Father's Day for Danielle Wang, 28, of Austin, Texas, will in many ways be the same as it has been for the last eight years. She will spend it without her father, Zhiwen Wang, who during this time has been imprisoned in China for refusing to give up his faith.
Zhiwen Wang's house was surrounded by police cars on the night of July 20, 1999, and he was dragged away, neighbors said. For Danielle, who had moved to the United States a year earlier with her mother, the following months brought no news of his whereabouts.
Then, shortly after Christmas, she turned on the TV and saw her father on CNN: he was being sentenced to 16 years in prison for practicing Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), a spiritual practice that focuses on the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance, and is known for improving health.
The news, and seeing her father on TV came as a shock to Danielle, who also practices Falun Gong. His face looked very old, his face was bruised from beating, she says.
Zhiwen Wang was a volunteer contact person for Falun Gong in Beijing and responded to the many letters of interest from the public about the practice. He became increasingly busy as Falun Gong soared in popularity, by the Chinese regime's own estimates being then practiced by 70-100 million people in China. The practice was promoted by the regime until its sheer popularity rapidly outpaced the Communist Party's own membership, then numbering 60 million.
Almost overnight, the Chinese communist regime cracked down on the practice, and thousands of adherents were detained and subjected to beating and torture. Zhiwen Wang was one of them.
Danielle received a letter from him dated December 2006. It was the second letter in eight years that she received. It reads like a caring father's letter: reminiscences about time flying by so fast, asking her whether her cooking skills have improved, recent reads, and hopes and wishes for his child.
He writes, "When you just went abroad, you were just like and little bird who just learned how to fly … Looking back in my past, there was one regret: because I had been busy with all sorts of businesses and issues, I could not take you to visit many places and broaden your vision of the world.
"It appears now that the environment that you are in are much more open. You can access more aspects of life, broaden your visions and have a far-reaching world. It has always been my wish for you to be able to open your mind, gain knowledge, grow skills and talents and to display your achievements …
"How is your life like on the other side? Do you cook to improve your meals when you have time? You can learn to cook one or two dishes."
For someone being imprisoned, the letter says remarkably little about his own circumstances, outside of the life of his mind, musings and readings. He adds, "Please do not worry about me."
Eight years after his sentencing, and with Father's Day around the corner, his daughter is renewing the call for his rescue, hoping international pressure will result in his release.
Her friend Yeongching Foo is giving her encouragement. Foo's then-fiance, Charles Lee, a U.S. citizen and Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested on a trip to China, hoping to break through the information blockade, he said. Chinese authorities imprisoned him for three years, until Foo's active efforts raised enough international awareness for his release.
Foo's advice for Danielle has been to "always be persistent, get more and more people involved, continue to do it until he's released."
"They [the Chinese authorities] actually told Charles, 'Your fiancée is giving us a lot of trouble,'" Foo said.
Lee describes his harrowing time in jail as marked by intense psychological and physical pain, around the clock. "People in Western countries could not imagine how torturing it is," he said. "Losing freedom is the only the beginning for us to be in a Chinese communist prison. 'You must suffer every minute'—that's their philosophy. I once told them, 'I'm not afraid of death, so what can you do?' and they said, 'We can make your life more miserable than being dead.' And actually, they did."
The physical abuse caused Lee to develop a heart condition and the authorities attempted to use his mother and blackmail him into pressuring him to abandon his faith, according to Lee.
Danielle worries about more than her father's health. "From here in the America, we can see all the persecution … and recently there's even more outrageous cases that they [Chinese communist authorities] harvest organs live and sell them for profit so I'm very concerned about it," Wang said.
Danielle is working to rescue her father. "I'm trying to do everything within my power to rescue my dad, wherever I go, … because I want him to be free to like me, like Dafa practitioners all around the world except for China," she said. "I want him to be free, to suffer less, not to be put in prison for believing in the principles of truth, compassion, forbearance."
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