(Minghui.org)
Name: Wang Yudong
Chinese Name: 王宇东
Gender: Male
Age: 51
City: Qiqihar
Province: Heilongjiang
Occupation: Chef and chess referee
Date of Death: April 9, 2023
Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 21, 2017
Most Recent Place of Detention: Fengtun Prison
Having lost her mother in July 2022, a six-year-old girl Lily (alias) recently became an orphan when her father also died in April 2023.
Even before she was born, Lily’s suffering had already started in her mother’s womb. Not knowing she was pregnant, Ms. Zhu Xiumin held a five-month-long hunger strike to protest the arbitrary detention and torture of her for practicing Falun Gong. It was a miracle that her pregnancy remained viable throughout her ordeals and she delivered her baby Lily on December 8, 2017.
Only six days after her birthday, Lily’s father, Mr. Wang Yudong, was sentenced to three years for his faith in Falun Gong. Ms. Zhu struggled to care for Lily all by herself while dodging police harassment.
When Mr. Wang was released in March 2020, he struggled with mobility and speech impairment due to a stroke he had in prison. With continued police harassment, the family still couldn’t stay together. Ms. Zhu took Lily back home in 2021 to live with Mr. Wang, while she remained on the run herself. She was found dead in July 2022.
While still mourning Ms. Zhu’s passing, Mr. Wang struggled to care for Lily and his ailing mother, despite the physical difficulty he had himself. He never woke up from sleep on the morning of April 9, 2023, leaving Lily all alone. Both he and Ms. Zhu were 51 when they died.
Family’s Plight
Mr. Wang, of Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, was an excellent chef and chess referee. After the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, he was twice sentenced to a total of 13 years.
When Mr. Wang was given his first prison term in 2001 at the age of 29, the judge was pressured to change the original five-year term to ten years, citing an order from above. At the Harbin Prison and Daqing Prison, Mr. Wang was held in solitary confinement for 131 days and chained to the ground for 25 days. The guards also sexually assaulted him by squeezing his testes, force-feeding him, and pulling on his collarbone. An inmate said to him, “If we beat you to death, we will write that you died of natural causes on your death certificate.”
Ms. Zhu, a former blanket factory worker, was sentenced to seven years in 2002 by the Yangming District Court. Her “crime” was working with other practitioners on tapping into the cable TV network to broadcast information to debunk the communist regime’s propaganda against Falun Gong.
At the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison, Ms. Zhu was subjected to electric shocks, sleep deprivation, and freezing torture. When she was released on May 9, 2009, she said she didn’t expect herself to have been able to survive the seven-year-long hellish torture.
The couple was arrested again on March 21, 2017, while at another practitioner Ms. Liu Mingying’s home in Qiqihar. The police held them in separate rooms for interrogation. The police handcuffed Mr. Wang behind his back and pulled the handcuffs up to increase the pain in his shoulder joints. They also stabbed his ribs, slapped him in the face with a shoe, covered his head with a plastic bag, and filled the bag with cigarette smoke. The police also deliberately let Mr. Wang hear their colleagues beating his wife next door.
Shortly after the couple’s arrest, the health of Mr. Wang’s father deteriorated and he quickly passed away.
After Ms. Zhu was later taken to a detention centre, she held a hunger strike to protest the persecution. She was beaten, thrown on the ground, deprived of sleep, and force-fed. The guards mixed psychiatric drugs into her food, causing her to have facial swelling, numb tongue, and persistent thirst. Both the guards and Ms. Zhu were shocked to find she was pregnant in August 2017. They released her shortly thereafter.
Mr. Wang stood trial at the Longsha District Court on December 14, 2017, and was sentenced to three years. He appealed the verdict, but the Qiqihar City Intermediate Court ruled to uphold his original verdict. At the Tailai Prison and Fengtun Prison, he was subjected to electric shocks, sprayed with spicy water, held in solitary confinement, and chained to the ground. His vision declined quickly. He later suffered a stroke and a severe heart condition. After the resuscitation, he didn’t wake up until three days later. The doctor said he lost over 70% of his brain cells.
After Mr. Wang was released in March 2020, he spoke very slowly and his reaction was also slow due to the sequelae of the stroke. Not long after, his mother also fell ill and became bedridden. Despite his own health condition, Mr. Wang tried his best to care for his mother.
During Mr. Wang’s prison term, Ms. Zhu lived in displacement and destitution in order to hide from the police, while struggling to raise her daughter. She couldn’t return home even after Mr. Wang was released, fearing that the police may start to harass the family again.
When the police began to harass Ms. Zhu in Qiqihar in 2021, she sent her daughter home to live with Mr. Wang, while she remained displaced herself.
It was an arduous effort for Mr. Wang to care for both his daughter and mother. After his mother passed away in 2022, the police kept coming to harass him and ordered him to move away, as having a Falun Gong practitioner in their district means failure in their job. Upon seeing articles on Minghui about the persecution of Mr. Wang’s family, the police intensified the harassment, suspecting that he was the one who wrote the articles.
It brought Mr. Wang tremendous mental pressure when he returned home one day and saw many cigarette butts in the trash can. As he didn’t smoke, he knew the police had come again.
Then his worst nightmare came true when someone called and told him about Ms. Zhu’s passing in July 2022. Despite the fact that he tried hard to provide love and care for his little daughter, who had never lived a day without the fear and pressure of the persecution since she was born, the physical and mental trauma that he had endured over the years was beyond what he could withstand. He died in his sleep on April 9, 2023. No matter how desperately his little girl called him, he never woke up.
Chinese version available
(Clearwisdom)
