(Minghui.org) Many Falun Gong practitioners are now exercising their legal right to sue Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese communist regime, for launching the persecution of Falun Gong, and causing them great harm and tremendous suffering over the past 16 years.
The momentum of this new wave of lawsuits continues as the number of complaints steadily rises.
Over 82,200 practitioners have filed criminal complaints from inside and outside of China against Jiang between May and mid-July 2015, according to the Minghui website.
The complaints are submitted to China's Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court.
Ms. Ding Lihua, a 67-year-old retired vice president of a bank branch in Daqing City, recently filed a criminal complaint against Jiang.
She was arrested three times between late 2000 and mid-2002. Shortly after her release in 2001 from detention, she was dismissed from her job.
To avoid further arrest, she lived away from her home for nine months. She developed severe health problems following her third arrest and was released on medical parole – the condition, however, being that she must leave her hometown.
In her criminal complaint, Ms. Ding detailed the benefits she experienced from practicing Falun Gong, and the three arrests for seeking justice for the practice. She also recounted how her family suffered because of the communist regime's guilt by association policy. Ms. Ding Lihua wrote:
I used to live in pain, having been plagued by numerous ailments for years, including a kidney infection and coronary artery obstruction. All of these symptoms disappeared within four months after I began practicing Falun Gong in October 1998. This cultivation practice also taught me to be kind, honest, tolerant, and considerate.
Having benefited so much from the practice, I became determined to seek justice for Falun Gong after the persecution began in 1999.
I was arrested and taken to the Beijing Qianman Police Station on December 28, 2000, for peacefully protesting for the right to practice Falun Gong at Tiananmen Square.
There were already hundreds of practitioners detained in this police station since the onset of the persecution. The officers brutally kicked us. They also shocked with an electric baton anyone who called out “Falun Gong is good.”
Many practitioners were taken away by buses in the evening. I was taken to the Miyun Police Station, where many practitioners were beaten in small cells. The anguished screams, and the short, sharp explosive sounds from the beatings in these solitary rooms were heard throughout the police station.
A fellow practitioner and I were handcuffed in the early morning of January 1, 2001, and taken by bus to Yixian Detention Center in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province. At the detention center, I was made to undergo a body search. I was forced to sit on an iron chair, and was interrogated until midnight.
Ten of us practitioners went on a hunger strike to protest the illegal arrest.
My son and son-in-law were forced by officers from the Honggang Police Station and my workplace to pay more than 8,000 yuan for my transfer back to the Daqing Detention Center in Heilongjiang Province. I was taken to the Honggang Detention Center one month later.
I was released on March 16, 2000, and dismissed from my job at the Honggang Branch Office of Daqing City Industrial and Commercial Bank. I also lost one month of wages, and my annual bonus. I therefore asked for early retirement.
Officers from the Honggang Police Station and 610 Office broke into my home and ransacked every room on the evening of August 20, 2000. They confiscated my Falun Gong books and Master's photo. They also arrested me, but I escaped from the police station the next morning, and had to live away from my home for almost nine months to avoid being arrested again.
After my escape, my son, his wife, and my son-in-law were harassed at work. My son-in-law was detained three times. His cell phone was confiscated, so he could not contact anyone.
Two officers arrested me outside a friend's house on May 9, 2002. They took me to the Zhanqian Police Station in Daqing City, where I was slapped, beaten, and kicked. This police station is known for being brutal, with one person having died after a month of torture.
I was subsequently transferred to the Saertu Police Station, where I was handcuffed to an iron chair and shackled to a metal ring on the floor for two days. All of the windows were kept open during a cold night.
Daqing Detention Center, a place where practitioners were tortured, was my next destination, starting on May 11, 2002. During the day, practitioners were forced to sit still, not allowed to talk, and required to obtain permission to go to the restroom.
I was on conditional medical parole, effective May 20, 2002. The detention center demanded that I leave Daqing City and sign a three statements document, renouncing my belief. I refused, but my family signed the three statements to avoid my being sentenced to forced labor. I went to live in Qingdao, Shandong Province.
I lived with my daughter after returning to Daqing City. People from my former employer, including the Branch Office president and security chief, proceeded to harass my daughter's family.
Officials threatened me in early 2003 with arrest, and imprisonment at the Harbin Drug Addiction Treatment Center, if I refused to be “transformed.” They forced my younger sister, who worked at the Jiamusi Branch Office, to bring me into the bank for a farewell lunch. I realized that this was a setup however, and left.
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.