After 23 Years of Repeated Arrests and Torture, Family of Three Targeted for Their Faith Again

(Minghui.org) A family of three in the Zhifu District of Yantai City, Shandong Province, has been repeatedly arrested for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. The police have arrested and put them in forced labor camps and brainwashing centers many times over the years.

At one point Mr. Jiang Qianguo and his wife Ms. Fu Chunhua had to leave home to avoid further persecution. Their daughter Ms. Jiang Jing was expelled from her university for refusing to renounce her faith. The persecution has caused Mr. Jiang, now 70; Ms. Fu, 68; and Ms. Jiang, 42, a great deal of suffering and financial loss.

The police arrested all three of them again and ransacked their home on July 16, 2022. They took them to Binzhou Medical School for physical exams the next day. Ms. Jiang was released because of her poor health, although the police continued to monitor her at home. Mr. Jiang and Ms. Fu are now in the Muping District Detention Center even though Ms. Fu’s blood pressure was high.

Mr. Jiang and Ms. Jiang both took up Falun Gong in 1996. Mr. Jiang’s hypertension and nasal inflammation soon went away. He had energy again and strove to live by Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. Ms. Jiang started getting good grades in school and got along with her classmates. Ms. Fu became a practitioner a year later, and her stomach issues and insomnia disappeared. She worked hard and her coworkers respected her.

The persecution, however, broke up this once happy family. The following summarizes the ordeals the family has endured over the past 23 years.

Husband Becomes Emaciated after Repeated Brainwashing and Tortures

After the persecution started, Mr. Jiang’s supervisor repeatedly threatened to fire him if he didn’t quit practicing Falun Gong.

Mr. Jiang went to Beijing to protest the persecution in November 2000. He held a banner on Tiananmen Square. The police beat and arrest him. They put him in a metal cage in the Tiananmen Police Station and then took him to Mentougou Detention Center. The guards there instigated other detainees to assault him because he refused to give his name and address. The detainees stripped him and poured cold water on him in the cold weather. They beat him and deprived him of sleep and sawed a toothbrush back and forth between his fingers until the skin split and his hands were covered in blood. He went on a hunger strike to protest the abuse.

Torture reenactment: Sawing a toothbrush back and forth between the fingers

The authorities transferred Mr. Jiang back to Yantai City several days later and detained him 15 days. The security guards from his work often seized him from home and put him in a brainwashing center. To avoid being arrested and tortured, he decided to leave home and moved frequently.

The police found and arrested him in 2001. They put him in Zhifu District Detention Center, where the guards forced him to do labor-intensive work for long hours. A month later, the authorities sent him to Zibo Forced Labor Camp to serve a one-year term. He had to work non-stop during the day, and the guards wouldn’t let him sleep at night unless he signed the statements to renounce his faith.

As soon as Mr. Jiang was released, the authorities took him to Longkou Brainwashing Center. The guards ordered him to watch videos that slandered Falun Gong and write statements to defame the practice. They tortured him when he refused to comply. A few days after he was released, the authorities picked him up and took him to Zhifu District Brainwashing Center, where they put him in solitary confinement. Inmates there took turns watching him around the clock and preventing him from sleeping while verbally abusing him.

Zhifu District Domestic Security officers broke into Mr. Jiang’s home and arrested him, his wife, and his daughter for “illegal assembly” in May 2014. The officers ransacked their home and confiscated almost everything they had, leaving a few clothes scattered on the floor. They held Mr. Jiang in the Zhifu District Detention Center for a month, during which time he was brutally tortured. He was skin and bones when he left the detention center a month later.

Wife Forced to Leave Home after Constant Harassment

Ms. Fu also went to Beijing to speak up for Falun Gong in November 2000. The police attacked her when she took out her banner at Tiananmen Square. They put her in a metal cage in Tiananmen Police Station and later transferred her to another police station to interrogate her. The officers took turns kicking her during the investigation and waved a baton covered in blood, saying that the blood came from other practitioners.

Her employer and the police kept harassing her at home, ordering her to write the statements to renounce her faith. She lived in constant fear. Each time the doorbell rang, she was terrified. She left home in 2001 to avoid the persecution and moved from place to place.

When she returned home in August 2002, the police and local officials couldn’t wait to take her to a brainwashing center, where she was tortured for 40 days.

The police broke into her home in May 2014 and arrested her, her husband, and their daughter. They put her in Fushan Detention Center, where she had to do labor-intensive work day after day until she was released a month later.

Daughter Expelled from School and Put in Forced Labor Camp

When Ms. Jiang went to college in 1999, she did well and got along with everyone. In a political science class in 2000, the instructor defamed Falun Gong. Ms. Jiang stood up and told the instructor and her classmates why the persecution was wrong. The school immediately suspended her and called her parents in, telling them that the school intended to incarcerate and brainwash her. Her parents refused to let them do that and took her home. The school authorities called the Yantai Police Department to report the incident. The officers later arrested Ms. Jiang and gave her one year in Wangcun Forced Labor Camp in Zibo City.

In the forced labor camp, she was forced to sit on a small stool surrounded by a group of inmates. They brainwashed her around the clock with propaganda against Falun Gong and deprived her of sleep for days. She nearly had a mental breakdown.

She reunited with her parents a year later, after she was released. Before long, the police arrested her father and put him in a forced labor camp. Soon after, the police took her mother to a brainwashing center. She had to live on her own.

The police broke into her home and arrested her and her parents in May 2014. They locked her in Fushan Detention Center for a month. When she refused to go into the cell and went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution, the guards handcuffed her to the cell’s metal gate for three days before dragging her inside. A month later she was released, yet the local officials continued to harass her at home every now and then.