Yanling Zhang is a Falun Gong practitioner from China. She was working as the finance director at a Beijing company when the Chinese Communist Party banned Falun Gong. Ms. Zhang suffered horribly at the hands of CCP interrogators who tried to make her renounce her beliefs. Now that she has escaped to America, Ms. Zhang devotes herself to helping those still suffering in China.
My name is Zhang Yanling and I was born on December 2, 1972. I graduated from the Finance and Accounting Department at Beijing University of Chemical Technology in July 1993. I began working for the Finance Department at China Telecommunication Corporation Ltd. in August 1993, and I was promoted to Head of Finance in 1995.
My father Zhang Jian worked as a Japanese-language translator for the Research Department at Air Force Command Academy and my mother Zhang Huiying was a senior engineer at the Training Department of Air Force Command College. My brother Zhang Yanbin worked at Beijing Instec Video Technology Co., Ltd.
My parents began practicing Falun Gong in June 1992, and my mother introduced the practice to me in December 1994. We lived a happy, peaceful life together.
The Chinese regime began persecuting Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. My parents refused to give up their belief, and the Air Force Command Academy held a mandatory brainwashing class for them in July 1999. As they persisted in their belief, college officials arrested them in March 2000. I was not allowed to visit my parents. My parents insisted that they didn't do anything wrong by being productive members of society, and they refused to write "repentance statements".
In June 2000, the Central Military Commission issued orders to sentence my father to two years of reeducation through labor. My father was taken to Xiaohongmen Detention Center, where Yu Changxin, head of the Air Force Command Academy was also held after being sentenced to 17 years in prison.
My father was released from Xiaohongmen Detention Center on June 9, 2002. I saw my father at my uncle's home with help from my cousin. I learned that during his detention, the officers beat him, breaking one of his ribs and leaving him with diminished hearing. They also poured boiling water over him. Because he refused to listen to Communist propaganda, he was often locked in solitary confinement, in a small, dark room.
He was often not allowed to use the restroom, and he was not given food or water on a regular basis. His weight dropped from 70 kg [154 lbs] from before the persecution to 45 kg [99 lbs], and he was skin and bones.
At first, my mother was sent to work on a farm owned by the college. Ma Huibin, a security officer from the college led two female soldiers and they watched my mother around the clock. My mother worked in the fields during and day and attended brainwashing classes at night. This lasted nine months. By December 2000, my mother still persisted in her belief, and because the Air Force did not have a prison for women, they sentenced my mother to two years of labor reeducation and sent her to Xinan Women's Labor Camp in Tuanhe, Beijing.
In August 2002, my mother was released from Xinan Women's Labor Camp in Beijing. Even after release, my parents had no freedom at home, the college forced them to abide by the Eight Policies (special rules for suspected practitioners or dissidents). I could not reunite with my parents because the police were still actively pursuing me. Meanwhile, my brother Zhang Yanbin was arrested in November 2001 by police from Zibo City, Shandong Province for trying to play Falun Gong-related information through a speaker in public, when he was living in Shandong Province. He was sentenced to six years in prison and was held at Zibo Detention Center and No 1 Jinan Prison.
At the time, both my parents were incarcerated and I was living in exile, so we could not visit him. Prison officials told my uncle living in Laizhou City, Shandong Province to visit my brother, and my uncle brought him some daily necessities. When my brother was released in September 2006, he told me about his ordeals while being held in prison.
Once, he was stripped naked by officers at the Criminal Police Division of Zibo Detention Center, and then he was forced to stand in the snow while wearing square-shaped shackles weighing 19 kg [42 lbs]. Each step caused excruciating pain as the heavy metal ground against his ankles. They also handcuffed him and hung him on the wall for seven days and nights, during which they kept shocking him with electric batons. I have been arrested and detained many times during the past eight years. On February 28, 2000, I was arrested and taken to Haidian Detention Center for unfurling a banner that read, "Falun Dafa Is Good". One month later, people from my company bailed me out.
Around 8 p.m. on July 17, 2000, I was taking a shower at my apartment when the police barged in. I quickly put on some clothes and met them. They said the police chief wanted to talk to me. I refused to go with them.
They handcuffed me and dragged me to the police department, where they locked me in a small room, and they asked if I would go to Tiananmen Square on July 20, 2000. I refused to answer their question, and they charged me with "disrupting social safety" and again sent me to Haidian Police Department detention center.
People at my company sympathized with me and they again bailed me out in the evening of July 29, 2000. On May 22, 2001, I was held at Chaoyang District Detention Center for one month for handing out Falun Gong pamphlets. My friend bailed me out by paying 30,000 yuan (US$4,277.)
On April 18, 2003, the police abducted me from the street and took me to a brainwashing class. They ransacked my home and took Falun Gong books, flyers, my computer and printer, and other of my belongings, without a warrant, and never acknowledged the things they took.
At the brainwashing class, they forced me to watch videos that attacked Falun Gong with vicious lies, and afterwards, they coerced me to write my "understanding" of those videos; namely, they expected my understanding to be along Party lines.
When I refused, the guards forced me to stand up straight against the wall with my nose touching the wall. They took turns sleeping but they would not let me close my eyes for even a little while. Every second felt like an eternity.
Fear, exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and more than anything else, sleep deprivation took its toll. In addition, they kept telling me, "If you don't reform (renounce Falun Gong,) we'll keep doing this to you, and not many people can survive this strategy."
Our family finally reunited again in September 2006. The persecution, however, continued unabated. Our home phone was tapped, and during holidays and so-called "sensitive days" (Party Congress and national holidays,) the police or "610 Office" agents would come harass us at our home. If my answers to their questions didn't fit the Party's requirements, they would have immediately sent me to a detention center.
Life in China was depressing, because I lived in constant fear and there was no relief.
My friend Liu Fangfang also worked at the Air Force Academy. She was evicted by the academy for practicing Falun Gong. She was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for distributing VCDs of the nine commentaries on the communist party.
I called her husband from America in February 2008 and asked about her, and he told me she was supposed to be released in May this year, but her sentence was extended by six months because of Beijing Olympics. So she will be imprisoned until November 2008.
I am fortunate that I came to this free country, but what I feel even more keenly is my responsibility to my family and my fellow practitioners. I know many practitioners are still living in terror and brutality inside prisons and labor camps. I sincerely hope everyone in the world can help us end the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
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