The Face of Persecution
A horrifyingly true story of torture and faith in modern China
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.
Editor’s note: Gao Rongrong and her sisters wrote extensive accounts of the persecution they endured first-hand. No one can tell this story better than they can, and as much as possible, I have relied on their own telling. We begin with her sisters.
We first realized something was wrong on May 14, 2004, when we tried to visit our sister Rongrong at Longshan Forced Labor Camp, only to find that previously announced visitations were canceled that day.
We shook the metal gate. An aging security guard let us in after we told him we were Gao Rongrong’s sisters. Instead of having us register and taking us to the building detaining Falun Gong practitioners, he took us directly to the office building facing the gate.
Two guards came out to meet us. The woman was Wang Jinghui, head of the second ward. We asked, “What happened to our sister? Why are you taking us here? Let us see her.” She replied, “Gao Rongrong got hurt a little while working.”
The man said, “Gao Rongrong fell from the building.” Lili immediately asked, “You tortured my sister again, right? Aren’t you Tang Yubao?”
Gao Weiwei and Lili risked their lives to smuggle photos and videos out of the hospital. Their mission in life is to tell this story, and it gives them strength every time it touches someone’s heart.
Send them a message of support to let them know that the story of their sister has reached another person.
Imagine yourself standing face-to-face with the man who disfigured your sister.
Imagine him, standing on the opposite of your dying sister’s hospital bed looking you in the eye and trying to justify himself.
Imagine him threatening to hurt you if you even so much as cry.
Six months after jumping from the window Gao Rongrong continued to languish at the hospital. She later wrote the following about that time:
I was surrounded by the guards from the Longshan Forced Labor Camp, and they often caused trouble for my family. Male guards even had the audacity to sleep on the couch in my room.
When I was first sent to the No. 1 Hospital of the China Medical University, I was often rolled on a gurney to the examination room for check-ups. Many patients and their family members would surround me and ask, “What happened to your face?” My family would tell them about the electric shock torture I suffered at the labor camp, and the guards would abruptly stop them from continuing and threatened to arrest them.
Once in an elevator, someone asked my family about my condition, and when my elder sister told him about the torture, Bi Yinhong from the Administrative Division of the forced labor camp tried to beat her and threatened to report her to the police.
The guards always tried to drive away the crowds of onlookers who refused to leave. The guards became furious and screamed, “So what? So we’ve shocked her!” Guards Sun Zhizhong and Wang Chunmei shouted in the hallway, “So we’ve shocked her with electric batons, we’ll kill her that way!”
Zeng Xiaoping and Wang Jichang, who were involved in persecuting me, were arranged to guard the hospital, which caused me more mental pressure.
One day at noon in late September, Su Zhizhong, a male guard in his 30s from the Third Division got drunk and slept on the couch in my room. He unzipped his pants and it was an unseemly sight. My 73-year-old mother called in female guard Zhao Yingjie, and she called Su Zhizhong outside the room. Su Zhizhong cursed in the hallway and he even tried to beat up my mother. Other guards stopped him. He pounded on my door until everyone on my floor came out of their rooms. He cursed and went wild for more than two hours while holding up his pants.
One day at noon in late September, Su Zhizhong, a male guard in his 30s from the Third Division got drunk and slept on the couch in my room. He unzipped his pants and it was an unseemly sight. My 73-year-old mother called in female guard Zhao Yingjie, and she called Su Zhizhong outside the room. Su Zhizhong cursed in the hallway and he even tried to beat up my mother. Other guards stopped him. He pounded on my door until everyone on my floor came out of their rooms. He cursed and went wild for more than two hours while holding up his pants.
You may now be asking yourself, “Wait, why was this lady in a labour camp to begin with?” Indeed, her background is enlightening.
Again, in Rongrong’s own words, written in secret:
I was born on February 1, 1968. In 1990, I graduated with a major in industrial accounting from the accounting department of Shenyang College of Finance and Economics. After that I worked in the Luxun College of Fine Arts, first in the auditing department and then in the accounting department.
In 1996, I read a book called Zhuan Falun. From the book I started to understand the true meaning of life. From then on I followed the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, to be a good person, a person with higher moral standards. The cultivation of Falun Gong taught me to work more seriously and diligently, and treat people with more kindness and honesty.
Somewhere between 70 to 100 million people across China in the late 1990s had a similar experience in taking up the practice of Falun Gong. By 1999 there were more people who practiced this particular method of meditation and self-cultivation than there were registered members of the communist party.
The leadership of China decided to eradicate Falun Gong. Anyone who wouldn’t give up their beliefs disappeared into the labour camps, prisons, and the burgeoning persecution-industrial complex — millions of them whose names and faces never made their way beyond the walls of their dungeons.
What no one expected was that Falun Gong practitioners stuck together, held on to their beliefs, and refused to back down. China had never seen a civil society movement before.
Beginning on April 25, 1999, the local police started to investigate all local Falun Gong exercise sites. The exercise site at the Luxun College of Fine Arts campus was also affected. Under pressure from higher authorities, the heads of the college forbid us from doing the exercises on the campus. We continued our exercises outside of the campus, along the road or in the residential communities.
he secretary from the college Party committee, people from the human resources department, and the security department came to watch us. The college Communist Youth League committee, the student community and the propaganda department received inquiries and were criticized for “not watching over our activities.”
I had been working in the auditing department at the Luxun College of Fine Arts after I graduated from college. It was a sensitive department. The college leaders had a talk with me after May 1, 1999 and requested that I not organize people to do the exercises, a request I refused. Then I lost my job.
Madness took over the government, media, police, and even the schools as the persecution swept across the country with newly empowered, extraordinarily corrupt “610 offices” setting up shop in every single city and municipality to coordinate the persecution.
In the spiritual vacuum of communist China, this simple practice of qigong exercises and Buddhist-school philosophy had given people meaning in their lives as well as health benefits. Practitioners immediately began assembling in efforts to counteract the ensuing repression.
On July 20, 1999, after learning that some local assistants were arrested and their homes searched, I decided to appeal to the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee. We were arrested and detained at the municipal stadium. Many practitioners were detained at the stadium.
I wanted to appeal to the provincial Party Committee again but was arrested on the way there. Once again I was detained in the stadium.
Later, I was shocked to see all the TV stations broadcasting the vicious propaganda programs, framing the founder of Falun Gong and the Falun Gong practice. Since appealing locally was impossible, I decided I had to go to Beijing.
The first time I was in Tiananmen Square, a police officer came up and asked, “Do you practice Falun Gong?” I answered, “Yes.” I was immediately taken away and sent to the Qianmen Police Station.
Later, they took me to the Jinshan Hotel in Beijing. Police from Shenyang City tried to get information about the whereabouts of other practitioners from me. I refused to tell them. They beat me cruelly. I managed to escape as they were about to take me back to Shenyang.
The second time, I was talking to someone at Tiananmen Square, when a police officer came up and asked, “Do you practice Falun Gong?” I didn’t answer. They still arrested me.
I was taken to the Liaoning Provincial Liaison Office. They forbade me from wearing shoes to prevent me from escaping. Later I was taken to the Danan Dispatch Station in Shenyang City and escaped from there in the middle of the night.
I was arrested the third time in Beijing just prior to October 1. Officers from Shenyang City Police Department and from the Heping District Police Department even beat my over-70-year-old father in order to find out where I was.
Like many others, Rongrong and her sisters remained unshakeable.
Multiple arrests, multiple escapes, Gao Rongrong was in good company in the sprawling network of detention centres surrounding Beijing.
The scale of the persecution cannot be overstated. Within a few short months, millions of innocent people had been processed through secret police systems. On the Falun Gong side, it didn’t take long to realize that they were fighting for their lives and that the Chinese Communist Party gave no quarter.
Thousands of Falun Gong defenders made their way to Beijing every day. Some would attempt public appeals on Tiananmen Square, immediately being whisked away to Qianmen Police Station. Others would try to file formal appeals on behalf of their family or themselves for the injustices of the persecution.
They all believed that if people just knew the truth, if they understood that Falun Gong were good people and that none of the lies on the government-controlled television and newspaper were true, if they just spoke loud enough and clear enough, the whole world would hear.
Thousands a day with the same dream — Gao Rongrong among them.
Because there was no place for us to appeal, we Falun Gong practitioners had to go to Tiananmen Square to make our voices heard. Before dawn, there were already police officers coming up to us, inquiring if we were Falun Gong practitioners, and they started to arrest people. Vehicle after vehicle full of practitioners were sent to the Qianmen Police Station to be incarcerated in metal cages, where we were not even allowed to use the toilet.
Later we were transferred to Fengtai Stadium, and then finally locked up in police stations and detention centers around Beijing.
I was sent to the Xikezhan Detention Center in Beijing that same night, where I was body searched and interrogated. Because everybody refused to report their names, we were coded. The loudspeaker played back the slandering propaganda at high volume.
I held a hunger strike for 13 days and was force-fed by having a tube inserted into my nose. The Dafa books I carried with me were taken away. In two weeks, dozens of practitioners were taken back to their local places by their local police officers, and only an older fellow practitioner and I were finally left.
On December 29, 1999, a police officer took me directly to a train, preventing us from staying in Beijing. The detention, that lasted over 60 days, followed no formal legal procedure. I even had to pay 300 yuan for the food and train ticket.
After returning to Shenyang, I drifted about. I was again arrested in February 2000 when I went back home. The police said that they had closely watched and waited from outside my apartment building for over ten days.
Gao spent the next three months at the Shenyang Detention Centre. She was then transferred to the notorious Masanjia Labour Camp. Among all the horrible places of the world, Masanjia holds a special designation.
Rongrong refers to this time as her “three lost years.”
It was endless labour, torture, and ruthless mind games where the guards constantly the faith of the inmates with brainwashing sessions that could last for days without sleep.
Over the course of those three years, they methodically and violently wore down Rongrong’s consciousness until she was completely fractured mentally. That is the objective in places like Masanjia
Brainwashing in the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp was to make one’s brain numb and drive out kindness and good faith from one’s heart. How terrible was this mental persecution!
In those days, through three years of giving up “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance,” I lost the true meaning of life. It was very depressing and full of suffering.
In January 2001, I was released before my sentence had expired. But what awaited me was not as good as what the propaganda spouted, “The policy of treating released practitioners is very good.” Instead, the persecution against me continued.
Rongrong struggled through a bureaucratic nightmare of trying to rebuild her life while still being harassed regularly.
Most tragically, she had been forced to give up her practice of Falun Gong in the camp, and now found herself wandering through a painful existence.
I still had a trace of my good conscience left, which urged me to try to find, in the human world, some criteria that I could yet use to guide me to be a good person. I found that deep in my heart, “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” was still guiding me, and that the heavenly principle, good is rewarded with good, and evil is met with evil, was still warning me.
After a long time of confusion and struggle I eventually realized that one cannot live without “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.” By the end of May 2003 I started to awaken. I decided to restart my cultivation of Falun Gong.
After just a month of living happily as a Falun Gong practitioner again, the wife of a friend turned her in to the police.
A few weeks later she was sentenced to three years in yet another forced labour camp.
On July 8, 2003, I was sent to the Shenyang City Longshan Forced Labor Camp. Attempting to force me to give up my belief, the guards there used many methods of physical torture and brainwashing. On that same day, because I shouted “Falun Dafa is good” at the gate, the deputy head of the No. 2 Division, Tang Yubao, hit me on the face twice. My face immediately swelled and one ear could no longer hear clearly. The symptoms lasted for quite a few days.
After that, I was forced to squat continuously, around the clock, for four days. At that time, my heel was injured, and the pain in my legs was hard to endure and lasted over two months afterward. Also, because my chest and the abdominal cavity were oppressed, my lower back and abdomen felt like they were burning. My organs were injured. Under this kind of situation, Tang Yubao still hit me on the face with a book clamp and arranged people to take turns to shout insults at me. I suffered serious mental and physical trauma, and lost my clear mind and further fell into the trap of their deceit. Later my mind became clear, and on February 16, 2004 I wrote a solemn declaration affirming that I would continue my practice of Falun Dafa.
I was forced to work for over ten hours every day. Some work, such as making the wax crafts and flowers, involved handling toxic materials. My physical condition worsened, and I had great pain in my chest, back, neck and shoulders. My hands and arms were injured, my eyes were very tired, and I even didn’t have the energy to wash the clothes. Around the time of the 2004 Chinese Lunar New Year, I felt nausea and was vomiting, had pain in my liver and stomach, my heart couldn’t withstand any running or jumping, my whole body was powerless, and I was as thin as just skin and bones. However, Wang Jinghui, the head of the No. 2 Division claimed that my health was all right and I had problems with my mind.
The goal of labour camps in China is to break people. Torture is both the end and the means. The whole system is designed to maximize the suffering of the inmates.
Resistance leads to escalation.
Gao Rongrong never stopped resisting.
On March 22, 2004, Tang Yubao ordered the two guards, Wang Jichang and Zeng Xiaoping, to drag me to the administration section. Tang Yubao beat and kicked me, and also started to shock me with the electric baton. Many guards of the administration section, No. 1 and No. 2 Divisions were present, but none of them attempted to stop the torture.
Afterwards, Tang Yubao handcuffed my hands to the radiator, and continually shocked my face, head, neck, hands, feet and back with the electric baton.
The heads of No. 1 Division, Yue Jun and Yang Min, came in one after another and asked, “What’s going on?” Chief Wang Xuetao of the administration section also came to look. Afterwards Li Fengshi arrived. He first urged me to transform. Seeing that I remained unmoved, he started slandering Falun Gong and practitioners, and in the end he said wickedly, “What is the despotic mechanism for? What are the handcuffs and electric batons for? I don’t believe we cannot control you, little Gao Rongrong.”
Though my body had been seriously damaged, on March 23, the deputy head of the No. 2 Division, Liang Zhen, still let the prisoner Shi Jing carry me to the slave labor workshop. Two days later, they then sent me to the re-education group formed by Longshan and Zhangshi Forced Labor Camps subjected me to brainwashing for nearly two weeks and didn’t let me sleep.
Tortured to the brink of death, then sent back to work — to endure further abuse for failing to keep up with the others.
As bad as that sounds, it’s actually preferable to the brainwashing sessions. Which is why everyone keeps working.
After the brainwashing, an inmate secretly gave Gao a copy of an article written by Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi. It was like a lifeline from heaven for her. Tragically, her monitor discovered the piece of paper and turned her in.
This brings us to May 7, 2004, the day we began this story.
At around 10 a.m. on May 7, 2004, I was called to the office of the division head on the second floor. I was too weak to do forced labor. Jiang Zhaohua and Wang Jichang still forced me to work anyway. Jiang Zhaohua shocked my face and hands with two electric batons. Wang Jichang handcuffed me to a heating pipe.
That was how the day started.
She went back to work after that — for the last time.
At around 3 p.m., I was called back to the same office on the second floor, where Tang Yubao and Jiang Zhaohua were waiting. They pushed me to the ground and began to shock me with electric batons.
As they were shocking me, they asked, “Where did you get the article from? We will let you go today if you tell us.” When they realized I wouldn’t answer, they added, “You will only need to go to work and wear a name tag.” I still kept silent. Tang Yubao then said, “I’ll have to kill you today! I’ll fix you even if I lose my job! I have more than enough time to take care of you!” Tang also said he would change his shift with others as he was not working the following day, in order for him to be able to continue torturing me.
As they were shocking me, Tang Yubao fiercely kicked my thighs and calves and stomped on my feet with the heel of his boots, which left bruises on my body. At 4 p.m., Jiang Zhaohua left the office. Tang Yubao continued to shock me.
He continuously shocked my face, ears and neck with two electric batons for a long time. My body convulsed and hit against the heating pipe. My eyes were dry and my eyebrow hair fell off after Tang Yubao shocked my eye sockets; and the skin shed around my ears and mouth. The scars on my wrists from being handcuffed are still visible today, and my arms were numb for more than two months afterwards.
One of the most alarming details of Gao’s account of these events is just how many people came and went throughout the day. Some joined in, some made snide comments, some just nodded with approval at her pain.
Yue Jun told Shi Jing, the “group leader” of the inmates, to cut the front of my hair extremely short, as was a way to humiliate me. Teng Jiliang, the guard on duty, took a nametag that was hanging on the headboard and pinned it on my chest. He also found my parents’ pictures, placed them on the table and viciously said, “We’ll let your parents watch while you are shocked with electric batons!” Guard Zeng Xiaoping came in and held a small mirror in front of my face. He said I could only blame myself for the disfiguration.
Physical pain, humiliation, and emotional abuse are all part of the torture, and all the while they tell you it’s your own fault.
My face, ears, neck, back, ankles and other parts of my body were repeatedly shocked with high-voltage electric batons. The skin blistered and turned black. My face swelled up by about two inches and was severely deformed. My eyes could barely open and yellow fluid continuously seeped from my face. My hair stuck to my face and ears, and the blisters on my neck were the size of my thumb. I felt that I would rather die than live when the electric batons shocked the injured parts of my body.
Sometime past 9 p.m., an inmate had a sudden heart attack and Tang Yubao was called away to deal with the situation. Only then did he put down the electric batons. After he left, I asked Teng Jiliang to use the bathroom. I met a fellow practitioner and two inmates in the bathroom, and they were shocked. One person asked, “Who is this?” Another one said, “Is that Gao Rongrong? That’s horrific!”
When I came out of the bathroom, Teng Jiliang did not let me to go back to the cell but took me back to the office.
Standing in the office, I knew Tang Yubao would return and continue torturing me and threatening me, “We’ll fix you until you are dead.” I also kept seeing the terrifying faces of the barbaric guards. I was mentally and physically exhausted.I could not imagine what kind of tortures would be waiting for me through the long night. During the past six to seven hours, I had already suffered horrendously. I looked at the door and saw Teng Jiliang guarding it, and feared that Tang Yubao would walk through the door at any moment. I saw the electric batons and handcuffs in the room, and only the window behind me was not so frightening. I jumped out of the window from the second floor. My left femur fractured; my pelvis fractured in two places and the bone in my right heel splintered.
Gao’s jump drew the attention of people throughout the camp, and they had no choice but to to take her to the hospital. Barely hanging on to life and consciousness, she bounced between various military hospitals for the next few days.
The labour camp guards were caught up in the same bureaucratic process as Gao. They wanted nothing more than to get her back to the camp so that they could sweep the whole thing under the rug (i.e. murder her). They refused to notify her family, and it was only by coincidence that her sisters came to find her.
In addition to the bone fractures and wounds from the torture, Gao suffered from malnourishment, kidney failure, severe skin rashes, and she had a consistent fever for months. She relied entirely on IVs, and eventually the blood vessels in her hands all hardened. She was too weak for surgery, and because she was bed ridden, her bones weren’t healing properly.
Every time the doctors wanted to operate on the fractures, Gao’s fever would prevent them. She remained bed-ridden, and extremely weak.
Of course, her pitiful state, didn’t stop the persecution. Sometimes dozens of people a day would come through, demanding identification and harassing the doctors. Uniformed police, secret police, city officials, Provencial authorities Communist Party representatives … it never ended.
And always — always — the guards from Longshan Labour Camp would return.
When I was first sent to the No. 1 Hospital of the China Medical University, I was often rolled on a gurney to the examination room for check-ups. Many patients and their family members would surround me and ask, “What happened to your face?” My family would tell them about the electric shock torture I suffered at the labor camp, and the guards would abruptly stop them from continuing and threatened to arrest them.
Zeng Xiaoping and Wang Jichang, who were involved in persecuting me, were arranged to guard the hospital, which caused me more mental pressure.
One day at noon in late September, Su Zhizhong, a male guard in his 30s from the Third Division got drunk and slept on the couch in my room. He unzipped his pants and it was an unseemly sight. My 73-year-old mother called in female guard Zhao Yingjie, and she called Su Zhizhong outside the room. Su Zhizhong cursed in the hallway and he even tried to beat up my mother. Other guards stopped him. He pounded on my door until everyone on my floor came out of their rooms. He cursed and went wild for more than two hours while holding up his pants.
The guards always tried to drive away the crowds of onlookers who refused to leave. The guards became furious and screamed, “So what? So we’ve shocked her!” Guards Sun Zhizhong and Wang Chunmei shouted in the hallway, “So we’ve shocked her with electric batons, we’ll kill her that way!”
For the next five months, Gao’s sisters, mother, and father were either in the hospital with her or pleading with the government to get her released.
They’d make progress at the city level, and then they’d be told it is a provincial issue. Then they’d make progress with the province only to be sent to Political and Legal Affairs Committee (the group that runs the secret police).
They appealed to every authority they could. Sometimes a kind-hearted person would want to help, but then that person would be removed from the case and they’d be at a dead end once again.
After five months, they knew they would have to take matters into their own hands.
One week before I managed to escape from the hospital, I was able to gradually eat on my own and stopped the intravenous feeding. I weighed less than 70 lbs. I was not able to sit up. My arms would tremble if I raised them up and I had to relieve myself in bed. I would be out of breath when talking and was running a low-grade fever every day. I was unable to move my swollen left leg, which the doctor said was still broken.
All of the efforts to get her released and expose what had happened made Rongrong a topic of national concern for China’s leadership.
In addition to the guards and daily visitors from various government agencies, she was being treated at a military hospital with high security. Anyone who visited her came under scrutiny — or worse.
On October 5, 2004, a group of Falun Gong practitioners staged a daring rescue. Rongrong’s body was broken, but her courage was not. They simply disappeared into the autumn night.
Rongrong’s sisters detailed the following 10 years after the harrowing events:
They left virtually no stone unturned regarding Rongrong. Our entire family, as well as our workplaces, were harassed about Rongrong’s whereabouts.
For our safety, we never returned to Shenyang again.
To prevent Rongrong being sent abroad, the top communist Party leaders Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan, and Zhou Yongkang – the same people responsible for the entire persecution – had ordered Shenyang authorities to form a special task force to search for Rongrong.
A local radio station even broadcast a public notice, stating, “A young female named Gao Rongrong has been abducted, and the Bureau of Justice is looking for her on behalf of her parents. If anyone sees her, please report her to the police. Her parents are offering a reward for any information on her.”
Police stations, train stations, public transportation departments, and neighborhood committees in nearby cities and counties all received notice from Shenyang Bureau of Justice to keep an eye out for Rongrong as well.
Rongrong, and the practitioners who helped her, managed to stay out of sight, but not for long. They were found and arrested again on March 6, 2005.
How many times did she have to escape? How much suffering can one person endure? Not until she left this earth could she be free of their chains.
On June 16, 2005 — over a year after that fateful night that nearly took her life — she finally succumbed to the relentless persecution.
The sisters continue:
Our parents found out that Rongrong was taken to the notorious Masanjia Forced Labor Camp. However, they hadn’t told us about this because they didn’t want us to be involved in this issue.
We don’t know what happened to her in her last three months, except that she had been kept alone. Our parents went to the labor camp many times, but they were never allowed to see Rongrong.
Su Jing, the labor camp head, even told them that Rongrong was doing well. When our mother insisted that she see for herself how well Rongrong was doing, Su Jing ordered local police to arrest her.
We also heard that Luo Gan, former head of the 610 Office, had ordered the local authorities to handle the case discreetly, and censor information about the persecution that Rongrong had suffered.
Zhou Yongkang, former Minister of Public Security, even came to Shenyang to personally orchestrate the arrest and further persecution of Rongrong and her rescuers.
After Rongrong died, the Procuratorate turned in all the documents about her to PLAC. The 610 Office also took Rongrong’s profile from her workplace, the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts. Rongrong’s identity was effectively eliminated.
We never got to see Rongrong’s body; the authorities had disposed of it almost immediately.
It is a tragic tale, made all the more so by how effectively the criminals in uniform buried their crimes.
No charges were ever brought against anyone involved.
Gao Lili and Gao Weiwei managed to finally escape China and bring out even more evidence. They know that there is no earthly justice for their family. They know that they cannot change the past.
But they hope that if they continue to persevere, if they continue to tell the world what happened, if more people can know the name Gao Rongrong, they might just be able to change the future.
Thank you for taking the time to read their story. Gao Lili and Gao Weiwei have dedicated their lives to telling the story of what happened to their sister. If you’d like to send them a message of support or sympathy please select from the following.
Write to Gao’s Family
This message is only visible to admins.
Problem displaying Facebook posts. Backup cache in use.
Click to show error
Problem displaying Facebook posts. Backup cache in use.
Click to show error
Error: Error validating access token: The session has been invalidated because the user changed their password or Facebook has changed the session for security reasons. Type: OAuthException
