(Minghui.org) A well-regarded teacher who constantly received top teaching evaluation scores and never hesitated to help others was repeatedly forced out of her job and had to move from place to place to avoid being persecuted for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual teaching that has been targeted in China since 1999.
In the past 22 years of persecution, Mr. Zhou Qing was unlawfully imprisoned for 4 years and 8 months and forced to move and change jobs at least 3 times.
With Mr. Zhou and his wife, also a Falun Gong practitioner, now in hiding to avoid being arrested again, the police harassed the couple’s family members in an attempt to find their whereabouts.
In June 2021, three officers from Guiyang City, Guizhou Province, where Mr. Zhou stayed before going into hiding, went to his hometown in Luodian Town, Jingshan City, Hubei Province to hunt for him. They first interrogated his mother in her 80s. She refused to reveal her son’s whereabouts, and the police went to Xinshi Town in the same city to terrorize Mr. Zhou’s son and father-in-law.
His son was bedridden from bone tuberculosis and was still recovering from major surgery. The young man and his grandfather were both forced to turn in their cellphones, which the police examined for hours before being returned. The police also forced the grandson and grandfather to fingerprint an interrogation record.
After the police left at 10 p.m., Mr. Zhou’s father-in-law was unable to sleep that night. He fell the next day and ended up in a wheelchair. Yet the Guiyang police continued to call and harass him and his grandson.
Respected by Students and Coworkers
Once a physics teacher at Jingshan City First High School, Mr. Zhou’s teaching improved significantly after he took up Falun Gong in the summer of 1996. He carefully marked the students’ homework, explained the problems, and wrote down encouraging words. At the end of one semester, in one of the classes he taught, all 76 students gave him the best evaluation score of A.
Mr. Zhou used to suffer from chronic coughing with sticky phlegm. The problem went away after he began to practice Falun Gong. His general health, personality, temper, and work ethic improved and he was respected by his students and coworkers.
One of the teachers called in sick one day and all the other teachers went to visit him in the hospital except Mr. Zhou, who stayed behind and substituted for the sick teacher’s classes. When the school informed him that he would be paid for the classes and the sick teacher’s salary would be deducted, he refused to take the money.
A few days later the school supervisor still paid him the fee, with an additional bonus. He returned the bonus and said that it wasn’t his intention to be rewarded for helping a coworker. The supervisor told him that the school needed more teachers like him and “the reward was to encourage such a spirit.” A few days later the school announced his good deed to the entire school, praising him for “not seeking money and fame.”
Incarcerated in School and Family Kept Outside of Their Home
When the persecution of Falun Gong started in July 1999, Mr. Zhou’s son just turned one year old. The child grew up missing his father with him being incarcerated multiple times and forced to stay away from home to avoid arrests.
When the director of the local education bureau visited Mr. Zhou’s school in 2000 and learned that Mr. Zhou still practiced Falun Gong, he conspired with the school principal and locked Mr. Zhou in the school.
During that time, the school conducted a survey on the teachers’ performance, and many parents demanded Mr. Zhou resume teaching. One of the parents was especially adamant about it, because her daughter’s physics grade went from 39 to 123 thanks to his teaching. Huang Xiaoxiu, the principal, yelled at the parent in his office and claimed that it was his duty to manage the teachers.
Mr. Zhou often tutored students at no cost when many other teachers charged a fee for extra help outside school hours. One student said, “Mr. Zhou is my most favorite teacher. Such a good teacher is being detained. I really can’t make sense of it.”
With the strong demand of his students and their parents, Mr. Zhou was released a month later.
The principal didn’t give up and continued to harass Mr. Zhou and his family. He instigated the security guard to bring in officers from the Xinshi Police Station and arrested Mr. Zhou on July 10, 2000. This time, Mr. Zhou was locked in a detention center for 16 months, despite the strong protest of the students and parents. He was brutally beaten during his detention.
When students wrote a joint letter to demand their beloved teacher’s release, the school and the education bureau spread rumors that Mr. Zhou incited his students to rebel against the government.
While Mr. Zhou was in detention, agents from the local 610 Office suspended his salary to cut off the only financial source of his family. To make matters worse, the principal refused to let him go back to work when he was released in November 2001.
The principal later abused Mr. Zhou’s labor without paying him properly. At the end of 2001, a month after his release, the principal visited him at home and asked him to teach two classes of senior students who failed the college entrance exam, and promised to pay him after the exam was over with an additional bonus. Mr. Zhou agreed to help and started working the next day. The exam was held in July 2002 and the principal only paid him about 1,000 yuan, much less than promised.
As Mr. Zhou lived in the school-allotted housing on campus, the principal at times ordered the security guard not to let his family go out of the campus, not even when they needed to purchase food or let the child out to play. At one time, the principal had him incarcerated, and immediately the security guard locked his wife and child out of their home, not even allowing them to pack their clothes.
Given Four Years in Fanjiatai Prison
Mr. Zhou was arrested on July 8, 2004, and held at the Xiaogan Detention Center. The guards tortured him until he was paralyzed and unable to speak. Around the same time, the police also arrested his wife and held her in Jingmen City Brainwashing Center, where she was subjected to brainwashing designed to force her to renounce her faith. When both of them were jailed, their child had to go live with the grandparents.
Although his wife was later released after she became ill, Mr. Zhou was sentenced to four years in prison. The authorities arbitrarily extended his term for eight months, and sent him to a brainwashing center after that.
During the four years, Mr. Zhou was locked in Fanjiatai Prison in Shayang County, his wife and son had to walk 16 hours of mountain roads to see him. His son often carried his most favorite toy and said, “I will play it with dad.” But every time when they arrived at the prison, full of hope, what awaited them were the guards’ cold faces and rejection of their visitation request.
Sometimes the young boy wouldn’t leave and waited outside of the prison for two or three hours, whether it was on a hot summer day or snowing in the winter, hoping that the guards would change their mind. When the little boy desperately cried, “Dad, dad…,” the guards would come out and drive the mother and son away.
At home, sometimes the boy said to his mother, “I almost forget what dad looks like.” Then he would find an album and look for his photos taken with Mr. Zhou.
At one time when both Mr. Zhou and his wife were incarcerated, the boy cried to his grandmother, after seeing other kids with their parents, “I want dad and mom. Can you buy one for me?”
After returning home from the prison, Mr. Zhou’s wife went to the local 610 Office, which is in charge of the persecution, to ask for permission to visit him, but to no avail.
Dejected, she was hit by a big truck on her way back home and she suffered a comminuted fracture and broken hamstrings in her legs. Although she avoided having her legs amputated, she was unable to work anymore. With Mr. Zhou’s salary being suspended, the injuries caused his wife and son’s lives even more distress.
Forced to Move to Another Province, Another District, and Became Destitute
After Mr. Zhou was finally released, the family decided to move to Guiyang City in nearby Guizhou Province to avoid persecution. In Guiyang City, he provided private tutoring to students to make a living. Because of his outstanding teaching ability and decent personality, he became well-known to the local students and was given many teaching opportunities. With the new financial stability, he purchased a house in Guiyang.
The police, including Peng Yilin, in his hometown, found out his whereabouts in 2013 and shut down the tutoring center he co-owned with a few others. He then began to work at a private school.
One summer morning in 2019, Mr. Zhou went to Shijicheng Police Station to do house registration paperwork for his child and was detained at the police station for hours. When he tried to call a relative in the U.S. to seek help, the police snatched his cellphone and forced him to reveal the password.
The police threatened to shut down the private school if the principal continued to employ him, forcing Mr. Zhou to quit his job. With no income anymore, Mr. Zhou had to sell the house he had just bought in Guanshanhu District and moved to Baiyun District in Guiyang.
Three officers, including An Renming, Ouyang Lin, and a man surnamed Che, from Guanshanhu District showed up at Mr. Zhou’s new residence and interrogated him on April 16, 2020. They forced him to officially change his residency to Baiyun District. Soon after, officials from Baiyun District also started to harass him and coerced his landlord to kick him out.
The local police from Baiyun District dispatched a police car to follow Mr. Zhou around and subpoenaed him every other day. This was to prevent him from giving classes and to destroy him financially.
The residential committee of Baiyun District ordered his family to move again. At the time his son’s bone tuberculosis was so severe that the child had a hard time breathing and walking. The child couldn’t get proper treatments since he contracted the disease, because he was constantly terrified and had to move from place to place in the persecution.
After the family moved out of Guiyang City, the child went back to Hubei Province to live with his maternal grandfather. Soon the child became paralyzed and had a major operation on his spine. He nearly died during the surgery.
Mr. Zhou and his wife did not live with their child because they didn’t want him to suffer persecution. After they were forced into displacement, the police from Guiyang traveled to his hometown in Hubei Province and harassed the child in order to obtain information on their whereabouts, which the child had no knowledge of. The police continued to call the child after they left and put tremendous pressure on him.
With their son’s surgery having cost over 200,000 yuan and still having another surgery to do, the family is now left in a dire situation.
A Kind Reminder to People Involved in the Persecution
Mr. Zhou’s fellow practitioners would like to remind all those involved in the persecution of the principle that good is rewarded and evil incurs retribution. Falun Gong practitioners outside of China have been compiling lists of perpetrators involved in the persecution and submitting such lists to their respective governments, urging them to sanction the perpetrators on the lists by denying them visas or entry and freezing their assets.
The principle that good and evil will receive their due retribution may also manifest in other ways. Several officers who had taken part in persecuting Mr. Zhou have already suffered mishaps or tragic deaths, which the practitioners believe to be a grave warning for others to stop persecuting Falun Gong.
Huang Xiaoxiu, the principal of Jingshan City First High School, was driven out of his post before the end of his term. His wife died from illness and his child was in a vegetative state.
Li Dehui, deputy chief of Jingshan City 610 Office, was struck by a car and died in her 40s. Those who were with her at the time of the accident were unharmed.
Several others who didn’t persecute Mr. Zhou but persecuted other practitioners also had a similar fate.
Zhou Jinsong, a police officer in Xiaohe Police Department in Guiyang City, once said to a practitioner after beating her, “Did I beat you? Did anyone see it?” During a brainwashing session of the practitioners, Zhou claimed that “I don’t care if I go to hell. I just want to persecute Falun Gong practitioners.” A few years later, both he and his wife died at home for unknown reasons.
Wang Youfa was the chief of the education division in Yang’ai Prison. He was 41 years old when he died of leukemia between 2005 and 2006 which was only one month after he was diagnosed with the disease.
Li Bin was the secretary of the Discipline Committee of Yongwen Township in Guizhou Province. He was given a big award in 2003 for actively participating in the persecution of Falun Gong. He had a brain hemorrhage on the eve of the 2008 Chinese New Year and died four days later on February 10, 2008. He was 34.
Guo Wen was a deputy director at Ergezhai Police Station in Guiyang City. He closely monitored practitioners in his jurisdiction and frequently ransacked their houses and arrested them. When the practitioners urged him not to do evil, he wouldn’t listen, but continued to personally orchestrate the persecution. He died in an accident in 2015. He was 47.
Related article:
Outstanding Teacher Forced Out of Job for Refusing to Renounce Falun Gong
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