Falun Gong Survivors of Torture See Themselves Depicted in Art

Falun Dafa mothers and children honored in paintings

By Gary Feuerberg
Epoch Times Staff

(L to R)Zhenjie Yu, Chunmei Ma and Lianying Zhang, are three mothers who told their personal stories about the persecution and torture they experienced in communist China for practicing Falun Gong, on July 20, in Washington. (Gary Feuerberg/ Epoch Times)

WASHINGTON—Chunmei Ma was reminded of her life in China by a painting of a child who looks about 3 years old. Police are restraining his mother while other police are hauling away the family’s possessions, including his toys. The painting is called “House Raid” and the artist is Chongqi Yao.

This painting was one of several on exhibit July 19–20 at the John A. Wilson building, where the Washington mayor’s office is located and the D.C. Council meets. The exhibit has toured more than 40 countries and 200 cities.

The office of Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) sponsored the exhibit in the atrium of the building. The timing on July 20 was to mark the 12th anniversary of the effort launched by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1999 to “eradicate” Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa).

“The Art of Truth, Compassion, Tolerance International Art Exhibition,” consists of paintings by over 12 artists, who share in common the practice of Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that involves doing five sets of meditative exercises and living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

“The artists have personally experienced suppression and imprisonment as a result of the persecution,” said Karen Chen, the coordinator for the exhibit. Chen said that the exhibit is a historic record of Falun Gong practitioners’ brutal persecution, as well as the serenity and peacefulness of the practice as practitioners attempt to safeguard justice and peace by upholding the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

Persecuted Mothers and Children

HOUSE RAID: D.C. police officer John Anderson gives his reaction to a painting depicting police ransacking and pillaging the home of a family of Falun Gong practitioners in China. 'House Raid' was painted by Chong qi Yao in 2008. Oil on canvas. (Jenny Jing/Epoch Times)

The theme of the exhibit was how the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners has affected mothers and their families.

Ma, originally from Liaoyuan City (Jilin Province) in Northeast China, was separated from her 7-year-old son when she was arrested on Nov. 16, 1999, in Tiananmen Square and taken to Heihuizi Women Forced Labor Camp in Changchun (Jilin Province). She was arrested because she had appealed to the Beijing government to cease the persecution of Falun Gong.

Ma, 42, was in Washington with two other female survivors tortured for practicing Falun Gong: Zhang Lianying, 49, from Beijing, and Yu Zhenjie, 60, from Mudanjiang City (Heilongjiang Province) in Northeast China. They have been telling their stories to members of Congress and to attendees at the art exhibit.

Zhang and husband Niu Jinping were abducted in front of their 4-year-old daughter Qingqing, on April 20, 2008, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) arrested more than 500 practitioners in Beijing in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. Zhang was sent in July 2008 to the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp in Liaoning Province.

Zhang told New Tang Dynasty Television on May 23, “During holidays, Qingqing would hide in the bathroom in the middle of the night and cry. She told her aunt she missed mom and dad and wondered if we had anything good to eat.”

Yu’s daughter was a student at Heilongjiang University when Yu was sent to the Qiqihar Shuanghe Forced Labor Camp in December 1999. The daughter, also a practitioner, was expelled from school, tortured, and brainwashed.

In October 2006, Ma crossed the border into Thailand in disguise. Yu also fled China to Thailand, coming stealthily through the mountains. Eventually both were caught and sent to a Thai refugee prison. Ma and Yu received U.N. refugee status and found asylum in the United States.

Zhang and Niu and their daughter Qingqing came openly to the United States on a commercial flight. By some miracle, they were able to get visas to leave, said Levi Browde, Falun Dafa Information Center spokesperson, quoted in an article by AFP.

All three mothers were lucky to have survived.

Zhang is the luckiest with both husband and daughter by her side. Qingqing was finally happy and smiling when told they are safe in this country. Ma has not seen her son since their last half hour together in 2006. Yu’s daughter’s whereabouts are unknown.

Practitioner Accounts of Torture

AFTER THE PARADE, artist Xiqiang Dong, oil on canvas, 2005. The woman in traditional Chinese garment and with the paper lotus flower cupped in her hand suggests that she has just participated in a Falun Gong parade. Such parades seek to reveal the beauty and grace of the practice, as well as the nobility and richness of China's cultural heritage. (Gary Feuerberg/Epoch Times)

Ma said the guards beat her and once did not allow her to sleep for three days. Ma said they “were forced to labor 18 to 19 hours per day, but the camp administrator declared we only did six hours per day.”

In May or June 2000, orders went out from the CCP’s 610 Office—an extrajudicial Party organ that oversees the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners—to “transform” practitioners at Ma’s camp, to force them to renounce their belief in Falun Gong.

“As soon as a group of guards brought me to the interrogation room, their electric batons shocked me with two batons simultaneously around my neck. My skin instantly had red bumps, and the hair on the back of my neck burnt. They stomped on me, pulled my hair, hit me with their fists, and kicked me.”

Ma said her head ached, she was nauseous and in a weakened state. When she woke up after passing out, they would beat her again. Once she was cuffed for three days without a drop of water to the Death Bed, a metal bed that pulls one's limbs in four directions.

An account of the torture of Lianying Zhang can be read at the Clearwisdom website. Zhang described the Death Bed torture as “most excruciating” when the guards pulled the ropes fastened to poles of the bed with all their might.

“I was stretched more than 20 times. The longest session lasted three days and three nights. … I was stretched while the guards shocked my armpits, inner thighs, and other sensitive areas. I went into convulsions, and my flesh was burned. The wounds would not heal for a long time.”

Yu said she was sent to the Mudanjiang public hospital, where she was shackled with heavy anklets and injected with unknown drugs. She became incontinent as a result and the pain was greater than childbirth, she said. She lost consciousness and later her memory. When she was near death, her younger brother was able to get her released into his custody, and soon after, practitioners helped hide her and eventually helped her to escape to Thailand.

Thanks to being able to return to Falun Gong practice, she was able to walk again in less than two months, Yu said to the Epoch Times.

Yu spoke of being shamed when, for three days, police stripped off her clothes and let others watch. She could not move her body and was unable to resist.

Ma and Yu said they had good marriages, but due to pressure from the CCP, their husbands were coerced into divorcing them.

Blood Tested

Ma recounted physical checkups and injections she was given that left her with swollen legs and unable to walk. Her captors took her to the hospital to check her blood, but would not let her see the results. Later, after she came to the United States in September 2009, she learned about the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

“I was almost butchered by the CCP for organs,” Ma said.

Two practitioners, Men Yanxi and Zhao Lianhua, who were in the same cell with her, did not have visible injuries to their bodies, but were carried out after losing consciousness after some unknown torture.

“I had a feeling they were both murdered. I tried looking for them, but their whereabouts are unknown.”

Professor Sen Nieh, chair of Mechanical Engineering at Catholic University of America and spokesperson for the Washington, D.C,. Falun Dafa Association, went with the three survivors to visit members of Congress on Capitol Hill, acting as their interpreter.

The group met with Legislature Correspondent Coalter Baker at the office of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), where Nieh said he discovered, “They did not realize that they were candidates for organ harvesting when they were being detained until after they came to America and learned about it.”

Nieh said, “Practitioners get a physical exam and are blood tested. Because they are physically abused, tortured, and often killed, this cannot be for their health.”

Reactions

John Williams, a police officer, said of the painting depicting the police raid, “It shows human dignity taken away from the individual. … As we speak, they don’t subscribe to anything that really resembles humanity.”

Michael Anderson, who works in the attorney general’s office in the Wilson building, said, “That is unspeakable that atrocities could go on like this in this day and time. I don’t understand why anybody would want to torture anybody like that.”

Russell Campbell, chairman of the Montgomery County Human Rights Commission, said that opposition to the persecution must be put on the record. “This must stop and must stop now,” he said.

With reporting by Theresa Hung

From - http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-states/survivors-of-torture-see-themselves-depicted-in-art-59479.html