(Minghui.org) The year 2002 marked a milestone in Falun Gong practitioners' peaceful resisitance to the Chinese Communist Party's persecution. Practitioners in different parts of the country risked their lives to tap into their local cable TV networks to broadcast programming debunking lies used by the CCP to attack Falun Gong.
Seven practitioners in Gansu Province sucessfully broadcast such programming and reached over 100,000 viewers in Lanzhou and Baiyin in August 2002. These practitioners were later sentenced to 10-20 years.
Mr. Zhang Guangli (张广利), a former employee of Baiyin Copper Mine Company and one of the seven practitioners, was sentenced to 12 years at Lanzhou Prison.
After his release on September 20 of this year, the local police have kept up the pressure on him, constantly going to his home to harass and threaten him.
Mr. Zhang's parents are also Falun Gong practitioners. All three of them have been arrested multiple times since the persecution began in 1999.
Mr. Zhang and his father were sent to a labor camp together in 2000. Less than one month after their release in June the following year, Mr. Zhang's mother was sent to another labor camp. She was transferred straight to a detention center when her term expired at the end of 2002.
Mr. Zhang was interrogated with torture after he was arrrested again in September 2001. Pushed over the edge by police beatings, he tried to escape. He broke a spinal vertebra while jumping out of a third-floor interrogation room.
The police sent him home after that episode. After recovering, he made a difficult decision to leave home and live a destitute life in order to avoid future arrests.
Mr. Zhang joined six other practitioners to tap into the local cable network in August 2002 and was arrested soon afterwards. While serving the 12-year term, he had to fend off the guards' non-stop attempts to make him renounce his belief in Falun Gong.
Team 9 deputy instructor Zhang Haijun held Mr. Zhang in solitary confinement and did not allow him to sleep for days on end. In his attempts to pressure Mr. Zhang to write a “repentance statement,” he had 5-6 guards watch Mr. Zhang during the day, and another six inmates keep an eye on Mr. Zhang at night. They forced him to read books and watch TV programs defaming Falun Gong and praising the CCP.
Mr. Zhang was kept in a sunless room alone from November 2006 to about 2010, during which time he was prohibited from going outside.
Starting in 2004, guard Gao Shenrong and assistant instructor Yuan Xiaohong revoked Mr. Zhang's family visitation rights for more than six years.
Mr. Zhang was lucky to survive the prison abuse, but some of the practitioners (including the earliest pioneer Liu Chengjun from Jilin Province) who tapped into cable TV to broadcast Falun Gong programs have died of torture injuries sustained in prison.
Now that Mr. Zhang is finally released, he still faces police harassment and is under surveillance.
Parties Involved in the Persecution
Baiyin District Commission of Politics and Law
Xiao Shengbao (肖生宝), Secretary of the Party Committee, +86-13830021969Shi Fulai (石福来), Director, +86-13830099539
Baiyin Sub-Bureau of National Security
Fan Fengtao (樊丰涛), Brigade Captain, +86-13639300753
