Ms. Guo, a heartbroken mother in her 50s, desperately pleads, "Please rescue my daughter!" She is blind in one eye from crying so much; her worry has affected her health so seriously that her teeth are falling.

Ms. Guo’s daughter, Ms. Li Hongshu, is an employee of the Panjin City First People's Hospital and an outstanding university graduate. Her husband, Mr. Li Shangshi, was sentenced twice to a total of seventeen and half years in prison because of his desire to continue practicing Falun Gong.

Ms. Guo’s husband, Mr. Li Shangshi, was sentenced in 1999 to three and a half years in prison due to his practice of Falun Gong. After his release in 2003, he was immediately sentenced again to 14 years in prison. Mr. Li has just been transferred to Dabei Prison from Fushun Prison. In 1999, their daughter, Ms. Li Hongshu, was also sentenced to three years of forced labor and was imprisoned at Masanjia Forced Labor Camp. At the beginning of 2002, she was again sentenced to ten years and was imprisoned at Dabei Women's Prison in Shenyang City. She has suffered inhuman torture and mental abuse.

On November 20, 2007, when she went to visit her daughter, the prison guard told her, "Ms. Li Hongshu is under strict control and is not allowed to meet with family because she has read Falun Gong materials. You can come again two months from now." Once again, Ms. Guo returned home with tears in her eyes. She did not know whether her daughter was dead or alive, but she knew that many Falun Gong practitioners had died in prison.

Ms. Guo anxiously waited until January 9, 2008, and went to visit her daughter again. When she saw her daughter, she was shocked. Ms. Li's entire face was disfigured. The right side was terribly swollen, and her eyes were bruised so much that they were only slits. The left side of her face was so thin that it seemed only skin and bones. She was very thin and walked with great difficulty. Even standing or sitting down was very strenuous for her.

When Ms. Guo saw her daughter's condition, she broke down in tears. She then asked the two prison guards by her daughter's side, "How can this happen? Why was she beaten like this?" Chief Liu said, "She was under strict control for two months and was pressured. The pressure has been suspended for quite a few days now."

Ms. Guo then asked, "Why was she under strict control?" Liu said, "Just that matter of her practice of Falun Gong." Ms. Guo cried and asked, "Why is she so thin? Didn't she have any food to eat?" The prison guard said, "How could we not give her food? It's just that what she eats is different from normal."

Ms. Guo looked at her daughter again and said, "Isn't her leg crippled? Hongshu, stand up and let mother have a look!" But Hongshu couldn't stand up. By now Ms. Guo was sobbing and said to the prison guards, "You should do some good deeds! Don't treat my daughter like this anymore! We are all good people--let her come out alive!"

The prison guard said that everything was all right, and they were just applying a little pressure on her. Then they pointed at the less than 1,500-gram food container and said, "Look, she can still carry this thing, so she is all right." The prison guard also said to Ms. Guo, "We did not want to let you see your daughter at all, because we feared that you would cry and make a fuss after seeing her." During the ten-minute meeting, no matter what Ms. Guo asked, Ms. Li Hongshu did not say anything, but just cried.

The prison guard said, "Usually, no matter how we pressure her, she never cries." The meeting passed quickly. Ms. Li Hongshu stood up with extreme difficulty. With tears in her eyes, she said to her mother, "Mother, you take care of yourself." After saying this, she turned around with great difficulty and moved slowly away, step by step, all the time under the watchful eyes of the two guards.

As Ms. Guo stared at her daughter's tortured body moving slowly away, she tried not to think about how her daughter would look next time. She left the prison with a weeping heart.

During the Chinese New Year, when families reunite, Ms. Guo moved her small, thin, hunched-over frame to bring clothing for the new season to her husband and daughter in prison. From summer to winter, she is seen walking without stopping. The people familiar with her cannot help but shed tears seeing her pass by.

Posted on November 12, 2008