stand or walk. Even after she became bedridden, the police and residential committee staffers still came to harass her on a regular basis, taking her photo, recording her voice and videotaping her. She passed away on September 4, 2024.
Ms. Yang Huirong and Ms. Wang Lanhua from Sanhe City, Hebei Province, Arrested