Help Rescue My Mother, Han Jizhen, Who Has Been Cruelly Persecuted In Nanjing Mental Hospital

By Practitioner Wang Yongsheng in U.S.A.

(Clearwisdom.net)

It is a widely acknowledged basic human right that one has the right to choose what to believe and to improve one's health through physical exercise. Yet under the dictatorship of Jiang's regime in China, human rights are unobtainable. Like tens of thousands of others who have dared to exercise the rights granted to citizens by China's Constitution, my mother was taken away by authorities. She was tortured in the Nanjing Mental Hospital for more than three months.

My mother worked for a newspaper printing factory. Years of hard work had left her with many illnesses. She suffered from one particular gynecological disease for 28 years. She tried western and traditional Chinese medicine, even some ancient medicine, but her health situation did not improve at all. In early 1998, my mother began to practice Falun Gong. In just a few months, dramatic changes took place. The chronic disease that had plagued her for 28 years was cured and so were those common diseases like colds coughing. For the first time, my mother really enjoyed the feeling of perfect health and didn't have to worry about visiting doctors or hospital bills. Because of Dafa's teaching of the principle of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance," my mother became well known in our neighborhood as a kindhearted and very nice person.

Beginning July 20, 1999, since he could not bear the popularity of Falun Gong, Jiang used his power to launch a nationwide persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Since my mother practices Falun Gong and had witnessed the great benefits the practice had brought to her, she wanted to explain the truth about Dafa to the government. On December 23, 1999, my mother went to Beijing to appeal for restitution of Falun Gong's reputation and legal standing out of a citizen's conscience. China's Constitution states, "A citizen has the right to appeal without obtaining any permission." But the fact is, Jiang's regime violates the Constitution. They control the Appeals Office and have literally changed the office to a police station. The practitioners who went to the Appeals Office were arrested on the spot. So whoever dares to step into an Appeals Office will be arrested. This left Falun Gong practitioners with no choice but to go to Tiananmen Square to appeal to the public.

My mother went to Tiananmen Square on the second day after arriving in Beijing. The police in Tiananmen Square were very experienced at telling the practitioners from other groups of people and arrested every practitioner they found. People with kind and innocent appearances were their first suspects and usually their guesses were right. A policeman noticed my mother and asked, "(Are you) practicing Falun Gong?" My mother answered yes. The policeman immediately pushed my mother into a police van. In the van, the policeman started angrily slapping my mother again and again until he got tired, then he grabbed a bag and used that to hit her.

The police knew where my mother was from after checking her ID card. So the police from Nanjing City (Jiangsu Province) took my mother back to Nanjing. Without any legal or medical diagnosis documentation, the police detained her against her will in the Nanjing Mental Hospital (currently renamed the Nanjing Cerebrum Hospital). Initially, the hospital refused to take my mother because the doctor said that my mother was a healthy person, not a psychiatric patient. The police put heavy pressure on the doctor and eventually forced the hospital to admit her. The doctor told our family members, "She is here not because she has any psychiatric problem. It is because she does not want to give up her belief in Falun Gong!"

I was shocked and anxious when I heard my mother was being detained in the mental hospital for her belief in Falun Gong. I immediately took time off from work, bought a plane ticket and flew back to Shanghai. On the day after I arrived in Shanghai, I went to the Nanjing Mental Hospital and visited my mother there. My visit uncovered inhumane things happening in that hospital that I could never have known from the outside. I asked my mother how the hospital treated her, a healthy person. My mother told me, "I am forcibly injected with unknown drugs combined with some oral medicine. If I refuse to take their drugs, they will use ropes to tie me up and force-feed me. The drugs cause me a lot of pain. I cannot calm down no matter whether I am sitting, standing or lying down. I feel so listless and dizzy. My head just stops thinking and I am easily irritated and cannot calm down." I looked at her attentively. My heart was painful when I listened to her. My mother's every motion was extremely slow, whether talking or tiny physical movements. When she was talking, it sounded like her tongue was swollen and could not move easily. She could not talk fluently and, apparently, her thinking was slowed down. After all those days in the hospital, my mother, a healthy person before, looked like a real patient.

We suddenly heard a nurse yelling something outside of the door. My mother said to me nervously, "They are going to give me drugs again!" Soon a young nurse came in with water, cup and drug in her hands. She said while feeding my mother the drug, "Do you still want to practice Falun Gong? Give it up now!" I was standing aside and silently watching what was happening. Watching my mother suffering right in front of my eyes is far beyond what I can describe. It was torture for me. The painful scene stabbed my heart and ruthlessly tore it apart.

Later I met with the doctor and said, "I am Han Jizhen's son. I came back from America because I wanted to know about my mother's situation." The doctor said, "Your mother can be discharged from the hospital at any time as long as the police allow us." When I asked them about the drugs they used on my mother, she said, "We have no choice. The police want her to be here, and we have to use drugs on her. Otherwise, if she goes to appeal for Falun Gong in Beijing again, we would bear the responsibility."

After our family repeatedly requested it, the hospital released my mother several days before the Chinese New Year. To our surprise, the police came to our home the next day and threatened my mother to write a statement promising not to appeal for Falun Gong again in Beijing. Otherwise, they claimed that they would put her back into the hospital. Under the pressure from the police, given that my mother did not want to go through the torture in the hospital again, she had to do what the police demanded, even though it was totally against her will. We thought that the police would not harass us any more and we could have a peaceful New Year's Festival. But the police came to our home again on the next day. They said to my mother, "You only wrote a statement promising not to appeal for Falun Gong in Beijing. That is not enough. You must write a statement promising never to practice Falun Gong again, or we will put you back into the hospital." My mother told them, "How can I make such a statement? Practicing Falun Gong has brought me great health effects. How can I stop practicing such wonderful exercises?" The police said brazenly, "It seems you still have the psychiatric problem and were not cured at all in the hospital. You must still need further treatment in the hospital." Without any legal process, the police took my mother away and put her into the hospital again for two more months.

My father's health is not good. He had cancer and surgery at the time, and needed my mother to take care of him at home. Since the police took my mother away, she could not take care of him. Instead, he had to send meals to her every day. The family was in dire straits.

At the end of 2000, I had the documents ready for my parents to be able to visit me in America. They both got visas and bought airline tickets. But right before they were going to board the flight, they were stopped by customs at the Shanghai airport because they found my mother's name on the blacklist in their computers. The police knew that if my mother went overseas, their inhuman and criminal acts would be exposed to the public.

Right now the police and other officials are still watching my mother. She cannot leave her home town without permission from the authorities. I appeal to the international community for help to free my mother so that our family can be reunited.

December 9, 2002

 Yearly Archive   Printer Version