Listener (New Zealand): Nothing Left to Lose (Photo)
By Graham Reid
(Clearwisdom.net) The walls of the modest unit in
suburban Auckland, where Huang Juo-Hua and his four-year-old daughter Kaixin
live, are almost bare. In the lounge there is only a meagre calendar, and a
large photograph of Huang's wife Luo Zhi Xiang, its frame decorated with
flowers. There is a whisper of a smile on her lips, yet the eyes of the pale,
attractive young woman possess an unusual sadness. There is another photograph, which Huang keeps in a drawer.
It is of the same woman in a coffin. She looks like a piece of battered
porcelain: her hair is gone, the eyes are sunken and the cheeks hollow. The face
is frozen and looks mummified. Huang - who has just received New Zealand citizenship and
wears a polo shirt with an All Blacks logo - wants to tell the painful story of
his wife's death. Her "crime" - and his, which caused him to flee
China - was to be a member of Falun Gong, the [...] group that the Chinese
Government has been ruthlessly repressing for seven years. Huang and Kaixin arrived in New Zealand - a country he knows
little about - in January, after being granted United Nations refugee status. He
knows that by using his real name he may be courting unwanted attention from
Chinese authorities, even this far from his homeland. But, speaking through a
translator, he says he now has little left to lose. His wife is dead and his
parents in China - also practising Falun Gong members - are harassed regularly
anyway. Tragically his is not an unfamiliar story. Sometimes referred to Falun Dafa, Falun Gong is a way of
living that blends aspects of Buddhism, Taoism, meditation techniques and
traditional physical exercises with the teachings of the movement's leader, Li
Hongzhi. Li introduced his ideas in 1992 and insisted they be offered free to
those who wished to learn. Because of its traditional aspects, Falun Gong had
wide appeal for many Chinese. Estimates on membership in China today range from
many tens of millions to an unlikely 100 million. Whatever the true number - a figure of 70 million is commonly
accepted but the political climate makes it impossible to ascertain precisely -
the movement has grown rapidly. Practitioners testify to its positive effects
for their health and general well-being. Though it has a spiritual component,
Falun Gong does not consider itself a religion: it has neither places of worship
nor clergy. But in a country where only five belief systems are lawful -
Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism - Falun Gong was never
likely to have an easy ride. Ironically, Falun Gong was originally encouraged by the
Chinese Government, which viewed it as a wholesome and moral movement, and
approved of its tenets: tolerance, compassion and truthfulness. Li Hongzhi [...]
lectured widely. But seven years ago the ground shifted suddenly. In early
April 1999, a provocative newspaper article criticised the movement. When Falun
Gong members rallied in protest, many were arrested and beaten. And on April 25,
around 10.000 practitioners gathered outside the government's headquarters in
Beijing. The size of the movement - around 100,000 members in Beijing
alone - alarmed authorities, who viewed it as further evidence that the
Communist Party was losing its grip on the people as it tinkered with
democratisation and capitalism. On June 10. the party established an
extra-constitutional body - the now notorious 610 office - specifically to
facilitate a crackdown on Falun Gong. It now has branches in all cities,
villages, government agencies and schools. The next month, concerned at the
numbers of government officials, military and police personnel who were Falun
Gong practitioners, the party declared the practice of Falun Gong illegal and
police began arresting and detaining practitioners. The Washington Post reported sources saying that "the
standing committee of the Politburo did not unanimously endorse the crackdown
and that President Jiang Zemin alone decided that Falun Gong must be
eliminated". Since then, the government has been hiking up the rhetoric:
Falun Gong was first labeled unlawful, then characterized as an evil cult and,
more recently, defined as counter-revolutionary, lawyers in China have been
ordered not to represent Falun Gong members. Beijing human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng - recognised by
China's Ministry of Justice in 2001 as one of the country's "10 best
lawyers" - has been under pressure since winning a 2004 case for a Falun
Gong practitioner who was illegally persecuted. In January, he barely survived
what has been described as a staged traffic accident set up by plainclothes
policemen. Repression of Falun Gong in China has been widespread and well
documented, often with graphic photographs of tortured victims. Most of the information about repression and torture of Falun
Gong comes - by necessity - from Falun Gong itself or from anti-government
sympathizers. The Epoch Times, for example, founded in China [Editor note: U.S.]
in 2000 and with editions worldwide, focuses on human rights coverage to the
movement. Its reports are increasingly being verified by independent
researchers. A report by the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights and Labor published last month contains a damning catalogue of
human rights abuses by the Chinese government: physical abuse resulting in
deaths in custody; torture; coerced confessions; harassment, detention and
imprisonment of those perceived as a threat to the party or government
authority; and forced labour. Estimates of the numbers of Falun Gong adherents
who have died in custody as a result of torture. abuse or neglect ranged from
several hundred to a few thousand. Huang Guo-Hua tells his story with deliberation and
directness, and an unwavering gaze. He met his future wife in Guangzhou,
southern China in April 1999. Both practised Falun Gong. In October of that
year, when the government defined "heretical cults" and declared Falun
Gong to be one, the couple went to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to join protests.
They were arrested and Huang was taken to a prison in his home province where he
was deprived of food and made to do heavy labour. Luo was imprisoned for 15 days
in Guangzhou and force-fed salt water when she went on a hunger strike. After 20
days Huang was released and rejoined Luo in Guangzhou. They married in April
2000. In November 2002, police came to their house and found Falun
Gong books. The pair were arrested and detained in separate police stations.
Huang went on a hunger strike and was force-fed through nostril tubes, which,
when first inserted, pierced internal organs. When police learned his wife was three months pregnant with
their second child, she was removed from custody and initially taken to the
Huang Pu district for what Huang says was brainwashing, then to a hospital where
she was guarded by officers from the 610 unit. His wife's sister learnt where
she was being held and visited. On December 1, the sister saw a policeman run into the room
where Luo was detained. The sister assumed Luo had escaped, but on the street,
three stories below, lay her near-lifeless body. As Huang tells it, his wife's body had no broken bones, which
gives the lie to the 610 assertion that she jumped. She had insisted the day
before that she wanted to live for her baby's sake. She had a severe head injury
consistent with a blow. A second injury appeared after she was transferred to
another hospital. She died, aged 29, on December 4, with her unborn baby inside
her. Huang, still in custody, wasn't informed until four months later. He saw
her body briefly and could identify his wife only by a distinctive front tooth.
In December 2003, he was released from detention, having been forced to renounce
Falun Gong and watch re-education films. He returned to Guangzhou. The following
year he obtained a passport in his home province before fleeing to Bangkok in
August 2004. Later that year a friend brought his daughter to him. He applied
for and was granted UN refugee status. Kaixin is suffering greatly, he says. She cries for her
mother. It is she who puts the flowers around the sad-looking young woman in the
photograph. As longtime sinologist Professor Barond ter Haar of Leiden
University in the Netherlands notes: "The continued perseverance of Falun
Gong adherents/practitioners even inside the People's Republic of China in
publicly expressing their resistance to the prohibition and persecution of their
movement is remarkable, and easily misunderstood as fanaticism." In March, Falun Gong documented the existence of a secret
detention camp in Shenyang City - where organs may be being harvested from live
inmates. It's part of the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital to which 6000
adherents have been admitted. None has been released. The authors of the report
refer to it as a "concentration camp" and compare it to Auschwitz. It
is an increasingly common comparison being made by Falun Gong and human-rights
monitors. The preface to the Falun Gong volume on investigations into
the persecution of members in China opens with a quote by Nobel Peace Prize
winner and humanitarian Elie Wiesel: "Sometimes we must interfere. When
human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders
and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever man or women are persecuted
because of their race, religion or political view, that place must - at that
moment - become the centre of the universe. " Harassment of Falun Gong members outside China is widely
reported. Members here say that they have been followed and photographed by
people they believe to be party spies. Many Chinese practitioners living abroad
fear identification will attract the attention of the CCP's international
network of spies and lead to reprisals for family at home, or arrest on their
return. Yet in a small unit in Auckland, as his daughter arranges
fruit in front of the photograph of his late wife, Huang Gua-Hua keeps talking. "He doesn't worry about himself now," his
translator says. "He wants to use his real name to the truth about Falun
Gong persecution in China. "He wants people to know and believe him."
Huang Guohua with his daughter, Kaixin, and a photograph of his late wife,
Luo Zhixiang
Chinese version available at
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/4/27/126240.html
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