(Minghui.org) Having suffered unimaginable torture for remaining resolute in her belief in Falun Gong, Ms. Ren Jinping from Langfang City, Hebei Province recently filed a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin, the former head of Chinese Communist Party for launching the persecution campaign against Falun Gong.
To bear witness to the relentless persecution and bring the main perpetrator to justice, Ms. Ren revisits the darkest moments of her life of 10 years ago and recounts the numerous occasions when she was targeted for her belief—nine arrests, illegal detentions, brutal torture, rape by a police officer, forced labor, and sexual abuse.
She also recalls the devastation of losing both parents in a span of five months and the guilt of causing pain and suffering to close family members. Painful as it is, she states, “My ordeal is only the tip of the iceberg of how Falun Gong practitioners in China have suffered in the past 16 years.”
“I only wish to file charges against Jiang,” she clarifies. “Though many public security officials were involved more directly in my persecution, I no longer bear resentment toward them—not even the police officer who raped me. They were all being used and are victims themselves.”
Ms. Ren is charging Jiang with illegal imprisonment, torture, organ harvesting, and genocide. Her complaint was sent on June 26, 2015 and received by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate the next day.
Following is a summary of what Ms. Ren suffered.
Ms. Ren started practicing Falun Gong in 1995 and soon regained her health. She became energetic and more considerate of others. Her family, friends, and neighbors were amazed by how much she had changed.
When Jiang Zemin launched the persecution against Falun Gong, Ms. Ren made two trips to Beijing between October 1999 and May 2000 to appeal for the right to practice. She was arrested both times, beaten, and fined. After the second arrest, she was sent back to Langfang and tied to a death bed for 45 hours at the city detention center.
Three police officers arrested Ms. Ren in June 2000 for doing Falun Gong exercises in public. They beat her for more than an hour in broad daylight until she lost consciousness, and then took her to the city detention center. She was beaten by director Xing with a shoe, which resulted in severe swelling and loss of hearing.
To escape an attempted arrest in September 2000, Ms. Ren left home to live in Beijing temporarily. During her 19-month stay in Beijing, she was arrested three times for telling people or posting information about the persecution of Falun Gong. Twice she was sent to a detention center, where she was tortured and almost became a victim of organ harvesting. Another time she was raped by a police officer.
Ms. Ren was arrested just a few months after she moved to Beijing in September 2000. While detained at the Chaoyang Detention Center, Ms. Ren was secretly given extensive physical examinations and various tests at the Civil Aviation General Hospital.
“The doctor looked at my results and said, 'The results look great. We could easily find a match.' At the time, I had no idea what he meant.”
The guards took her out of her cell after midnight the following day and cuffed her hands behind her and shackled her feet. She was put into the trunk of a car escorted by armed police officers. Curled up in an awkward position in the trunk with her hands cuffed and feet shackled, the pain quickly became unbearable.
After driving for an hour, the car's engine died. The vehicle was towed back to the Chaoyang Detention Center. Ms. Ren was told not to speak about this.
Years later, she happened to be watching a TV program about state-sanctioned organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. It suddenly dawned on her what could have happened to her. “I still tremble with fear whenever I think of what could have happened that night.”
While putting up posters with Dafa information in Beijing in May 2001, Ms. Ren was stopped by a police officer. He tried to grope her while giving her a pat down and when she did not allow it to continue, he beat her with a rubber club until she lost consciousness. He then dragged her to a nearby bridge and raped her.
“I felt a severe pain in my lower body and knew right away what had happened. After the deed was done, he inserted the rubber club into my vagina and sat on top of me. I am not sure how many hours had past before I finally regained consciousness.”
When she saw the officer sitting nearby smoking a cigarette, she shouted for help. He did not appear concerned at all. “Yes, I raped you. I could have killed you and thrown you into the river. We have directives from higher ups to treat Falun Gong however we want.”
In great pain, she managed to get home after he left. She remained in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness for the next few days. She could not move at all. The physical pain eventually passed, but the psychological damage will haunt her for the rest of her life.
While distributing fliers with Dafa information in October 2001, Ms. Ren was arrested in Beijing. At the Sanjianfang Police Station. she was handcuffed and locked in a metal cage for a day and a night. Later, she was transferred to the Chaoyang Detention Center, where she was detained more than two months.
She was subjected to beatings, made to stand for long periods of time, and her face burned with cigarette butts. Because she refused to write a guarantee statement and renounce her belief, she was confined to a small cell. She was on the verge of death when she was transferred to the Public Security Hospital that December.
The basement of the Public Security Hospital was used to detain Falun Gong practitioners from all over the country. Most were brought there after being tortured to the verge of death. All of the practitioners were cuffed and shackled to a bed in the “spread eagle” position and were only let down when they ate or used the bathroom.
The medical personnel took blood samples from each practitioner every morning. Whoever resisted were shocked with electric batons. A blood sample of 60 ml was drawn from Ms. Ren almost every day during the 27 days she was there.
Authorities from the Langfang Police Department eventually found out where she was and transferred her back. She was sent directly to the Yuecheng Brainwashing Center upon returning to Langfang. During the month she was detained there, the guards beat her every day in an attempt to get her to renounce her belief.
Ms. Ren was arrested in her own home in Langfang in March 2004 and taken to the Kaiping Women's Forced Labor Camp in Tangshan City, where she was held for two years. She was confined to a small cell for over a year.
She was made to stand 24 hours a day for three weeks in a row, which caused incontinence and her legs to swell. The guards abused her around the clock. They sometimes forced her to kneel down and shocked her on the bottom of her feet with electric batons. The window to her cell was sealed with tape during torture sessions so that no one could hear her screams. The temperature inside the cell rose above 100 degrees during the summer.
Four female guards once stripped her completely naked and yanked all her pubic hair out. They then forced her to stand, even though she was bleeding heavily. She eventually lost consciousness and fell to the ground.
After Ms. Ren left home in September 2000, her non-practitioner husband, Wang Zhixin, was illegally arrested and detained for two weeks. With both parents gone and no place to go, their son slept on the street. The police also frequently harassed and threatened her husband.
The police often harassed Ms. Ren's elderly parents at their home, almost always in the middle of the night. The couple was taken to the police station late at night one time and weren't released until after midnight. Constant fear and anxiety took a toll on both her parents' health.
After Ms. Ren was sent to the forced labor camp in 2004, her mother's health declined rapidly and she passed away in less than a month. Five months later, her father passed away.
“When I learned of the deaths of my parents, I was so heart-broken and I passed out. The guilt tears me up into a thousand pieces every time I think of them.”
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 thousands Falun Gong practitioners over 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 now allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.