East & Bays Courier (New Zealand): Jailed and Tortured

November 15, 2006

Torture and persecution now have a face - a family of faces who live locally.

One face is that of grandmother-to-be Hanweng Zhang, who seldom smiles and is conscious of her false teeth when she does. The 50-year-old's real teeth were pried out of her mouth with a metal spoon.

Mrs. Zhang, a nurse, her daughter Yanchen He, 28, and son-in-law Ziwei Yang, 33, all practice Falun Gong, which is a form of moving meditation similar to t'ai chi.

It has five gentle exercises that energize the body and its practitioners pursue the goals of wisdom and enlightenment.

In their native China they were imprisoned in "re-education and labor camps," where they were beaten, tortured and subjected to brainwashing to "encourage" them to give up their beliefs.

In the [late] 1990s there were 70 million Falun Gong practitioners in China, 10 million more followers than the Chinese Communist Party had.

The then president Jiang Zemin banned Falun Gong in 1999 and labeled all practitioners criminals.

"We believe in truthfulness, compassion and forbearance," says Mrs. Zhang.

And for this, Mrs. Zhang spent two years and three months at the Henan Shibalihe Women's Forced Labor Camp suffering things most people would not dream possible.

Her stories involve degradation of many kinds.

She was stripped of all her clothing and made to sit in the snow before being beaten.

Her hands were tied high behind her back so tightly they turned black, while at the same time her head was tied to her feet.

She was made to stand like that until she collapsed, Mrs. Zhang says.

She can also recount being watched by male prison guards in the showers and in the toilet and being strapped to large boards with sticky tape and suffering electric shocks to sensitive parts of her body.

She lost her teeth when the Falun Gong practitioners adopted a hunger strike in protest of their treatment.

"They grabbed us all, shouting, closed our noses and forced the food into our mouths," she says.

She opens her mouth and lifts her bottom teeth to show they are false, one hand indicating how her teeth were gouged out with the force of a metal spoon held by her captors.

The family has spent six of the past seven years apart, living as fugitives with their every move tracked by police.

They are now in Glen Innes as refugees through the United Nations - all but one that is. Yanchen's father Sanpu is still in the Wan Qing Villa brainwashing center in Zheng Zhou City, Henan.

Information is scarce and the family live in dread of news - and no news.

"As each day passes my father is at risk of losing his life, like so many before him," says Yanchen who, along with Hangweng and Ziwei, is studying English at AUT University to better their prospects of a good job.

"The stories about organ harvesting there are true.

"He has spent four of the past seven years in jail or these camps. We don't know how much more he can take.

"I arrived here, free, in May and such a day I will never forget.

"The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the New Zealand government's help will remain ever precious to me."

Yanchen, who is nine months pregnant, says: "I only have one wish now and that is to have my father with us."

"The only way I see him now is when I sleep. He smiles at me but when I wake up I cry because it is just a dream.

"I want my father to know my baby."