Messenger Post: One Voice, A Thousand Names

In many ways, the last two years of Louise Huang's life has mirrored the plot lines of George Orwell's novel, "1984".

A totalitarian state tried to erase her spiritual belief system. Her disillusion quickly provoked virulent cruelty. Her purported crime? State subversion.

Huang practices Falun Gong, benevolent spiritual teachings derived from Chinese traditions. On July 20, 1999, the [party name omitted] Chinese government outlawed its doctrines.

From that point on, China unleashed unbridled and vehement repression; blows of fist and feet, pervasive surveillance, detainment, brainwashing, brisk pressure to renounce subversive beliefs, and for some, death.

China is bent upon squeezing Huang and other Falun Gong practitioners into submissive control.

Huang refuses to relinquish. She endured imprisonment and torture for the decision, but found a way out last summer. In July 2000, she fled China and came to live with her brother and his family in Fairport.

Two years later, countless more remain in her native country and the repression continues.

"Their basic rights of existence are in danger," Huang said of her fellow practitioners in China. (Her brother, Wayne Huang, translated for his sister). "But I have the forum for them. I can stand up to speak for them."

The World looks on

Huang is driven her responsibility to her fellow mainland practitioners.

She walked from New York City to Washington, D.C., over the past weeks, sharing her stories with those she passed. Over the past weekend in D.C., she joined thousands who protested the two-year anniversary of China's crackdown on Falun Gong and its peaceful practitioners.

They beseeched their representatives to stop the injustice.

Huang's brother, his wife and Penfield practitioner, Helen Chou, left for the Washington protest Wednesday from Perinton Park. They presided over a brief ceremony, calling attention to the problem.

Amnesty International sponsored the local send-off. The organization has called for the immediate release of all the jailed practitioners in China.

"This is such an important issue because the persecution of the practitioners of Falun Gong in China is so severe," said Chris Dygert, coordinator for the Rochester Chapter of Amnesty International.

Sally Poole Gonzalez, a local resident, said she first learned of the problem a year ago from a Wall Street Journal article. The article exposed the death of a practitioner while in police custody. She said she was appalled.

"I wanted to see what I could do as an American to help out," she said of her attendance at the event.

More than 250 practitioners have died in police custody, the victims of brutality and deprivation, Huang charges. The Chinese authorities have said the deaths are the result of medical ailments.

A Web site listing recent deaths flashes portraits of mainly young, innocuous looking Chinese citizens.

The situation is urgent, Huang said. Banners reading, "SOS Urgent: Rescue Falun Gong Practitioners Persecuted in China," and pins could be seen throughout the Washington protest.

Locally, about 10 people gathered to call attention to the situation.

"When I heard about the persecution and abridgement of human rights of the practitioners of Falun Gong, I felt it was important to make my voice known," Brighton Town Supervisor Sandy Frankel said at the local event.

A step toward amity

Huang journeyed nearly 200 miles on foot to make her voice known. She left from New York City July 3.

Those she met offered support. Some knew nothing of her situation. Many were incredulous.

A man in his 50s cried after he read a flyer Huang handed him. It described the death of a Chinese women and her 8-month-old child while in police custody. He hugged her.

Another women stopped her car and shook Huang's and her marching companion's hands. Restaurant owners offered free drinks and food to those on the trek.

"Even though I can't understand English, I could obviously see from their hearts they are kind hearted and righteous minded." Huang said.

Many asked what they could do to help. Huang directed them to write to their congressmen, sign petitions and stay informed.

"They all said, 'Don't be afraid in our country, because you have the freedom to practice your belief,'" She said.

Freedom revoked

Huang attempted similar outward protest in her native China, Chinese authorities were not as welcoming. They offered no hugs or handshakes, only imprisonment and brutality.

When the Chinese government first announced its ban on Falun Gong in July 1999, she left her native Guangdong province and traveled to Beijing to protest the decision. She planned to file a formal appeal with the government, a right Huang said is guaranteed under the Chinese constitution.

She arrived in Beijing and booked a hotel room. She never made it to the appeal office.

"The police basically broke into the hotel and arrested me because they thought I was a practitioner," she said.

Authorities shipped her back to the Guangdong province, where local authorities interrogated her for seven hours upon her arrival. She was in a small room surrounded by five policemen. They asked her for names of other practitioners, and how many she knew within the area.

They tried to force her to write a confession, agree not to appeal the state's crackdown and not to practice Falun Gong.

"They told me I can no longer have my belief," she said.

She would not acquiesce. She remained indignant.

"I feel I didn't commit any wrongdoing as a citizen. All the things I did, did not violate the law," she said. "I feel I am a law-abiding citizen. I refused to answer their questions."

Police threatened to send her to jail. In the interrogation, Huang said she realized police had tapped her phones. She signed a quasi-statement, she said, simply to get out of there.

A work supervisor escorted her home.

She would continue to practice, she would continue to appeal, and she would continue to suffer for it.

Enduring Persecution

Huang said she was never left alone again.

Police monitored and harassed her. At work, where she coordinated activities for [party name omitted], supervisors asked her to write a statement of thoughts denouncing Falun Gong. She told them she must write for the truth, she said.

She asked for vacation days, and a supervisor informed her the police said she was not allowed to leave the area. Thousands of other practitioners endured the same treatment. The government began a caustic propaganda campaign against the practice.

Huang's frustration mounted. By October of that same year, she made another appeal. She would be detained nearly a month this time.

"I decided to go to Beijing again to appeal for the unjustified situation," she said.

She made it to the appeal office, but she never reached an official. Police confronted and arrested her in the building. They sent her to a local detention center.

Authorities detained her for 12 days. Huang and other cellmates staged a hunger strike during the ordeal. Shortly after the detained refused to eat. Police came into the cell and pulled out a white-haired older woman from Beijing who was participating in the hunger strike.

Police later returned the women with blood dripping from her nostrils. Huang said authorities had shoved two plastic tubes up her nose and forced a saltwater solution into her stomach through the tubes.

"Her face was paper white," Huang recalled.

The women was their example to stop the hunger strike.

Huang was transferred to another cell. She watched as police beat a male practitioner in that cell. She said.

She was sent home and held in a detention center there for another 15 days.

Enduring faith

Her spirit would not be broken.

"No matter how much trepidation or difficulty I will go through, I firmly believe Falun Gong is good," Huang said.

After her release, she was expelled from the [party name omitted] Party. She lost her job. The authorities asked her family, with whom she lived, to sign a letter attesting she would not appeal government decisions again. Huang said her family had little choice but to sign.

Police warned her if she appealed again, she would be sent to labor camps.

Yet, she continued to practice Falun Gong.

Two months after her release, she sat in the home of a fellow practitioner. They conversed and prepared a meal. Police broke through the door, Huang said and charged each person in attendance with disturbing the public order.

Authorities sent her to a labor camp for 15 days. She weaved baskets at the camp, and was forced to work 15 to 16 hours a day, she said. The prison uniforms were dirty and unwashed, she said. She ate rice and a few vegetables.

"The conditions were cruel," she said.

She was arrested so suddenly, her family didn't know what had happened to her. They went to local authorities to ask of their daughter. The police told them nothing, Huang said.

"This time, I could feel we are losing more and more of our rights to practice Falun Gong," she said.

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The crackdown increases

In America, her brother watched and read the reports coming out of China. The crackdown had increased at the beginning of last year, and so too had his worry.

"We knew the persecution was brutal," Wayne Huang said.

He called her at home, but decided it was too risky because of police taps. In China, his sister was about to undergo the harshest of her detainments.

She traveled to Tiananmen Square in June 2000. She ruled out another appeal, and decided to protest by conducting Falun Gong exercises in the square.

She was quickly arrested, and thrown into jail again.

There, the violence reached its harshest tone. She watched as police forcefully beat a male practitioner in her cell.

The practitioner refused to give his name. A group of four police officers began punching and kicking him, she said. The beating continued for 10 minutes. Police dragged the man to another room and continued beating him, Huang said.

He screamed in pain, calling for help in desperation, she said. Police brought the man back to the room. He was bloody and bruised, hunched over and vomiting, Huang said.

Police transferred her to a basement room. About 30 others were in the room. The males were handcuffed to a water pipe. Police asked Huang her name. She refused to tell it. They told her to face the wall and spread her legs apart.

"He punched my back with his fist," she said of her interrogator.

She wouldn't talk.

"I didn't tell them my name because I refused to bow to the violence," she said.

She was jailed for two days. Police recognized her accent and sent her back to her province.

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Escape

Huang had not told her parents. She left for Tiananmen Square. When their daughter returned, the family planned a trip out of town. They worried for her safety.

The Public Security Bureau denied Huang's visa. Huang was not allowed to leave the country. She plotted a clandestine escape, but would not provide details because she said she did not want to incriminate those who helped her.

By July, she was free and at her brother's Fairport home.

Her voice has only grown louder in America.

"One voice is small," she said. "One hundred voices is still very small. Ten thousand voices you can maybe just start to hear. One million voices, then everybody around the world will hear."