(Clearwisdom.net) Mr. Zhao Aijun and Ms. Zhou Haixia, a couple from Shihezi City, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, have been arrested by the local police several times for practicing Falun Gong. Mr. Zhao was arrested in 2003 and escaped. He has been wanted ever since. He, his wife, Zhou Haixia, and their child decided to become homeless to avoid further persecution. On February 14, 2006, in Urumqi, Mr. Zhao was again arrested. Three policemen jailed him in the First Detention Center of Shihezi City.

Since his most recent arrest, Mr. Zhao has been on a hunger strike and is very weak. He is in handcuffs and shackles, which are only used on criminals on death row. After searching Mr. Zhao the police didn't find any evidence, but they still claimed that they would not let him go and would sentence him to prison.

On February 20, Mr. Zhao and Ms. Zhou Haixia's pictures were posted on the streets in Urumqi in an attempt to also arrest Ms. Zhou, who is now in a very difficult situation with their two-year-old child.

The following are their persecution experiences.

Zhao Aijun used to be a police officer in Shihezi City. After the persecution began, he lost his regular job and was assigned a janitor's job. In September 20, 1999, he was fired for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. He then became an employee in a guard company.

Zhou Haixia worked in an electric equipment factory in Shihezi City. Since she refused to sign a Guarantee Statement to renounce Falun Gong, the head of the factory's CCP committee, Qu Yinchang, jailed her in the factory. They released her later under her strong protest. They also laid her off, only paying her a minimum pension. They ordered her to go to the factory every day so that they could watch her.

The couple was arrested again in October 3, 1999, for doing the Falun Gong exercises in a public square. Wang Keping and Xu Ningdong, agents from the Shihezi Police Department, searched their house. Ms. Zhou was jailed for 11 days and Mr. Zhao for 15 days.

At the end of October 1999, Mr. Zhao and Ms. Zhou went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. When they got to Beijing, they heard that all the practitioners who had gone to the National Appeals Bureau had been arrested, so they went to Tiananmen square to appeal.

On November 4, Mr. Zhao and Ms. Zhou, along with other practitioners from Anhui, did the Falun Gong meditation on Tiananmen Square. Police arrested and detained them. In the detention center, the couple was locked together for three hours, which hurt their wrists. They were transferred to the Shihezi City agent's office in Beijing and escaped in the middle of the night.

This brave couple decided to go to Tiananmen Square again. In November 10, they went on to the Tiananmen Gate Building. Although there were many police about, they ignored them and shouted, "Falun Dafa is great!" Then they did the first set of the Falun Dafa exercises.

They were jailed in Beijing's Chongwen District Detention Center for nine days. Ms. Zhou started a hunger strike to protest. The police force-fed her. They ordered one male criminal inmate to push her against the floor and insert a hard tube into her nose. The tube scratched her lung, and she was choked by water. The criminal didn't pull the tube out until she had almost lost consciousness.

Officers from Shihezi went to Beijing and took the couple back to Shihezi. They were locked in the Mosuowan Detention Center for 50 days, from November 10 to December 30. Later they were sentenced to forced labor, Mr. Zhao for three years and Ms. Zhou for two.

Ms. Zhou was jailed in the Wulabo Forced Labor Camp in Urumqi, where most of the criminals are drug users. She was locked up in the so-called "intensive watching cell." Forty people were held in a 20 square meter room (about 215 square feet). She was forced to do labor before dawn. Her job was to carry 50 kg loads (about 100 pounds), and she had to work for 17 or 18 hours a day. During the day the guards kept cursing them. They didn't have breaks, even a bathroom break, except for a one-hour lunch break. They had to work everyday till 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. If the guards were not satisfied with their work, they would be punished by having to work till 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. or forbidden to eat. Sometimes the punishment was to stand in the snowy field in thin clothes. Although they had to work till very late, they still had to get up before dawn.

Most arrested women practitioners in Xinjiang are jailed in this labor camp. The female police officer, Ba Xiaomei, used all kinds of methods to force practitioners to reform. She ordered the criminal inmates to beat Ms. Zhou, who was often beaten black and blue.

In 2000, Ms. Zhou started a hunger strike to protest. She was violently beaten and force-fed. She was also forced to stand 24 hours a day without any sleep for six days. To force her to eat, the policemen refused to let any criminal inmates in her cell meet their families, which made them all hate Ms. Zhou Haixia and made them try to force her to eat. This is one of the common tricks that the CCP likes to use--making people hate Falun Gong. Since Ms. Zhou was not swayed, the guards then forced all the criminal inmates to stand in an extremely uncomfortable pose: they had to stand with their hands touching the ground and their legs straight. Nobody can endure this for a long time. Everybody cried and somebody even kneeled down to beg Zhou Haixia to eat.

In 2001, after the fake "self-immolation" case occurred, the persecution got worse. Ba Xiaomei and the deputy political head of the forced labor camp, Ma Xiaoqin, took more than 100 practitioners into their office one by one in the middle of the night on February 8, 2001, and beat them with five electric batons. They beat the practitioners on their mouths, noses, ears, hands, and other sensitive parts for more than 30 minutes and sometimes even two hours. Practitioners' faces and necks were badly burned and some of them could not walk due to the electric baton beating. Ninety percent of the practitioners jailed in that labor camp were tortured that night. The guards who tortured them were Ba Xiaomei, Yuan Tingting, Li Xiaoting, Wang Yan, and Peng Huaidong.

February 10 was family visiting day. Some practitioners told their families about the torture. Afterwards the labor camp authorities cut off all Falun Gong practitioners' family visits. Ms. Zhou's family never saw her again until she was released.

In 2001, the labor camp extended the sentences of the practitioners who refused to "reform.: Ms. Zhou's sentence was extended by eight months. When she appealed to the labor camp bureau, the guards, including Li Zongping, intercepted her appeals letter. Ms. Zhou then asked her family to pass the appeals letter to the bureau, but they never got a reply.

In April 2002, Ms. Zhou was sent to a brainwashing ssession held by the Xinjiang AR's CCP committee. Many government officers who were trained in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners were present. They were: Man Zongzhou, the vice general secretary of the Xinjiang AR's CCP committee; Ma Pengcheng; Quan Yujie, a high-ranking officer in the police department in Xinjiang; Wei; and other government officers. Each practitioner had two people from their original workplaces as her personal monitors. The practitioners were watched 24 hours a day. First, the brainwashing officers pretended to be nice and trick practitioners into "reforming." After 10 days without any success they became very harsh. Labor camp guard Ma Xiaoqin claimed that if practitioners refused to reform, they would be forced to do the heaviest labor and they would never be released.

Since Ms. Zhou refused to be reformed, she was sent back to the labor camp. On July 14, 2002, her original work place took her to a brainwashing center in the Nanyuan Hotel, Shihezi City.

Ms. Zhou was not released even after her sentence was over. They didn't even let her family visit her. She then made a decision: she must escape that evil place and be free.

In the evening on July 31, 2002, Ms. Zhou tied the bed sheet to the window bars and tried to escape from the third floor. Unfortunately, she fell and was injured. She was sent to a hospital in Shihezi with many fractures. The major two were her spine and left foot. She bled a lot, too. In the hospital, doctors installed a metal rod in her left foot and in her spine. She was released home 20 days later. After studying the Fa and doing the exercise, she was healed two months later.

Mr. Zhao was sentenced to three years in a labor camp. He was first jailed in the Wusu Forced Labor Camp in Xinjiang. He was forced to do more than 10 hours of very heavy labor every day. When his sister went to see him he was very skinny and darkly tanned.

In August 2000, all the male practitioners in Xinjiang who were sentenced were gathered in the Changji Forced labor Camp for further persecution. Guards beat them with electric batons and also forced them to do overtime heavy labor, trying to force them to "reform." Mr. Zhao insisted in his belief and solidly refused to "reform." His sentence was extended by four months.

In March 2003 Ms. Zhao was released. The agents at the local police station on Xingfu Road cancelled his household registry, and his original work place fired him. He had to do temporary work for a living. During this time, his original work place assigned somebody to spy on him.

On August 7, 2003, when Mr. Zhao got home from work, policemen from the National Security Brigade, Xu Ningdong and Song Li, arrested him and took him to the basement of the police station. Later, they searched his house. His wife, Ms. Zhou Haixia, was five months pregnant at that time. The police made a big mess in their house and took away some Falun Gong books and several cassette tapes.

That night, Xu Ningdong handcuffed Mr. Zhao's hands behind his back for two hours. The next morning, around 7:00 a.m., Mr. Zhao climbed over the wall when the policemen were sleeping and escaped. He has been homeless ever since.

The National Security Brigade agents could not find Mr. Zhao, so they issued a wanted notice and also assigned somebody to spy on his house. His neighbor, Ma Guoqiang, who was also Mr. Zhao's co-worker, was also involved in the persecution. All the phone calls from and to Mr. Zhao's house were tapped.

In December, when Ms. Zhou was in labor in the hospital, the National Security Brigade officials sent a lot of policemen to the hospital. The female officers put on a doctor's uniform and stayed in Ms. Zhou's room, trying to catch Mr. Zhao. After the baby was born, the police moved into Ms. Zhou's neighbor's house and watched her 24 hours a day. They even spied on her relatives. Since Mr. Zhao was homeless, his wife had to take care of the baby and could not go to work. Her sister supported her. Mr. Zhao never got a chance to see his child until the baby was one year and eight months old.

The 610 Office and the National Security Brigade never gave up. Every time Ms. Zhou went out somebody spied on her.

In October 2004, the deputy chief of the "610 Office," Xue Yuejin, Guo Tianqiang, and some other officials went to Ms. Zhou's house, asking for information on Mr. Zhao. Xue Yuejin threatened Ms. Zhou in front of her mother. Ms. Zhou then listed all the incidents of persecution that she and other practitioners had endured and blamed the officers present. The police were speechless due to Zhou's righteous mind.

In August 2005 Ms. Zhou made contact with her husband. They got together with their young child in another town.

On February 14, 2006, when walking on the street in Urumqi three police officers arrested Mr. Zhao again. He was jailed in the First Detention Center of Shihezi City. The police didn't inform his family until 10 days later. He was restrained with handcuffs and shackles.

Mr. Zhao has been on a hunger strike to protest. His family has had only one chance to see him since his arrest, and they saw that he was very weak. Police officer Li from the national security bureau threatened his family, saying that they had better not to tell anybody that Mr. Zhao was very weak.

On February 20, policemen posted Mr. Zhao and Ms. Zhou's pictures on the streets in Urumqi in an attempt to also arrest Ms. Zhou as a wanted criminal. Ms. Zhou is now in a very difficult situation with her two-year-old child.

We hope the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong will investigate the persecution of Mr. Zhao's family by the Urumqi and Shihezi 610 Office and the National Security Brigade and rescue Mr. Zhao Aijun.

The last name of the National Security Brigade policeman who is in charge of Mr. Zhao's case is Li. His phone number is 86-993-2913241.

March 11, 2006