Duan Kaiyang and Duan Jinjin are brother and sister, and they live in Xinli Township, Tangshan City, Hebei Province. Duan Kaiyang is a young intellectual working in Tianjin City after graduating from college. His sister Duan Jinjin worked in the biggest hotel in Tangshan City. She is smart, always cheerful, and was awarded the honor of "Goodwill Ambassador" by her work unit.

Both Kaiyang and Jinjin practice Falun Dafa. In July 1999, Kaiyang was sentenced to one and half years in jail for appealing in Beijing for the right to practice Falun Dafa, while Jinjin was sentenced to three years in a labor camp. She is currently detained at the Kaiping No 1 Labor Camp in Tangshan City.

At the end of 1999, in order to protest the persecution, Jinjin went on a hunger strike. During the hunger strike, she was forced to do heavy physical labor, such as moving bricks in a brick factory or carrying excrement. At night, she and another prisoner were squeezed into a single-bed while handcuffed to the head of the bed, which left her upper body exposed. Her weak body trembled in the cold wind of winter. One time her parents visited her; they could tell from her extremely haggard face that she had been seriously tortured in the labor camp. However, the guards in the labor camp ignored her suffering; they merely force-fed her three times a month to keep her alive. Her parents were very sad to see her condition and tried to negotiate fairer treatment with the labor camp staff. After the negotiations ended with no solution, they called the mayor's office, government offices in Hebei Province, and even offices of the Central government hoping to raise some concern about her daughter's case. However, their appealing only resulted in their own persecution. The 610 office [An office created by the government to deal specifically with issues related to Falun Gong] in Tangshan Police Station and the Kaiping Labor camp joined forces in order to arrest her parents. These two old people are honest and frank by nature, and have spent their whole lives diligently working for the country. However, they have to hide themselves, and while in their 60's, have become homeless. They do not have any source of income. Their only spiritual support was from their lovely son and daughter, whom they aren't allowed to visit. Meanwhile, their son and daughter are suffering in jail. In addition, their relatives and friends have received threatening phone calls from time to time. Even Jinjin's boyfriend was interrogated many times. He has been arrested and tortured at the Police Station. His mother was so scared that she suffered a relapse of her heart disease. She is living in panic everyday.

The prison walls don't just separate a person from the rest of society, but also separate all of the person's family members. In the jail, practitioners don't know what will happen tomorrow. Their family members, although they are outside the jail, worry about the practitioners. Nobody knows what measures the government will adopt to torture the practitioners. Nobody knows when they will have a family reunion.

We hope that more and more kind-hearted people will learn that Falun Gong is beneficial, does not present a threat to the Chinese government, and that they have been deceived by lies.

After wandering about for over one year, nobody knows Jinjin's parents' whereabouts. We hope that kind-hearted people from all over the world will look after them.

Insider

March 2001