(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Yuan Xueli from Xishui County, Guizhou Province was sentenced to ten years in prison in September 2012, and was taken to the Yang'ai Women’s Prison in Guizhou Province. It has been over a year since Ms. Yuan was arrested in Guiyang City in April 2012, and no family member has seen her since that time.
Ms. Yuan’s mother Zhao Dazhen is 74 years old. Over the past year, she has been running back and forth between Xishui County and Guiyang City, and between Guiyang and Yang'ai, hoping to see her daughter.
The first time she went to the prison, the receptionist said that she could not see her daughter because she did not have the proper certificate. The second time, they said that there were only two stamps on the certificate, belonging to the local neighborhood committee and the police department, respectively, but the certificate lacked a third stamp, from the local 610 Office. So they still would not let her see Ms. Yuan. After Ms. Zhao returned home, she tried to send some money to her daughter, which was returned by the prison's accounting department with a note telling her that her daughter did not want it.
Ms. Zhao has been extremely worried about her daughter over the past year. She misses her every day and does not know whether she is dead or alive.
After going through a great deal of trouble, Ms. Zhao was finally able to obtain all three required stamps on the certificate and went to the Yang'ai Prison for the third time on September 8, 2013. But this time the prison learned that Ms. Zhao herself was a Falun Gong practitioner, so they rejected her request to see her daughter, claiming that it was because her daughter had not “performed well in prison” (meaning she had not renounced Falun Gong). Ms. Zhao begged, “I won’t say a word. Just let me take a peak at her from afar. I just need to know whether she is still alive.” Despite the mother's plea, the prison adamantly rejected her request.
Feeling helpless and in despair, Ms. Zhao went to Changba where the Yang'ai Prison’s higher authority is located. She told a department manager about not being able to see her daughter, and that no one was willing to help her. She told the manager about the persecution that Ms. Yuan experienced in Yang'ai Prison between 2004 and 2007, where she suffered all sorts of torture, including being tied to a bed with her limbs stretched, forced to stand or squat for long periods of time, locked in a dark cell, suffocated with a blanket, beatings, etc. The inmate who monitored her pinched her until she was covered with wounds all over her body, which later became infected. She was force-fed after staging a hunger strike to protest the abuse. Ms. Zhao was concerned that her daughter was being persecuted heavily again.
Ms. Yuan Xueli was originally a staff member in the Business Administration Bureau of Xishui County, Guizhou Province. She was sentenced to three years in prison for writing letters explaining the facts about Falun Gong to the company heads and was fired by the company. Instead of releasing her after she had served her prison term, the authorities took her to the Banqiao Brainwashing Center in Zunyi and detained her there for six months. In June 2008, she was sentenced to two years in a forced labor camp, and was again sentenced to ten years of prison in September 2012. Her daughter was a college junior in Beijing. Her grandmother didn't dare tell her the truth about her mother being in prison but just told her that she was working out of town.
On this Mid-Autumn Moon Festival when families are supposed to be united, Ms. Yuan and thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners are forced to endure separation from their families while suffering persecution.
Yuan Chaohua, Xisui County 610: +86-15120230660, +86-15120350660
Zhao, director of the Xisui County Police Department: +86-18985687199
Chen Wanlian, Yang'ai Prison Accounting Department: +86-851-3380834
