Gao Rongrong — The Face of Persecution

This is Ms. Gao Rongrong, an accountant at an art college in Shenyang, China. The year is 1999. Gao's face is about to be known around the world. When the Chinese Communist Party launched its brutal crackdown on Falun Gong in 1999, Gao was fired from her job and later imprisoned for refusing to give up her beliefs. On May 7, 2004, Gao was tortured with electric batons for seven hours straight at the Longshan forced labor camp in her hometown of Shenyang. The torture seared the skin off her face, head and neck, and her once radiant face was left scarred with blisters. Desperate to escape the ongoing brutality, Gao jumped from a second floor window where she was being held, fracturing her hip and breaking her left leg. She was then moved to the Shenyang Public Security Hospital, where she was kept under guard. When her two sisters, Li Li and Wei Wei, were finally allowed to visit her, they burst into tears upon seeing her face. Gao told her sisters she wanted them to take pictures of her face and use them to let the world know about the persecution. The next day, one of her sisters managed to bring in a camera and take a few photos and recordings without the guards noticing. On July 7, 2004, photos of Gao's burnt face were published on the Minghui website. Soon, the images of Gao's face were displayed at human rights events around the world, and her story became the first case study included in the 2004 United Nations Human Rights Report on China's Persecution of Falun Gong. Furious over the leaked images, Chinese authorities sent Gao to the notorious Masanjia Force labor camp, which was widely known to employ the most brutal torture to break the spirit of Falun Gong practitioners. On June 12, 2005, Gao's parents were notified that Gao had been taken to the Masanjia Hospital, where she was unconscious and breathing through a machine. Four days later, at the age of 37, Gao passed away.