Name: Yang Guixia (杨桂霞)
Gender: Female
Age: 56
Address: Section 9, Dongfengxin Village, Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province
Occupation: Unknown
Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 2, 2011
Most recent place of detention:
No. 1 Detention Center in Daqing (大庆市第一看守所 )
City: Daqing
Province:
Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered:
Detention, forced labor, ransacked home, extortion.

(Clearwisdom.net) Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Yang Guixiang experienced severe torture resulting in disabilities at the Harbin Rehabilitation Center in 2002. She was recently arrested again for distributing Dafa materials on March 2, 2011. She has been detained at the No. 1 Detention Center in Daqing for 20 days.

When Ms. Yang Guixiang was posting materials about the persecution of Falun Gong in her neighborhood, she was reported to the local police on March 2, 2011. Ten police officers from the Dongfeng Police Office and the Gaoxin District Police Station in Daqing arrested her and ransacked her home. They confiscated her computer, two printers, a bank book with 2,200 yuan, Dafa books and materials, and other personal belongings. The police also arrested her daughter who was home at the time. Ms. Yang's family has managed to get her daughter and the bank book back by paying extortion money to the police. Gaoxin District Police Station however, is planning to prosecute Ms. Yang for the Dafa materials found in her home.

Ms. Yang has had many struggles in her life. Her older daughter died in 1992 at age 12 in a car accident. She suffered from serious depression over losing her daughter, and her health severely declined. She was diagnosed with hysteromyoma and hyperthyroidism. Two tumors developed on her neck, which caused heart failure. After several years of western medical treatment which was ineffective, she was introduced to Falun Dafa. She had been illiterate, but was nonetheless able to read the entire book Zhuan Falun after practicing Dafa for a period of time. The teachings of Dafa enlightened her to the meaning of life, and she was able to get over the bereavement of her deceased daughter. Ms. Yang gradually regained her mental and physical health by practicing Dafa, and the two tumors eventually disappeared.

Ms. Yang was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in 2002 for practicing Falun Gong. In the Harbin Rehabilitation Center, she was forced to write statements renouncing her belief. Within a year in the center, she developed multiple syndromes and disabilities caused by torture, including numb muscles, cramps, scabies, facial paralysis, poor eyesight, deformed legs resulting in her loss of walking ability, swallowing difficulty, and incontinence. She had lost 20 kilograms (44 lbs.) by the time her family picked her up in August 2003. Her husband then left her in a hospital, waiting for her to die upon learning the doctor's diagnosis of fatal brain disease. Some relatives didn't give up on saving Ms. Yang, and they brought her home and played Master Li's audio lecture for her. She recovered miraculously. Her eyesight was regained, and she could eat and swallow food, walk slowly, and conduct basic daily activities.

Because of a lack of a normal group practice environment, like that of the period before the persecution began, Ms. Yang has not had the opportunity to practice Dafa regularly and sufficiently. With the mental pressure caused by the persecution, she has been unable to fully recover. Dafa has helped her to become healthy, but the persecution has turned her into a person with a disability.

Since her husband passed away in 2007, Ms. Yang had been living with her young daughter on minimal social assistance. Before her recent arrest, she had been trying to let more people know about the persecution.