Pang’s mother, Cao Junping, was arrested and taken to the police station for practicing Falun Gong exercises in the public square. She was taken from the same spot where she had practiced peacefully in the early morning every day for four years prior to the regime’s crackdown.
She was released after the family paid 2,000 yuan (US$300), and Cao promised not to practice Falun Gong, an agreement she later publicly retracted.
Cao knew what was likely to happen if she practiced Falun Gong in public. Many practitioners had already been arrested and tortured for similar silent protests, explained Pang.
It was 2001, and the persecution of Falun Gong ordered by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top leadership had been raging for two years. Already, hundreds of practitioners had been tortured to death by Chinese authorities. A couple of torture deaths had occurred right in Xingbu.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice teaching truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, and a set of gentle exercises and meditation. After its introduction in northeastern China by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the ancient practice spread quickly because, practitioners say, it was free, its moral teachings improved lives, it had profound health benefits, and was rooted in traditional Chinese culture.
Its popularity upset then-Chinese-leader Jiang Zemin, who declared the practice illegal in 1999. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC), the official press office for Falun Gong, Jiang launched a Mao-style campaign designed to “eradicate” Falun Gong within three months. In order to terrorize an estimated 100 million practitioners into submission, he was said to have told security forces that “no measure is too excessive.”
Thinking of Others First
When Pang’s mother was dropped back home, her daughter found herself full of anger and hate for those who had tortured her mother and wanted to retaliate.
Her mother cautioned her strong emotion, saying: “Daughter, we are Falun Gong practitioners. We don’t have hatred. We don’t have anger. We just treat people well, no matter what they are doing to us, because they are also brainwashed. They are cheated, and when they know the truth they will give up these crimes.”
Pang recalls that on hearing these words half of her anger disappeared. The other half turned into determination to tell people what had happened to her mom, so that others could understand the truth about the persecution.
In an attempt to justify the persecution to the Chinese people, the CCP had concocted slanderous stories about Falun Gong and used its state-controlled propaganda machine to flood all media channels with the false accusations 24/7. Under such a severe brainwashing barrage, mixed up with the terror invoked in the Chinese people by all the hallmarks of another political campaign, many cooperated with the persecution.
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Pang, who was attending college at the time in a nearby city, recalled how she would hear “bad news” every month when she went home to visit.
Everyone knew somebody affected by the persecution. At the time of the crackdown, nearly 1 in 10 Chinese practiced, and the neighbors and extended family members all had stories. Pang said she heard about several practitioners who had been beaten to death, homes that had been confiscated, a funeral forcibly canceled, practitioners arrested while attending a funeral.
“Sometimes I could not bear [to hear]. I refused to accept that, and couldn’t bear it,” said Pang.
Again her mom counseled her, “these people are suffering with their bodies, with their lives, and you cannot even stand it with your eyes and ears?”
Pang says she learned to handle the hardships, and she began to tell her roommates and school friends about her mom’s story.
She had been interrogated at school before, so she was cautious. At her first choice of colleges, she was dismissed when she refused to give up practicing Falun Gong.
More Bad News
In the six month prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the FDIC received reports of over 8,000 Falun Gong practitioner arrests. Some practitioners were killed within days or weeks of arrest, while hundreds more were sentenced arbitrarily to long prison terms.
Pang’s mom and aunt were among those arrested. After her mother had been detained for 15 months, authorities held a sentencing trial at the Weifang City District Court. The trial did not observe standard legal procedure. Pang’s father luckily happened to see the notice of the trial, but there was no time to hire a lawyer. A local judge handed down a 10-year sentence, although no evidence had been presented that a crime had been committed. In a separate trial, Pang’s aunt was given nine years.
Pang heard that her mom defended herself during the rushed trial, but was frequently interrupted. Witnesses heard her say, “I didn’t do anything wrong or commit any crimes.”
These days Pang sends a card to her mother at the labor camp every two weeks. She said she chooses the card with her heart, and tries to find a beautiful image. She knows that all of her words are monitored by the authorities, so she can’t write much. She tells her mom that she calls her dad every day, and not to worry about them and just take care of herself.
Although Pang’s father, Pang Xiaoqian, is not a Falun Gong practitioner, he was arrested the same night as her mother, because he supported his family. He served one month at hard labor.
Upon his release, Pang’s father was fired from his engineering job and was placed under surveillance for six months. Earlier this year, in July, he, too, was sentenced to one year under the crime of “harboring a criminal” for his efforts to protect his wife from abuse. Authorities allowed him to convert the sentence into two years’ probation.
Recently Xiaoqian was forced to quit another good job as an engineer for a foreign firm after he applied for a visa to attend a conference overseas related to his work.
Also in 2008, the family home was ransacked and robbed by police twice, and the family car was illegally confiscated. Pang’s family estimates they have lost around US$80,000 worth of private property and have no recourse to seek its return.
Working for Rescue
“People cannot imagine how brutal the persecution is in China. When you just hear about it, you cannot feel it, but when they hear my story they can feel it,” explained Pang.
Over a period of weeks, she went to nearby cities in Kansas and Illinois to collect signatures, which she then brought to the various levels of the government, to city council meetings, and to the media. During spring break in 2009 she went to Jefferson City, and visited 100 state government offices in three days, gaining 18 letters of support.
After she graduated with her MBA, she decided to move to Washington, D.C., because she figured there were a lot of influential people there who may be able to help her to rescue her mother.
Currently, Pang is working for “Da Ji Yuan,” the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times, selling advertising. Pang is happy to be working for The Epoch Times, since the newspaper is committed to reporting on China and the CCP’s human rights abuses. Also, her work allows her to meet and talk to more people about her mom.
Pang, 26, speaks slowly and evenly about her family’s ordeals. Although she takes great pains to stay positive, her smiles are clearly restrained, and pain is evident underneath her pleasant demeanor. While she keeps very busy these days, her mom is still suffering, still imprisoned, and still dominating her daughter’s worried mind.
