SAN DIEGO—She was a judge in China until she, herself, became the victim of an unlawful state-launched persecution and was sent to a labor camp without trial, while authorities forced her husband, a surgeon, to divorce her.
Ms. Li Huiying, 50-year old former judge from Dalian, told her story through an interpreter as part of a human rights forum on May 11, 2011 at the University of San Diego (USD), Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice.
Ms. Li is a Falun Dafa practitioner. Though she and her family have gone through heart-wrenching experiences in China, she seemed unscathed by bitterness or hatred. When the audience warmly applauded several times, she thanked them with a gentle smile and by lightly pressing her palms together in front of her chest.
Ms. Li—or Judge Li, as people respectfully addressed her at the seminar—said she was a judge in Dalian City. In 1994, she and her father started practicing Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong), and both of them became very healthy through the practice.
Her father, a retired district attorney, used to have six very serious diseases, including very high blood pressure, and heart and lung disease. She also had a very serious health problem. Through practicing Falun Dafa, they recovered from all of those illnesses, she said.
But the most important thing she and her father learned from practicing Falun Dafa, was to follow the guiding principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and to become a better person, she said.
“For example, I was a judge. In China corruption is common in the judicial system. As a judge, almost every day, we would encounter bribery; almost every one would try to bribe us.
“It was very hard to refuse bribes. Through my practicing Falun Dafa, and being honest and truthful, I was perhaps the only judge that refused bribes and was known as a fair and just judge,” Ms. Li said.
Persecution
During the late 1990s more and more people in China began practicing Falun Dafa, and started to lose faith in communism. So in 1999, the Chinese government started banning and persecuting Falun Gong, Ms. Li said.
Ms. Li said in 2001 her father was locked up in a labor camp for 16 months without any trial and forced to do slave labor and undergo brainwashing. Conditions and treatment were very bad at the camp.
For example, he was only allowed to use the restroom twice a day. His health deteriorated drastically. His high blood pressure returned and became very critical, and he even had difficulty walking, so they finally released him. But within one week after his release he suffered a stroke and became paralyzed.
“I was really sad,” Ms. Li said. “I also encountered very severe pressure [to stop practicing Falun Gong] from the government at my workplace. I think this is terribly wrong, to persecute people like that, so in April 2002 I went to Tiananmen Square and I pleaded with the government to stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners.
“I was taken to the police station. They punched me, and my nose was bleeding,” Ms. Li said.
She said they sentenced her without a trial to a labor camp for three years. After 30 months she was transferred to the notorious Masanjia labor camp, known for its brutal torture of Falun Gong practitioners. There they extended her term 10 more months.
“In order to force me to give up my belief, they deprived me of sleep for three days and three nights,” Ms. Li said.
She witnessed a lot of torture at Masanjia, Ms. Li said.
“One practitioner insisted in doing the Falun Gong meditation. They taped her entire body in that position [with her legs folded in double-lotus] for two weeks, until she was almost paralyzed,” Ms. Li said.
Next: Fired for not denouncing Falun Gong
Three other practitioners were sexually assaulted by other female [non-Falun Gong] prisoners with a broken, jagged rod and a broken beer bottle to force them to denounce Falun Gong. “They told me that themselves,” Ms. Li said.
Some of the practitioners were taken to the hospital for blood testing. “At the time I didn’t know why they were blood tested,” Ms. Li said, referring to the information released in 2006 that Falun Gong prisoners of conscience were systematically killed for organ harvesting.
Ms. Li said she was fired from her job because she would not sign a statement denouncing Falun Gong. And even after being released from the labor camp, she was under surveillance by local police who constantly called and checked on her.
Her family members were also put under tremendous pressure, she said. Her husband, a surgeon, was forced to divorce her, and her daughter suffered from depression.
Ms. Li said her father passed away when she was at the labor camp, but she was not allowed to attend the funeral.
“I think it is very sad, just for wanting to be good people, to follow truth, compassion and tolerance, so many people [in China] have died.”
Ms. Li said she is one of the few very fortunate Falun Gong practitioners to have escaped the persecution in China and now lives in America. She said her former husband sent their daughter to college in the U.S., and that’s how she was able to come for a visit. She then applied for asylum.
“I hope the communist system will collapse like it did in Russia, and that all Chinese will enjoy freedom,” Ms. Li said.
Organ Harvesting
The principal presenters at the forum were Hon. David Kilgour, a former Secretary of State and longtime member of Parliament in Canada, and David Matas, an internationally acclaimed human rights lawyer from Winnipeg. They discussed their investigation (http://organharvestinvestigation.net/) into the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs by the Chinese regime, through the use of its hospitals, military bases, and medical doctors.
Kilgour and Matas have been speaking at universities, to representatives of governments, and countless professional and civic groups in over 50 countries on the topic of organ transplant and organ harvesting abuse in China, and their recommendations on how to stop this abuse. They have addressed their findings to the United Nations, the Canadian Parliament, the U.S. Congress, and the European Parliament, among other governmental bodies.
Last year they were both nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize and won the 2009 Swiss International Human Rights Award for their investigative work.
Dr. Steve Gelb, Professor and Associate Dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at USD, told The Epoch Times after the forum that the information presented at the forum was very compelling and important and is something everyone in the United States should be aware of.
“I wish that the world would respond to this the way it used to respond to South Africa, when there were boycotts and people wouldn’t go there and wouldn’t buy things,” Gelb said.
Gelb said the evidence is “very compelling,” especially after reading the [Kilgour/Matas] book. “It’s very clear that these people who presented tonight, who are not Falun Gong members, are clearly interested in human rights and that’s their motivation, and they are using methods that we respect in the university to sift through evidence and reach a fair conclusion,” Gelb said.
Gelb thought the U.S. government should worry about these things happening in China because our relationship with China is obviously very important—financially and politically, he said.
We have been tolerating “some horrible, horrible things” that would not be tolerated if some other governments did them, and we are using a double standard when it comes to China, which is now “one of the worst, if not the worst, governments in the world,” Gelb said.
“How can we turn our back and say it’s not our business, especially since we’re doing so much business with them?” He asked.
With reporting by Refugio Rochin and Jane Yang.
