Huang Guorong, female, was born on July 22, 1961 and lived in the Dongfanghong Forestry Bureau Shilin Farm in Heilongjiang Province. She came to believe in the Lord Jesus in 1992 and joined The Church of Almighty God in 2002. In April 2013, she was arrested by the police of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while in a gathering and was detained for 69 days. While she was detained, Huang Guorong was brutally tortured, which caused her to suffer from a psychological breakdown and have injuries all over her body, unable to take care of herself. She died in July of the same year without ever having the chance to clear her name; she was just 52.
Arrested and Detained for Attending a Gathering
Around April 16, 2013, while Huang Guorong was in a gathering with another Christian, they two were arrested by Zhou Kai and two other officers from the Shichang Police Station. The police found faith-related books and CDs at their gathering site; they handcuffed Huang Guorong and took her and the items to the Shichang Police Station.
The next day, they locked her up in the Dongfanghong Forestry Bureau Detention Center for the crime of “organizing and using a secret society, xie jiao organization, and superstition to undermine the enforcement of the law.”
When her family learned of her detainment, they went to the detention center to see her on three separate occasions but were blocked by the police every time.
Tortured to Nervous Breakdown After 69 Days of Detainment
On June 23, the police in the detention center notified Huang Guorong’s son to handle procedures to have her released on bail pending trial. Her son demanded that he be allowed to see her before going through with the formalities. The police pretended to go call for her, but lied when they returned, saying that she wasn’t willing to come out, and telling her son to take care of the formalities first. After he had paid 5,000 RMB in bail and handled the other procedures, four people carried Huang Guorong out. She was rolling around on the ground and was spouting gibberish.
After they got her home, Huang Guorong’s family discovered that she didn’t even recognize her own children, unable to take care of herself at all. When they changed her clothing they discovered that from the neck down, her entire chest was black and blue; both sides of her chest, her belly, and her four limbs were all purple, covered with wounds.
Medical Treatment Ineffective, She Dies Without Clearing Her Name
That evening, Huang Guorong’s family took her to Raohe County Hospital to treat her external wounds. At the time she was in a very precarious psychological state; she would start trembling and crying out just for seeing a person’s shadow or hearing someone’s voice.
The morning of June 25, Huang Guorong’s mind cleared for a little while—this was the only time she was awake after her release. Her son hurriedly asked her how she had been injured and whether the police had beaten her; she confirmed this. He then asked her why she wouldn’t eat—wasn’t she hungry? She replied, “I’m hungry but I don’t dare eat!” He said, “What are you afraid of?” Huang Guorong said, “When they gave me food they mixed it with feces and made me eat it.” Hearing this made her son cry. After comforting his mother, he had her lie back and rest, but she didn’t have another moment of clarity after that.
Her family then took her to the Mudanjiang Hospital for treatment. Upon examining her, the doctor said that she had to be admitted to the ICU, but her family couldn’t afford the daily medical expenses of over 10,000 RMB, and had no choice but to bring her home to take care of her.
Huang Guorong left this world without clearing her name at about 8 p.m. on July 10, 2013.
No Recourse, Nowhere to Turn
Before her passing, Huang Guorong’s family went to the Dongfanghong Forestry Bureau Discipline Inspection Committee to plead their case, but were hindered and threatened by the employees there, who said that if they continued to cause trouble they’d arrest them all. They then went to the Public Security Bureau to make their case, but the police shirked their duty and refused to release the surveillance videos from the detention center. Huang Guorong’s family hired a lawyer to go with them to review the footage from the Public Security Bureau’s monitoring room, but there was an issue with the equipment, which their lawyer said was the authorities intentionally not allowing them to see the footage. In order to seek justice for Huang Guorong, after her death her family uploaded a video to Baidu revealing the truth of her being persecuted to death by the CCP, but it was removed in over ten minutes after the upload. They then contacted the Tencent news network on QQ, but before they had even finished describing the circumstances surrounding Huang Guorong’s death, the response said: “No, no one can report on this kind of news.”
On July 17, Huang Guorong’s family went to the detention center to request the bail money that had never been refunded. One employee there revealed that she had been tied up and beaten by fellow detainees, and after learning of this the director did nothing about it. When the police discovered she had had a mental breakdown, not only did they not give her treatment, but they intentionally delayed at least six to seven days in notifying her family that they could bail her.
Her family signed and said: “Such a healthy person—being killed this way was such an injustice! We want to seek redress for her, but that’s impossible with the CCP in power. There’s nowhere to take our case!” Their eyes were full of despair. They look forward to the day that the truth of Huang Guorong being persecuted to death by the CCP government will see the light of day.
