Lawyer: Expose the Truth of the Persecution to Prepare for Holding the CCP Accountable

Left: Ye Xuxia in good health. Right: Ye Xuxia was beaten and seriously injured in a CCP labor camp for refusing to give up practicing Falun Gong, which led to disability and paralysis. (Photos provided by Ye Xuxia’s daughter, composite by The Dajiyuan)

[People News] “We must expose such things and let the whole world know the CCP’s evil and shamelessness,” said a Chinese human rights lawyer. He stated that revealing the CCP’s brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and other dissidents not only helps people recognize its evil nature but also prepares for future accountability and reckoning, because one day “the CCP will collapse.”

A Healthy Mother Crippled and Paralyzed After Persecution in a CCP Labor Camp

According to interviews by The Dajiyuan reporters Cheng Wen and Yi Ru, overseas Falun Gong practitioner Zhang Yu told The Dajiyuan that her mother, Ye Xuxia, was repeatedly arrested and detained illegally by the CCP since July 1999 for practicing Falun Gong and believing in “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.” Eventually, she was unlawfully sentenced to three years of reeducation through labor and imprisoned in the Fushun City Labor Camp.

Her mother, who had been in excellent health, “became increasingly unwell” during detention and forced labor. (Note: “Labor camps” are also known in other regions as “reeducation-through-labor institutions.”)

One day, Ye Xuxia “suffered a spinal injury” in the camp. Zhang Yu’s grandmother then obtained her medical parole (“baowai jiuyi”) to bring her home.

Ye Xuxia when she was healthy. (Photo provided by her daughter)

Zhang Yu knew that her mother’s kidney disease had fully recovered after she began practicing Falun Gong and that she had become very healthy. So how could she become like this after such a short time in a labor camp?

Zhang Yu later asked her mother what caused it. Her mother said, “It was the guards who beat me,” because she refused to “transform” or give up her faith in Falun Gong. “Guards” — the police officers inside the labor camp — often beat Falun Gong practitioners who refused to be “transformed,” violently striking their bodies and bones. As a result, her neck suffered severe trauma.

After returning home, her grandmother took her to many large hospitals and even went to Beijing to consult specialists. The diagnosis was consistently “spinal canal stenosis” or “cervical canal stenosis.”

Doctors agreed it was “caused by external force.” They told Ye Xuxia that it could be treated surgically, but if left untreated, it might lead to paralysis. However, they also warned that her body was too weak for surgery — she would need to regain strength first.

Zhang Yu said her mother remained frail and never became strong enough for surgery. About a year after being released for medical treatment, her mother “began to feel numbness in half her body.” After some time, “both legs stopped moving, and as time went on, she developed symptoms of paralysis — eventually becoming completely paralyzed.”

Ye Xuxia was beaten and seriously injured in a CCP labor camp for refusing to renounce Falun Gong, resulting in disability and paralysis. (Photo provided by her daughter)

In August 2004, the Fushun City Disabled Persons’ Federation officially recognized Ye Xuxia as having “Level II physical disability.”

The inside pages of the “Level II Physical Disability” certificate issued to Ye Xuxia by the Fushun City Disabled Persons’ Federation in August 2004. (Photo provided by her daughter)

At that time, a doctor told Zhang Yu’s grandmother, “There’s no point continuing treatment. Take her home.” The meaning was — prepare for Ye Xuxia’s funeral.

“But my mother still insisted on practicing the exercises in her wheelchair, which astonished many of the caregivers who had looked after her. They would say, ‘How can you still be practicing in your condition?’ But what amazed them even more was that someone whom the hospital had effectively sentenced to death—someone declared critically ill—went on to survive for another seven or eight years. Aside from the paralysis, she had no other physical problems. That fact really shocked a lot of people.”

In the end, because of severe bedsores that became badly infected, Ye Xuxia passed away in May 2016, before she reached the age of 60. Zhang Yu said that her mother’s case “was an example of being directly disabled through persecution and indirectly persecuted to death.”

Many of Ye Xuxia’s close friends, meanwhile, were tortured to death directly in the CCP’s labor camps. “Those I knew, the ones I called ‘aunties,’ all died long before my mother did,” Zhang Yu recalled sorrowfully. “They all suffered the same tortures; the level of cruelty was the same.”

A photo of Ye Xuxia and her daughter in earlier years. (Photo provided by Ye Xuxia’s daughter)

Lawyer: Expose the CCP’s Persecution to Prepare for Accountability and Reckoning

Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group attorney Wu Shaoping told The Dajiyuan reporter that, based on this case and many other documented instances of persecution, these “guards” have already committed crimes and violated Article 248 of the CCP’s Criminal Law.

Article 248 of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China explicitly defines the “crime of maltreatment of persons under supervision.” The article states:

“Staff members of prisons, detention centers, or other supervisory institutions who beat or physically abuse persons under their supervision, if the circumstances are serious, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or to criminal detention; if the circumstances are especially serious, to imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than ten years.

If the act causes injury, disability, or death, the offender shall be convicted and punished in accordance with Articles 234 and 232 of this law with heavier penalties.

Where a supervisory staff member instigates one detainee to beat or abuse another detainee, punishment shall be imposed in accordance with the preceding paragraph.”

Article 234 concerns “intentional injury,” and Article 232 concerns “intentional homicide.”

Wu Shaoping said that Falun Gong practitioners have suffered inhuman abuse and torture in prisons, and that other religious believers and political dissidents have also been treated with extreme cruelty. “According to the CCP’s own laws, these are classic examples of crimes committed by supervisory personnel,” he said. “By both reason and law, these acts should be subject to criminal accountability.”

He continued: “At this stage, while the CCP still holds power, it will not punish these lackeys who commit crimes on its behalf, because the CCP depends on their black hands to maintain the so-called security and stability of its regime.”

Regarding such crimes, Wu said: “I believe that, first and foremost, we must expose these atrocities and let the world know the CCP’s evil and shamelessness. That is extremely important—to help the world see what the CCP system truly is through the suffering of those under its control, so that people can understand the nature of this regime.”

He also advised: “Victims should still take up legal tools to defend their legitimate rights, to appeal and to file charges.”

Although victims may find it difficult to achieve justice under CCP rule, Wu said, “the very act of filing complaints becomes a record of their illegal crimes. One day, when the CCP collapses, history will overturn these cases. These records will serve as evidence of guilt—proof of the CCP’s crimes—and can be used for historical reckoning.”

Wu emphasized that even if legal accountability is currently impossible, exposing and documenting these facts of persecution “helps more people awaken from their illusions about the CCP.” He added, “It enables the world to condemn it morally and see clearly what it truly is. That moral awareness contributes to the disintegration of the CCP regime, because such a regime has already lost the people’s support.” △