November 1, 2003

(Clearwisdom.net) Enforcers from the Political and Judiciary Committee, and from the "610 Office"* in Chongqing City brazenly prevented the family from holding a funeral for Duan Shiqiong, who died as a result of barbarous abuse from persecution in a detention center hospital.

After Duan Shiqiong from Chongqing City died at the Chengdu Detention Center, officials from the Political and Judiciary Committee and the "610 Office" in Chongqing City feared that her husband Wang Zhihai, also a steadfast Dafa practitioner, would make her death known to the public and post it on Minghui.net. They tailed her husband everywhere, and together with a large number of police officers from the National Security Department, they brazenly prevented her family members from holding a funeral for her.

When her family members announced they would hold a funeral for her, these perpetrators deliberately put up innumerable obstacles, such as designating where the funeral should be held and demanding both verbally and in writing that none of Duan's colleagues or colleagues of her family members could be invited to the funeral, along with other restrictions. On September 24, when her family members had just finished decorating the designated place and were about to start the funeral ceremony, several dozen people from the Political and Judiciary Committee from Chongqing City, from the "610 Office," and the National Security and Police Departments suddenly arrived and started to sabotage the funeral by tearing up Duan Shiqiong's photograph and also banners reading "Grossly Wronged." They also looted many things on site, such as clothes, cash, and other common funeral items, and arrested one Falun Gong practitioner who went to the funeral. In the evening, using deceitful tactics, they also abducted Duan's husband. These two practitioners were illegally detained for 15 days. During detention, Wang's work unit and a friend each sent him 200 Yuan*, but the police confiscated half of the money.

Ms. Duan Shiqiong, 36, was an employee of the passenger section of the sub-branch for the Chongqiong Railway Bureau. She started practicing Falun Gong in 1996. After July 20, 1999, when Jiang's regime started persecuting Falun Gong, she went to Beijing to unfurl banners validating the Fa, and as a result she suffered persecution and in 2001 was forced to leave home to avoid further persecution. In August 2002 police unlawfully arrested her and detained her at the Chengdu City Detention Center. From the day of her arrest until she died on September 16, 2003, she was not allowed visits by family members. Even in the last few days of her life when she was in a critical condition, the police still did not inform her family of her condition. Her family received the death notice on September 17, a day after she died. That is when they learned she had held a hunger strike. Duan's reason for holding a hunger strike was because she refused to accept the seven-year prison sentence the courts had issued. She also went on this hunger strike to further protest the inhumane treatment of Dafa practitioners at the hands of the police. She started this hunger strike on July 25, 2003. The perpetrators said it was July 24. She was sent to the Qingyang District People's Hospital on August 11 to be force-fed. We don't know the exact details, but the cause of her death was most likely suffocation during the force-feeding. Her death has once again exposed the evilness and vile savagery of Jiang's regime.

* The "610 Office" is a bureau specifically created by the Chinese government to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party, as well all other political and judiciary systems.

** Yuan is the Chinese currency. The average monthly salary of an urban worker in China is 500 Yuan.

Posting date: 11/9/2003
Original article date: 11/9/2003
Category: Eye Witness Accounts
Translated on 11/1/2003
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.cc/mh/articles/2003/11/1/59870.html

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