Name: A Daughter's Fight for Religious Freedom–and Her Father's Life–in Communist China
Uploaded: 2024-09-01T16:29:01.000Z
Description: Imagine waking up every day not knowing if your loved ones are safe. That there's always the possibility of waking up to a message that they have been taken from their home, again, and are now being tortured for their beliefs. That’s exactly how one college student, who is now living in the United States, has spent her whole life.

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Imagine waking up every day not knowing if your loved ones are safe. That there's always the possibility of waking up to a message that they have been taken from their home, again, and are now being tortured for their beliefs. That’s exactly how one college student, who is now living in the United States, has spent her whole life.

She and her father practice Falun Gong, a faith that is demonized and persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). And now her father has been taken by Chinese police once again.

Today, she’s a student at Fei Tian College in New York. She joined NTD in the studio to share her personal experience after 1999 when the CCP began a brutal persecution of this peaceful faith group.

“The last time I saw my dad was actually when I left China in 2013, so it's been roughly 11 years since I last saw him,” she said.

“Our whole family practices the spiritual discipline Falun Gong. It's really tough to do that in mainland China. When I was 13, my mom decided to come with me to the U.S. to have more freedom for our religion as well as for education.

“It was 2015 when my mom and I received political asylum status, and then we applied for my dad to reunite with us, so he was actually legally able to come. He booked a plane ticket, but he was stopped at the airport in China. The airport staff told him that his passport was invalid. Basically, as soon as he got the travel document to come, they secretly revoked his passport. I guess he is on a blacklist of Falun Gong practitioners.”

Unfortunately, her Dad was arrested again on April 4. “The first thing I thought was, is he being tortured right now?” she said.

“This was not new to us. It was actually his fifth time being arrested. He was detained back in 2016, but I think the Chinese government faced some international pressure, so they transferred him from prison to house arrest, and then he was able to escape,” she said.

When Guangzi was one year old, her dad was arrested for the second time and badly tortured.

“I didn’t know until my mom was preparing materials for our asylum status how he was tortured. They handcuffed him and hung him up for about two days. His wrists were wounded and bleeding, and then they put ropes on the wounds. My mom says that to this day, my dad still has the scars.

“My mom also said that the police used a plastic bag to suffocate him. They would watch him suffocate until he was basically dying, and then they would take the bag off. They did this repeatedly.

“When he was arrested in 2016, while my mom and I were already in the U.S., he escaped from the police. We didn’t know where he was for a really, really long time—basically seven years. We only knew he escaped and hid in a rural area somewhere in China. Because he didn’t use a phone or computer for several years, we didn’t hear from him.

“It wasn’t until the last one or two years that he started contacting us through a supposedly secure app, and we just texted each other once or twice a month. Now I know he’s detained in a police station in China. Ironically, I know where he is right now, but not for the past eight years,” she said.

Guangzi recalled her childhood in China as a Falun Gong practitioner, “I had to sort of hide my identity because the CCP basically lies about everything regarding Falun Gong. So the CCP turns the whole society against Falun Gong. As a Falun Gong practitioner, you are discriminated against.

“I remember when I was very little—I don’t really talk about this a lot—but when I actually did [reveal my identity], the first reaction from people, whether friends or teachers, was, ‘Oh, you’re practicing an evil cult?’ They would just say, ‘Oh, you’re a weird person. Are you going to do dangerous stuff to us right now?’” she said.

Guangzi revealed that the Chinese regime smears Falun Gong in children’s textbooks.

“I remember that in the textbook, there was a chapter talking about things you should not engage in Falun Gong. They put Falun Gong along with smoking, drugs, and other vices, and they labeled it an evil cult, presenting false examples that they made up.

“I was so nervous because I didn’t know what to do when the teacher started to teach this, because it was obviously not right. But I was so young, I didn’t have the courage to just stand up and say, ‘No, this is not right. It’s all lies.’ I struggled a lot. I was about six or seven years old at the time.

Guangzi’s greatest wish is for her Dad to be safe, “I wish he could be released or, even better, escape from the persecution and reunite with us.”

She appealed to the audience to help stop this persecution: “I just hope people can pay more attention to this ongoing persecution towards peaceful and innocent people in China. I hope people can help with this. Tell the CCP to stop.”

The good news is that her father was released after this interview and is now safely back home in China.

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