In 2001 Associate Professor Wu Xiaohua from Anhui Province was kidnapped from her home. She was illegally detained at the Anhui Province Female Labor Camp, and then taken to a mental hospital against her will.

Wu was targeted because she practices Falun Gong—a Chinese meditation practice that teaches the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. For more than 10 years, the Chinese regime has been trying to eradicate Falun Gong by sending hundreds of thousands of its practitioners to makeshift detention centers, forced labor camps and psychiatric hospitals—just some of the places where communist officials and police try to force these prisoners of conscience to give up their belief.

Speaking in Japan, Wu’s sister, Wu Lili, spoke about the torture her sister was forced to endure.

[Wu Lili, Sister of Falun Gong Practitioner Wu Xiaohua]:
“The doctor ordered the electric shocks, and did this on both of her temples. She told me when he did this, the muscles all over her body contracted under the pressure and she was in immeasurable pain. She said that, ‘I have to be persistent, I have to always be persistent and told myself that I must live, I told myself if I live I will be proof, and to live is to be strong.’”

Wu Lili called on United States President Barack Obama to take his visit to China as an opportunity to rescue her sister and to help end the persecution of Falun Gong.