Name: Gao Weiping (高维平)
Gender: Female
Age: 49
Address: Shunyi District, Beijing
Occupation: Editor, reporter at the research department of China News Service
Date of Most Recent Arrest: 2010
Most Recent Place of Detention: Unknown
City: Beijing
Persecution Suffered: Electric shock, sleep deprivation, forced labor, brainwashing, illegal sentencing, imprisonment, torture, fired from workplace, detention
(Minghui.org) Minghui reported on November 27, 2010, that Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Gao Weiping from the Shunyi District of Beijing was arrested along with another practitioner by Dongcheng District police. Ms. Gao’s whereabouts have been unknown since her arrest.
Ms. Gao Weiping
Ms. Gao is 49 years old this year and worked gathering information and editing at the research department of China News Service, an agency attached to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council. Because she has remained steadfast in her belief and continued to tell people the facts about Falun Gong, she has been twice sentenced to forced labor and had to leave her hometown to avoid further persecution.
Ms. Gao began practicing Falun Gong in 1992. Prior to that, she suffered from serious irregular menstruation for which there was no cure. After she started practicing, the condition disappeared and she became free of illness. Her complexion became rosy and her skin became delicate. She conducted herself according to Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, was responsible at work, and always put other people's interests before her own. Her employer assigned her an apartment unit several times, but each time she gave it up to her co-workers. She donated 5,000 yuan to schoolchildren after the 1998 devastating floods. Everyone where she worked praised her as a very good person.
After the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999, Ms. Gao wrote letters to her supervisors and the authorities to tell them the facts. However, officials from the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and the China News Service punished her and deprived her of her salary. In addition, she was subjected to detention twice merely because she appealed in Tiananmen Square for Falun Gong.
On June 8, 2000, her supervisor called her in for a conversation. However, several plainclothes police officers came in five minutes after the conversation started and forcibly took her to the police department. The authorities then sentenced her to a forced labor camp. Unable to withstand the extreme pressure from the regime's authorities, her husband divorced her.
Around August 2001 when she had just been released, she went to Zhaogezhang Village, Zhang Town in the Shunyi District, and, around the Shunyi Brainwashing Center, posted informational materials that described the facts about Falun Gong. The police arrested her again and sentenced her to forced labor.
In the labor camp, Ms. Gao was subjected to various tortures, including electric shock, sleep deprivation, brainwashing, and forced labor. The guards once forced her to do slave labor at all hours of the day and night. Due to the harsh treatment, her body and mind were badly damaged and at one point she lost her memory and suffered a mental collapse.
Ms. Gao was not released until September 2003. Because she refused to write a guarantee statement, her supervisors demoted her to the printing shop and only gave her a temporary wage without any benefits. In addition, they ordered the seizure of her housing loan that was valued at over a hundred thousand yuan and frequently threatened her, attempting to coerce her to write a guarantee statement. Han Zhentang, Party secretary of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, often threatened that he would send her to the police department if she didn’t guarantee not to practice Falun Gong again.
On May 8, 2004, under orders from Han Zhentang, a China News Service official told Ms. Gao that they would arrange a distant hotel for her, in order to meet with her, and told her to go there directly for several days. Ms. Gao saw through this deceit and quickly left the office. She then had to leave home in order to avoid further persecution.
Since Minghui reported her arrest on November 27, 2010, her whereabouts have been unknown.
Furthermore, after Ms. Gao lost her job and family, she sometimes lived with her younger sister, Gao Weiling. However, officials from the Shunyi District Domestic Security Division broke into Gao Weiling’s home on August 31, 2006 and took her into custody. They sentenced her to eight years in the Beijing Women’s Prison. At this time Ms. Gao Weiling is still incarcerated and being tortured.
Contact information:
Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council: 86-10-68327530, 86-10-88387593
Beijing Prison Administrative Bureau: 86-10-82580775
Beijing Forced Labor Camp Administrative Bureau: 86-10-83501851
Xi Lei, head of Shunyi District Domestic Security Division: 86-10-69424957
For more perpetrators' information, please refer to the original Chinese article.
