The Face of Persecution

May 7, 2004

Longshan Labour Camp

Two guards trap a female inmate in a secluded corner of the labour camp. The woman is a practitioner of Falun Gong — a Buddhist meditation practice that the Chinese regime has brutally persecuted for the past twenty years. In that time, millions of people have faced terrifying nights like the one that begins this tragic tale.

What makes the events of May 7 at Longshan Labor Camp noteworthy is that she escapes.

… Only, she doesn’t gain her freedom.

Her name is Gao Rongrong, and after seven hours of torture with an electric cattle prod, the guards get called away. She is so weak that they don’t other restraining her. In a moment of desperate strength however, she rushes to the window and jumps. Both of her legs break in multiple places from her heels to her hips — but she survives.

Now in a hospital, a tragic game of tug-o-war ensues between her sisters and the labour camp. Rongrong’s torturers, the same sadists who dis!gured her face, stalk her recovery room for months while their superiors manipulate the maddening bureaucracy that her sisters have to navigate.

A heartbroken family fighting against a heartless system — it has become an all-too-common story. But Gao Rongrong isn’t just another victim of China’s state violence. The indomitable spirit of Rongrong and her sisters, — Weiwei and Lili, who help orchestrate a second escape — makes clear just how futile the persecution is.

These incredible women stand up to the world’s most oppressive government. They dare to smuggle out secret photos and footage of Rongrong, and they risk their lives to show the world what happens behind locked doors in China.