(Minghui.org)
Name: Zhang RuiyingChinese Name: 张瑞英Gender: FemaleAge: in her 70sCity: QianxiProvince: HebeiOccupation: Retired commerce bureau employeeDate of Death: January 6, 2023Date of Most Recent Arrest: November 3, 2012Most Recent Place of Detention: Tangshan City First Detention Center
A resident of Qianxi County, Hebei Province died on January 6, 2023, after suffering years of detention and harassment for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Zhang Ruiying, a retiree of the Qianxi County Commerce Bureau, credited Falun Gong for restoring her health, but she was repeatedly targeted for upholding her faith. She was brutally tortured each time she was detained. She was sentenced to three years following her last arrest in 2012. Her health declined due to abuse in detention and she was released on parole in 2013.
The local authorities still harassed her from time to time after Ms. Zhang returned home. Her husband and children lived in fear every day. Her husband would suffer headaches and vomit every time he got news that someone was coming for his wife. To prevent her from being arrested again, he and his children barred her from going out or having contact with other practitioners.
The mental pressure worsened Ms. Zhang’s already damaged health. She died ten years later on January 6, 2023. She was in her 70s. Below is her story.
Ms. Zhang suffered from numerous diseases before she took up Falun Gong in July 1996. Her health struggles started when she was 19. That year she waded through waist-deep flood water to herd some pigs to higher ground. She happened to be having her period that day and the exposure to cold water resulted in long-lasting complications.
From then on, every time she had her period, she’d feel unbearable pain in her back and stomach. Her stomach also became so stiff that she couldn’t even press it down. The menstrual flow was so heavy that any slight movement would cause the blood to run down her pants. Her period also lasted almost an entire month each time.
She later further developed anemia, liver ischemia, thrombocytopenia, late liver cirrhosis, gynecological diseases, rheumatism, lower back pain, frozen shoulder, and Meniere’s disease. She sought various treatments, including Western medicine, Chinese medicine, and folk remedies, but nothing helped.
Ms. Zhang’s teeth were sore from taking medicine, her platelet count had dropped precipitously, and her gums often bled. Every morning when she got up, her mouth was full of blood clots. There were also small red spots all over her body from bleeding underneath her skin. If she accidentally cut herself, she would bleed non-stop without treatment. She also could not tolerate anything cold. Her husband did all the household chores. She was miserable beyond words and felt that life was worse than death.
Her fate changed in July 1996 when she was introduced to Falun Gong. One of her friends’ father told her that a new book titled Zhuan Falun (main teachings of Falun Gong) had just been published and urged her to get a copy. She immediately went to the nearest bookstore. It was raining hard that day, and she had to roll up her pants and wade through the calf-deep puddles. Interestingly, she did not feel cold at all. Instead, her legs felt warm after returning home.
She spent the whole night and the following morning reading the book. After she finished reading from cover to cover, she was in awe of the profound principles expounded in the book. In just a few days, all her sickness symptoms were gone. She also felt something turning in her lower abdomen, back, and shoulders. She went to a hospital to check if she was pregnant again, but she was not. She then realized that it must be Falun rotating in her body. As extraordinary as it was, she experienced more miracles in her practice of Falun Gong.
Ms. Zhang became a freelance photographer after retirement to earn some extra income. Once one of her customers dropped her very expensive equipment on the floor by accident. The photos turned out to be blurry. As a practitioner, she did not ask the customer for compensation because he didn’t do it on purpose. But she also did not have the money to repair the camera. As she was lying in bed to take a nap that day, she saw the founder of Falun Gong fixing her camera as she was half asleep. After she woke up, she tried her camera again and all the pictures turned out to be totally fine.
Ms. Zhang’s first-hand experience with Falun Gong steeled her determination to remain steadfast in her faith, even after the persecution began in 1999.
On July 22, 1999, two days after the communist regime openly launched a nationwide campaign against Falun Gong, Ms. Zhang went to the Tangshan City government to appeal. She was arrested and taken to the Tangshan City Police Department for interrogation. The police notified her employer, the Qianxi County Commerce Bureau, to pick her up. She was then held at her workplace for several days and let go only after her family was forced to pay 2,000 yuan to her employer.
The Qianxi County authorities arrested many local practitioners in December 1999. Ms. Zhang was also detained for a few days.
Ms. Zhang went to Beijing again in December 2000 to appeal for Falun Gong and was arrested on Tiananmen Square on her third day there. She was again taken to the Qianmen Police Station, where she was forced to sit on the cold floor and had her hands cuffed to a heating pipe.
After she was taken back to Qianxi, Ms. Zhang was held at the Qianxi County Detention Center. She and six other practitioners were crammed into a very small cell, and they had to sleep on their sides at night. It snowed the first night, and the melted snow leaked into the cell the next day. The comforters got very damp and were also covered with dust that fell from the ceiling. Ms. Zhang was only given cold water to wash her face and hair.
Ms. Zhang did the Falun Gong exercises and was hung from a window frame by her wrists, with her feet off the ground. Her hands went numb, but the guards cuffed her hands behind her back right after the hang-up torture. She could not lie down to sleep at night and could only sit in a corner and doze off a little while. She felt excruciating pain and numbness in her hands and arms. The backs of her hands became so swollen that they looked like fluffy steamed buns.
Ms. Zhang went on a hunger strike in protest, and was force-fed and shocked with electric batons.
On January 20, 2001, the Qianxi authorities held a public parade of Falun Gong practitioners detained in various local facilities, including Ms. Zhang. The practitioners were tied up and stood on truck beds, with two officers behind each of them. Ms. Zhang shouted “Falun Dafa is good” after the truck carrying her pulled out of the detention center. The officers watching her immediately yanked her hair and pressed her head down. They also tightened the ropes that wrapped around her mouth, causing it to bleed.
Her son chased the truck and yelled for his mom to be let off the truck.
All the practitioners were then paraded through town and driven to the plaza in downtown Qianxi County to face a “public tribunal.” The police kicked the practitioners down to their knees to hear their “crimes” being announced. After that, they were taken back to their initial detention facilities.
Ms. Zhang was given an unknown length of forced labor term after the public tribunal. She was transferred to the Kaiping Forced Labor Camp that night. At the time, there were more than 1,000 practitioners detained there.
During the deep winter, the labor camp guards gathered up all of the female practitioners and forced them to undress to their undergarments. They were then made to stay in an unheated conference room for a whole day. Some of them had their hands cuffed, some were tied up, and others had their mouths taped shut. Everyone was shivering from the cold. After night fell, the guards moved the practitioners outdoors and tied them to the persimmon trees that dotted the field.
In the hot summer, the practitioners were forced to stand under the scorching sun. Anyone who squatted because of fatigue would be punched and kicked. Some practitioners suffered heat strokes, yet the guards still refused to give anyone anything to drink.
In order to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith, the labor camp guards also deprived them of sleep. Many practitioners, including Ms. Zhang, went on a hunger strike in protest. The guards instructed inmates to force feed the practitioners with under-cooked and extremely salty corn paste. Each time four small basins of paste was fed to each practitioner. One of them had projectile vomiting as a result, while others saw their stomachs so bloated that they could not bend their bodies.
The practitioners then yelled “Falun Dafa is good” together. The labor camp mobilized all of the male guards to beat the practitioners. Some passed out as a result of the beatings. Ms. Zhang tried to stop the guards from beating an already unconscious practitioner and was punched in the nose by a guard. Blood shot out of her nose and dripped to the ground.
The guards then took Ms. Zhang outside and hung her up by the wrists to a basketball hoop, with her feet off the ground. The handcuffs on her wrists had spikes and soon cut into her flesh, causing excruciating pain. After a while, a guard came with a basin of water to “cool her off.” He splashed the water onto her face non-stop, almost choking her. She was not let down until several hours later. Her hands had lost feeling by then. The flesh on her wrists was broken and bloody. It would take several years for the handcuff marks on her wrists to disappear.
One morning all of the steadfast practitioners were forced to do military drills. Ms. Zhang protested and was brutally beaten. The next day she was tied to a basketball hoop and exposed to the sun for long hours. Later she was taken inside and restrained on a conference room table in a spread-eagle position.
Ms. Zhang was arrested on November 3, 2012, after being reported for talking to people about Falun Gong at a nearby village. She was held at the local police station overnight before being transferred to the Tangshan City First Detention Center the next day.
The Qianxi County Court tried Ms. Zhang on March 27, 2013 and sentenced her to three years later. Judge Zhao Shengmin signed the ruling.
Ms. Zhang remained at the detention center after her wrongful conviction. Due to abuse, her eyesight quickly declined. She eventually could not see and needed others to help her walk. She was released on medical parole in mid-July 2013. Her eyesight never recovered in her final years.
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