(Minghui.org) A 63-year-old Guangdong woman, Liang Qinglian, submitted a criminal complaint against former Chinese president Jiang Zemin on May 23, 2015. Between 2000 and 2002, Ms. Liang was arrested six times for her belief in Falun Dafa. She was tortured in police custody and was twice sentenced to forced labor re-education.
Arrested Four Times for Appealing for an End to the Persecution
Ms. Liang started practicing Falun Dafa in 1997. After she began practicing, she recovered from rheumatism, bronchitis and other chronic diseases. In March 2000, Ms. Liang wrote letters to the State Department and the People's Congress describing the benefits of Falun Dafa and how the practice improved her health, and requesting an end to the persecution. As a result, Ms. Liang was arrested and interrogated by the police.
Getting no results from her letters, Ms. Liang traveled to Beijing three times between 2000 and 2001 to appeal for justice for Falun Dafa. She was arrested after every appeal and detained for a total of 25 days.
During the detentions, the police frequently interrogated and beat Ms. Liang. Once, a female police officer ordered prisoners to stab her fingers with needles, soak her bleeding fingers in water, and then repeat the whole ordeal.
A male police officer pushed her to the ground and stomped on her head. He dragged Ms. Liang by the hair and slammed her head against a wall repeatedly. They also forbade Ms. Liang to eat, drink, bathe, or use the bathroom for two consecutive days.
Arrested at Home and Sentenced to Forced Labor
On January 25, 2001, a group of police officers broke into Ms. Liang's home and arrested her. She was first detained in a detention center, where she was forced to make plastic flowers for more than ten hours per day. Ms. Liang's health deteriorated because of the difficult work and poor working conditions, as well as the fact that she was not allowed to do the Falun Dafa exercises. After she passed out one day, she was diagnosed as having a contagious disease.
Instead of giving Ms. Liang medical treatment, the police sentenced her to one year of forced labor without notifying the labor camp about her illness. In the labor camp, Ms. Liang was still forced to work for more than ten hours per day. Finally the labor camp released her in September 2001 after confirming that she was ill, because they did not want the disease to spread.
On April 26, 2002, Ms. Liang was arrested again when she was meditating at home. The police officers brutally beat her in an effort to pressure her to write statements renouncing her belief.
Ms. Liang protested with a hunger strike. The police sentenced her to two years of labor re-education and took her to the same labor camp where she was detained the year before. Because of her medical record, the labor camp refused to accept her. The officers took her back to the detention center for a few days, and eventually let her go home to serve the two-year sentence at home.
Since then, the police have constantly harassed Ms. Liang and threatened her family, forcing them to monitor Ms. Liang at home and prevent her from going out.
They attempted to arrest Ms. Liang again on November 2, 2002, before the sixteenth Congressional Conference of the Chinese Communist Party. Ms. Liang's family, neighbors, and her children's teacher protected her by hiding the children's house keys from the police. They also reasoned with the officers, asking them not to arrest good people. The police finally left at the end of the day.
Background
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners in the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.
