Psychiatric Persecution: The Case of Mr. Ren Dongsheng and His Family
Mr. Ren Dongsheng and his wife, Ms. Zhang Liqin (Source: Minghui)
Ms. Liu Xiufen, the elderly mother of a deceased Falun Gong practitioner who suffered extreme psychiatric torture during his imprisonment, died recently on April 10, 2024. She had spent over a decade fighting for her son’s justice. The case of Ms. Liu and her son, Mr. Ren Dongsheng, is an example of how the Chinese regime’s persecution tactics tear families apart, affecting multiple generations at once.
Mr. Ren’s story is one that sheds light on many aspects of the persecution of the spiritual practice in China. It highlights the heinous crimes against humanity that practitioners of Falun Dafa frequently suffer through in prison and the enduring consequences of those crimes on the mental and physical health of the family system. Mr. Ren’s story is also one of extreme loyalty and commitment to values under pressure. His wife’s and mother’s decades-long dedication to seeking justice on Mr. Ren’s behalf, despite the complete loss of the husband and son they once knew, is nothing short of extraordinary. Amidst extreme financial hardship, discrimination, and in the face of persecution directly targeting them, Mr. Ren’s loved ones never wavered in their devotion to sharing his story and working toward justice.
Psychiatric Torture of Falun Gong Practitioners
Mr. Ren’s case is one that exemplifies the psychiatric torture that practitioners of Falun Dafa frequently endure, causing practitioners lasting pain, paralysis, hallucinations, and even death. This psychiatric torture usually includes the forceful administration of chemical substances that damage the central nervous system, something that Mr. Ren underwent in the brainwashing center he was sent to after his prison term was up.
“Failing to break the will of Falun Gong practitioners with physical torture, the Chinese authorities have escalated the use of nerve damaging chemicals to directly destroy their capacity to hold thoughts and [act according to their] conscience. This horrifying, mind-destroying psychiatric torture has caused hundreds to become insane,” stated Shizhong Chen, a representative of the San Diego-based Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group and the United Nations Association of San Diego.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have chronicled the psychiatric abuses endured by practitioners of Falun Gong. Additionally, Dr. Robin Munro, a British human rights advocate and legal scholar, wrote a book entitled China’s Psychiatric Inquisition: Dissent, Psychiatry, and the Law in Post-1949 China, in which there is a chapter dedicated exclusively to the psychiatric persecution of Falun Gong in China.
Three Generations Affected by the Persecution
On March 8, 2006, Mr. Ren Dongsheng was arrested for telling people about his positive experiences practicing Falun Gong, which run counter to the demonizing propaganda pushed by the Chinese regime. He was sentenced to five years at Gangbei Prison (now known as Binhai Prison) in Tianjin City, where he suffered unspeakable physical and psychological torture, emerging unrecognizable and psychotic. After the expiration of his five-year prison term (on March 7, 2011), Mr. Ren was immediately sent to a brainwashing center for a week, where he was forced to ingest unknown drugs.
Upon picking him up from the brainwashing center in 2011, Mr. Ren’s mother was so distraught at his appearance and strange, erratic behaviors that she collapsed from the shock. Mr. Ren’s mother, Ms. Liu Xiufen, recently died on April 10, 2024, spending the last years of her life enduring police harassment related to her faith in Falun Gong and her persistent efforts to seek justice on behalf of her son.
Ms. Zhang Liqin, Mr. Ren’s wife, is also a practitioner of Falun Gong. In 2009, three years after her husband’s arrest, Ms. Zhang was also arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison. Upon her release in 2016 (five years after her husband’s release from prison), she returned home to find shattered windows, destroyed furniture, and a mentally deranged husband.
Ms. Liu Xiufen’s Persistent Harassment
Ms. Liu Xiufen, Mr. Ren’s mother, began to practice Falun Gong in 1997. Soon after she took up the mind-body spiritual practice, she recovered from varicose veins, heart disease, and leg pain. Despite the horrors unleashed against Falun Gong practitioners when the persecution began in July 1999, Ms. Liu remained steadfast in her faith.
After her son returned from prison mentally deranged, Ms. Liu and her daughter-in-law, Ms. Zhang, endlessly fought for Mr. Ren’s justice. In 2017, six years after Mr. Ren returned home from his five-year prison term and week in the brainwashing center, Ms. Liu submitted his case to the Tianjin Superior Court and the Tianjin First Intermediate Court. However, the case was dismissed on the premise that the two-year statute of limitations had already expired by the time it was turned in.
Upon the death of Mr. Ren in 2018, Ms. Liu and Ms. Zhang continued to be harassed by local authorities. Ms. Liu became confined to her bed due to stress from the frequent harassment at her home Despite this, the police would not leave the elderly, bereaved woman alone. Not long after the police officers broke into her home and demanded to have a conversation with her, she passed away.
History of Mr. Ren’s Arrest and Torture
On March 8, 2006, just a few short years after Mr. Ren’s family saw rapid improvements in health and quality of life after resuming their practice of Falun Gong, Mr. Ren was arrested for sharing his positive experiences with the spiritual practice with other people. Six months after his arrest, he was sentenced to five years in Gangbei Prison.
During his five-year term in prison, Mr. Ren was subjected to numerous types of torture. These various forms of torture were recalled by Mr. Ren in sporadic bursts of clear-mindedness when he was released from prison and corroborated by other practitioners who had been imprisoned with him and had witnessed the abuses perpetrated against him.
Mr. Ren’s legs were forced apart in a contorted position and his ankles were shackled to devices called floor anchors. The rest of his body was forced to bend over one of his outstretched legs, with his wrists chained to one of his ankles. This type of excruciating torture happened six times, each time resulting in Mr. Ren being unable to stand up for extended periods after.
Other forms of torture that Mr. Ren suffered through included being slapped by prison guards, having his hands burned with a lighter, and having his feet stomped on until his toenails fell off. The guards would dump food on the ground and force Mr. Ren to eat it off the floor. While he was restrained in handcuffs or shackled to the ground, the guards would also place food deliberately beyond his grasp, taunting and mocking him. He was also administered unidentifiable drugs.
Mr. Ren Unrecognizable Upon Release
Mr. Ren’s release date had been set for March 7, 2011. However, rather than being allowed to see him that day, Mr. Ren’s aged mother (Ms. Liu, who was already in her eighties in 2011) and his son Jianfeng were instead told to pick him up at a brainwashing center. Eight months before his release date, his family was refused visits with him at prison. Ms. Liu repeatedly requested to see him, however, and in response, prison officials showed her a video of her son in which he was perturbed, anxious, and behaving irrationally.
When Mr. Ren’s mother and son picked him up from the brainwashing center one week after his official release date, Jianfeng was upset to discover that his father was not the healthy, loving man he once knew. Rather than being strong, steady, and affectionate, Mr. Ren muttered to himself and displayed unusual behaviors. Ms. Liu was so heartbroken to see her son in this unrecognizable, unstable state that she wept and collapsed.
Upon returning home, Mr. Ren persisted in his psychotic state, smashing and shattering everything within his range of motion. More often than not, Mr. Ren would hallucinate rather than perceive his surroundings with clarity. He would frequently maltreat his elderly mother and would even beat his son, which would lead his mother to cry in despair. On rainy days, or whenever there were thunderstorms, he would run out of the house and scream amidst the downpour. He refused to let people cut his hair, and often left the house in the middle of the night, returning after many days’ absence highly agitated and covered in filth.
At a single mention of the police, Mr. Ren would immediately become unnerved and mutter that he needed to run or else he’d be caught by the police. He would then sprint out of the house and sleep on the curb. Mr. Ren would often wake up abruptly in the middle of the night and yell, “I am not afraid of you!” Once, on New Year’s Eve, he drove his mother out of the house in a car, leaving her stranded on the street alone. Moments of psychological clarity from Mr. Ren were rare, but when they occurred he would say, “The prison guards and inmates threatened to beat me to death if I did not renounce my faith.”
In spite of Mr. Ren’s psychotic state after being released from prison and the brainwashing center, officials from the Jinghai District Police Station and the 610 Office still harassed him at home.
Aftermath and Attempts at Justice Seeking
After seven years of imprisonment, Ms. Zhang returned home in February 2016 and was greeted by smashed glass, a leaking roof, demolished furniture, and a mentally unstable (and often frightening and erratic) husband. After Ms. Zhang painstakingly restored the furniture, door, and windows, her husband destroyed them all over again. Mr. Ren, in his unstable state, would also chase his wife and Jianfeng with a knife or stick in his hand.
Horrified by the changes in her husband, Ms. Zhang committed herself to discovering what exactly had happened to Mr. Ren that had caused his insanity. She found out that there were eight guards in Binhai Prison who were principally in charge of her husband’s torture. In October 2016, Ms. Zhang filed a complaint against the guards, which led to her being detained for 35 days.
In April 2017, the Zhengzhou Mental Hospital ran tests on Mr. Ren and gave his wife the examination results, which she then aimed to use in her lawsuit against the offenders. Police officers from Jinghai District and the justice department continued to harass her at home to prevent her from seeking justice for Mr. Ren. The frequent disturbances by the police (who still evoked fear in Mr. Ren) only exacerbated his mental instability, leading Ms. Zhang to live away from home for intervals of time.
Ms. Zhang was finally able to submit a criminal complaint to numerous government agencies, which included local procuratorial offices and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, on June 22, 2017. She also turned in papers to Binhai Prison, asking for financial compensation for the permanent damage Mr. Ren sustained from the brutal psychiatric torture methods employed by the prison guards. Most of the bureaus ignored her plea, and the rest of them outright rejected her case.
While seeking justice for her husband, Ms. Zhang had to tolerate his mental instability. Mr. Ren would sometimes throw his wife out of the house in the middle of the night, leaving her stranded with nowhere to seek shelter. Ms. Zhang’s elderly parents were heartbroken and distressed by Mr. Ren’s (their son-in-law’s) behavior. Her mother ended up hospitalized twice, and her father five times, due to all the pressure.
Ms. Zhang traveled to many different places in China to fight for Mr. Ren’s justice and to make his case known. When it would rain, Ms. Zhang would clutch her precious, hard-earned lawsuit documents to her chest, wrapped tightly in plastic bags for protection. This stirring image captures but a fraction of the burden Ms. Zhang carried with her as she persisted in her cause while enduring her psychotic husband at home and having herself just finished a seven-year prison term.
On May 9, 2018, after over two years of her efforts, Ms. Zhang’s appeal to file her case was accepted by the Tianjin First Intermediate Court. On September 4, 2018, Ms. Zhang described why she sought recompense to the Tianjin City Superior Court. She was brought to tears as she recalled and shared the years of persecution her husband endured, and the lasting effects they had on her family.
On September 12, 2018, just over a week after Ms. Zhang was called to Tianjin City Superior Court, Mr. Ren passed away. Jianfeng reflected: “I’ve felt the extreme pain this persecution has brought to my family since [I was] a child. But on a larger scope, the loss that the persecution has brought to our nation and society is immeasurable.”
This article was inspired by the following original Minghui and Falun Dafa Information Center articles:
https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2018/9/22/172022.html
https://faluninfo.net/psychiatric-torture-of-falun-gong-practitioners-widespread-says-un-submission/
