(Clearwisdom.net)

On 11:30 a.m. on October15, 2003, Falun Dafa practitioners held a press conference in Spain about the lawsuit against Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan that they had filed with the Court. The following is the text of a speech given by practitioner Chen Ningfang, mother of Chen Gang, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

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My name is Chen Ningfang, and I'm here to share with you my family's story to give you a sense of how the suppression of Falun Gong under Jiang Zemin's orders has affected the innocent people in China.

My husband and I are musicians and we both served 33 years in China's most prestigious philharmonic orchestra. My son, Gang Chen, worked in Carlsberg Brewery's Beijing branch as a logistics manager and is happily married. My daughter, Ying, enjoys a successful career as a manager in a large corporation in the United States. We have practiced Falun Gong for 7 to 8 years now, and it has given all of us tremendous joy, harmony, and health. We were able to practice freely and openly in China, and everything was going so well for us. But suddenly, in July 1999, the Communist leader Jiang Zemin initiated the persecution of Falun Gong, and our lives were turned upside down.

The police began harassing us, our phone was tapped, and our home was ransacked twice. My son, my husband, and I were detained just for making an appeal for Falun Gong at the Appeals Bureau, which is supposed to be a right granted by the Chinese constitution.

In June 25, 2000, over a dozen police dragged my son and me from our beds in the middle of the night, and our home was completely ransacked. I was released after 30 days of detention, but my son was sent to the notorious Tuanhe Labor Camp in the suburb of Beijing, where he spent the darkest 18 months of his life. All of this was done in the absence of any legal procedures.

In order to force my son to give up his beliefs, the guards at the labor camp resorted to the most inhuman and violent means. They usually only allowed him to sleep 2 to 4 hours a day. One time, they did not allow him to sleep 15 days straight. They punched or kicked him every time he closed his eyelids.

The guards also shocked him with several high voltage electric batons simultaneously. They shocked the most sensitive areas of his body, such as his face, his neck, and his chest, etc.to the point where the skin was burnt and his entire body was violently twitching. He felt as if his body was being set on fire, and as if many snakes were continuously biting him. One time, the guards directed over 10 inmates to beat him so badly that even his face was deformed. After the beating, they tied up his feet and legs firmly, tied his arms to his back, and then tied his neck to his legs so tightly that he was almost suffocated. After that, they stuffed him under a low bed, and sat on that bed to press it down on his back. At that point, he felt that his backbone was about to break. He could not walk for the following 2 weeks. Another Falun Dafa practitioner named Lu Changjun who was tortured in the same way has since become paralyzed.

So what was he punished for? He was punished for practicing Falun Gong; something that has brought him good health and a happier life, and that has taught him to be a good person. He was punished for being honest with himself and for remaining true to what he believed in--the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance," the principles of Falun Gong.

That was an agonizing time for us. Not a single day went by when I did not think about my son and how he was suffering. Each one of us in the family worried deeply about what might happen to him next.

Thanks to 8 Members of Congress in New Jersey who wrote a letter to President Bush requesting him raise the issue of stopping the persecution of Falun Gong to Chinese government when he visited China, and to release my son.

Thanks to the help and support of many kindhearted people around the world, Gang was finally released last year. But I know that my son is only one of the thousands of sons and daughters who have undergone similar, cruel persecution just for practicing Falun Gong. I know that many of them have suffered even more than my son.

At least 805 of these sons and daughters have died as a direct result of the persecution under Jiang Zemin's regime, and many, many more have been illegally forced into mental hospitals, jails, and labor camps where they are tortured and treated worse than we can imagine.

Jiang Zemin is responsible for inflicting all this pain to millions of innocent people in China. He has abused his power by initiating this persecution and continuously pressuring for further escalation of it. His complete disrespect of other's welfare and his atrocious crimes are a threat to peace and justice in this world. How can we pretend that it does not matter? We must not let him get away with it! It is the time to bring Jiang Zemin to justice!