(Minghui.org) An engineer and her husband were repeatedly threatened, arrested, detained, and tortured simply for upholding their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual teaching and meditation exercise that has been persecuted in China since July 1999.
Together, Ms. Li Xiuhua and Mr. Meng Fanquan from Tangshan City, Hebei Province were incarcerated for a total of 15 years, and their home was ransacked five times. Both of them lost their jobs as well.
Ms. Li’s latest arrest took place on May 13, 2019, while she was outside hanging up a Falun Gong banner. She was sentenced to one year in prison and tortured while serving time at the Tangshan First Detention Center until she was released on May 12, 2020. She passed away seven months later on Christmas Eve. She was 57.
Ms. Li graduated from Hebei Polytechnic University, one of the top-ranking universities in Hebei Province. She was an engineer at Qingyuan Environmental Protection. Her husband, Mr. Meng, was a teacher at the Hebei Technical Institute Light Industry Branch. They married in 1992 and had their son a year later.
Ms. Li was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid in 1994, caused by pressure from work. Despite all the medicines she took, she became severely underweight and fatigued, and suffered frequent palpitations.
Mr. Meng grew up in a poor family and was smaller than his peers because of his bad health. He later contracted hepatitis and constantly felt burning pain in his chest for unknown reasons. A doctor who examined him said that his organs functioned like those of a 70-year-old.
At the end of 1994, Mr. Meng attended a Falun Gong lecture in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. He identified with the universal values of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance and no longer resented the tribulations he suffered in the past. He stopped fighting for personal gain at work and looked after his students, including helping them financially. Instead of punishing his students when they made mistakes, he reasoned with them. His neighbors saw him as an honest, helpful, and reliable man.
At Mr. Meng’s recommendation, Ms. Li also began to practice Falun Gong in 1995. A month after she watched the lecture videos and learned the exercises, she stopped taking the thyroid medicines. She gradually gained weight and her health improved.
After the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) began its persecution of Falun Gong, Mr. Meng appealed for the right to practice Falun Gong and was arrested in Beijing in September 1999. While he was confined in a cage, an officer at Tiananmen Square Police Station beat him and broke his rib.
He was held in the Lubei Police Department for 15 days, during which time he was locked in a filthy cage, interrogated and tortured. He was then transferred to Tangshan First Detention Center for three months. His cell was meant to hold 12 people but was overcrowded with more than 30 people. They were given little food.
Ms. Li struggled to care for their six-year-old son alone and visit her husband in detention every month.
After Mr. Meng was released on bail in December 1999, he was removed from his teaching position at school and demoted to a janitor.
Ms. Li and Mr. Meng left their home in summer 2000 to avoid police harassment. They were later arrested in separate events and taken to Tangshan First Detention Center, leaving their seven-year-old alone.
The boy had to transfer to another school so that he could live with his grandmother in a village. He was often bullied by classmates, who held negative views about Falun Gong due to the demonizing propaganda put out by the communist regime.
Just prior to the New Year in 2001, Ms. Li was arbitrarily given three years in Kaiping Forced Labor Camp, and Mr. Meng was taken to Hehuakeng Forced Labor Camp for a year.
After Mr. Meng was released in November 2001, he wrote a letter to Hebeilu Police Station and explained why the persecution was wrong. The letter was sent to his school, and his coworkers forcibly held him in a brainwashing center in July 2002 for a year and a half. In the brainwashing center he was physically assaulted, deprived of sleep, and forced to watch videos slandering Falun Gong.
In May 2003, Mr. Meng managed to escape from the brainwashing center. The authorities repeatedly went to his home to terrorize his son in attempts to find out his whereabouts. Shortly after Mr. Meng came home in August, the police pried their door open, forced their way into their home, and seized him. He was held at the Tangshan City First Detention Center for a month and then taken back to the brainwashing center.
Ms. Li went on a hunger strike in the labor camp to protest the persecution. When she fell into critical condition, the authorities asked her brother-in-law to pick her up from the hospital. After she recovered, fearing the persecution, her brother-in-law cooperated with the labor camp and took her back.
Ms. Li was released in the summer of 2003, and Mr. Meng was released at the end of the same year.
Mr. Meng was arrested again on April 17, 2006, while working in the school library, after school security asked him to come out for a talk. As soon as he stepped out of the building, the police seized him. They handcuffed him, took his keys and ransacked his home in front of his 13-year-old son.
Mr. Meng was tried in September and sentenced to a seven-year prison term in October. The school quickly fired him after he was convicted.
While Mr. Meng was serving time in the Jidong Prison, the guards instigated other prisoners to watch him around the clock and beat him to prevent him from sleeping. He was denied family visits. When he went on a hunger strike in March 2007 to protest the torture, the guards force-fed him and charged him 100 yuan for each force-feeding session.
Following guards’ orders, the prisoners tied him to a chair and exposed him under the scorching sun; the temperature reached 110 °F during the day. At night, the place was swarming with mosquitoes. The mosquito bites caused large areas of swelling on his face, neck, arms and feet. The torture lasted three days.
During the New Year in 2011, a guard burned and disfigured his face with a high-voltage electric baton.
On multiple occasions when Ms. Li tried to visit her husband in prison, guards dragged her into a car and took her away. The guards threatened to never release her husband and to have the police arrest her and her child if she came again. The local police then followed her and harassed her and her employer at work.
Mr. Meng was released from Jidong Prison on April 18, 2013, only to be arrested by the local police a month later on May 23. He was detained for ten days.
A team of plainclothes officers arrested Mr. Meng early in the morning on March 13, 2014, when he was on his way to work. They confiscated his laptop and cell phone. The police went back at 9 a.m. and ransacked his home. Ms. Li’s 93-year-old mother was alone at home and was terrified watching the police taking away their belongings.
Mr. Meng was tortured in the Tangshan First Detention Center for 16 months and released on July 2, 2015.
Ms. Li was arrested again on May 13, 2019, after being reported for hanging a Falun Gong banner. The police ransacked her home and confiscated her credit cards and cash. She was incarcerated in Tangshan First Detention Center that night.
Ms. Li stood trial at the Lubei District Court on November 8, 2019. Her lawyer entered a not-guilty plea for her. Ms. Li recounted how she had benefited from practicing Falun Gong and demanded acquittal. The judge sentenced her to a year in prison on December 5.
While she was in Tangshan First Detention Center, she suffered hypertension and often felt dizzy. Seven months after she was released, she passed away on December 24, 2020.
A highly educated couple, Mr. Meng and Ms. Li spent their golden years in prisons and forced labor camps because of the CCP’s persecution of their faith. They ended up with no savings, no jobs, and a broken family. Below we list the persecution they suffered in chronological order:
July 20, 1999: the day the persecution of Falun Gong started, Mr. Meng’s employer placed him under house arrest and didn’t allow him to go home for a few days. They tried to force him to sign statements to renounce Falun Gong.
September 1999: Mr. Meng traveled to Beijing to speak up for Falun Gong. The police arrested and detained him for 15 days before transferring him to a detention center for three months.
November 2000: Mr. Meng’s employer put him in Tangshan First Detention Center. He was later arbitrarily given a year in Hehuakeng Forced Labor Camp.
December 2000: Ms. Li was given three years in Kaiping Forced Labor Camp for protesting in Beijing.
July 2002: Mr. Meng’s employer put him in a brainwashing center in Tangshan Textile University for 18 months. He escaped after 10 months and was seized three months later on August 29, 2003. He was released at the end of the year.
August 22, 2005: Officers from Jianshelu Police Station, Lubei Police Department, and Hebeilu Police Station broke into the couple’s home when only the child was present. They ransacked the place and confiscated the couple’s personal property.
April 18, 2006: Police from Lubei Police Department arrested Mr. Meng and put him in Fengrun Detention Center. He was tried on December 12. A judge at Lubei District sentenced him to seven years on September 29, and his employer fired him after the sentence. He was released on April 18, 2013.
May 23, 2013: Officers from Lubei Police Department arrested Mr. Meng at home and ransacked his place. He was detained in Tangshan Detention Center for 10 days.
March 13, 2014: Officers from Lubei Police Department arrested Mr. Meng at home and ransacked his place. After a trial at Lubei District Court on April 23, he was given 16 months.
August 2018: Officers from Longdong Police Station harassed the couple.
May 13, 2019: Ms. Li was arrested and had her home ransacked. She was tried on November 7 and sentenced to one year in Tangshan First Detention Center. Half a year after she was released, she passed away on December 24, 2020.
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