North Bay Nugget (Canada): Help rescue our families -- Chinese

Arnie Hakala

February 25, 2003 - 10:00

(Clearwisdom.net) Zhaojun Wang and his family had found mental and physical health and happiness in Falun Gong, but his beliefs led him to a labor camp in China.

"He was arrested in 1999, and in the labor camp he made chopsticks. He was forced to sit in front of a television and watch Communist propaganda," said his wife Yanying, 60, in an interview in North Bay Monday.

"He couldn't sleep when he was being brainwashed, and if he did they beat him. They said he would be set free if he denounced Falun Gong."

Yanying's story is one of thousands that have come out of China since the Communist government clamped down on Falun Gong in 1999, seven years after it began.

Speaking through a translator, Yanying stopped to wipe tears from her eyes.

"We used to have such a wonderful family," she said, explaining that she lives with her daughter in Toronto while her husband of 33 years and her son, Bai Qiu, 27, remain in Jinan, a city of four million in eastern China.

Falun Gong is a peaceful self-improvement and exercise system which aims at harmonizing mind and body while guiding people to upgrade their morality by following the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.

Four Falun Gong practitioners were in the city Monday as part of a Northern tour aimed at helping people understand the situation in China.

The problem with Falun Gong was that it became popular too quickly.

The spiritual ideas were all right with Communist Leader Jiang Zemin until its numbers reached 100 million, more than the membership of the Communist Party.

Since Jiang started his persecution, international agencies, such as the United Nations, have estimated that 100,000 Chinese have been illegally sent to labour camps and another 100,000 have been arrested and detained.

The four on an automobile tour of Northeastern Ontario cities this week are Yanying, Peijong Hsieh, Cecilia Xiong and Ming Zhai.

They had a meeting with Mayor Jack Burrows and also visited the constituency offices of Nipissing MP Bob Wood and Nipissing MPP Al McDonald.

"Every letter, every phone call helps to get the Chinese government to change its mind," Xiong said. "Six months ago, we did the same and it helped to free five people with relatives in Canada from Chinese jails."

Yanying said she was in Singapore helping her daughter with her first child when the Chinese government changed its mind about Falun Gong, which calls itself neither a religion nor a sect.

Yanying, an artist like her husband, has not been able to return home and it is breaking her heart.

She said Falun Gong helped her husband to heal stomach problems and it helped her son to stop the drinking of alcohol and other bad habits.

She talked to her husband a few days ago but she knew the line was tapped by the Communists so she had to be careful about what she said.

Xiong, 23, has a story that is as sad as Yanying's.

She left China in 1998 to study at a university in Brussells and was in Belgium when the terror in her homeland started. Like her, her parents were believers in Falun Gong, now practised in more than 50 countries.

"My mother was beaten until she was blind and deaf," she said. "My dad was placed in jail."

International pressure resulted in both being freed and now they are living in exile in their own land.

"You can't even mention the words Falun Gong because you are put in jail or tortured in a work camp," Xiong said.

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