PureInsight | March 21, 2005
to view the portrait in high resolution[PureInsight.org] Inspired by her own experience of being incarcerated in the Chinese prison, Amy Lee created this painting to express Falun Gong practitioners' determination to adhere to their belief in Falun Gong's cultivation principles, Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, despite being deprived of their freedom and subjected to daily verbal abuse and violence in the forced labor camps and prisons in China. The female Falun Gong practitioner is fearless in the face of torture. She insists on sitting in the Full Lotus position although her wrists and ankles are chained, suggesting she is incarcerated in prison and suffering from some type of torture. Her peaceful countenance reveals that she refuses to abandon her faith or become like the depraved torturers in the prison. An angel visits her there, giving her strength and courage to overcome the demonic tribulations.
About Amy Lee
Amy Lee is a Falun Gong practitioner. She was a successful fashion designer in China and enjoys traditional Chinese painting as her favorite pastime. She had a very successful career and a harmonious family with her husband and a daughter. Jiang Zemin destroyed her family and her career when he banned and started to openly persecute Falun Gong practitioners on July 20, 1999. Moreover, Amy Lee was repeatedly arrested and incarcerated in Chinese prisons where she was subjected to many types of torture. She was once taken to the 13th Precinct of the Public Security Bureau in Beijing for interrogation during which a policeman stripped her naked and kept beating her until she passed out. When she refused to renounce her belief in Falun Gong despite the Chinese police's abuse and torture, the police transferred her to a psychiatric hospital where she was subjected to the torture of force-feeding, the number-one cause of death of Falun Gong practitioners, although she was not on hunger strike. The Chinese Communist government often locks its dissidents in psychiatric hospitals and tortures them by giving them psychiatric drugs. Later the "610 Office" in Guangzhou abducted Amy Lee and threw her to a local forced brainwashing facility where she suffered from mental torment. After she escaped from the forced brainwashing facility, she had no choice but to leave her home to avoid additional torture. With the help of kindhearted people, Amy Lee escaped to the United States in 2001.
Amy Lee is a victim of Jiang Zemin's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. She has witnessed the Chinese Communist regime's brutalities against Falun Gong practitioners, Falun Gong practitioners' steadfast belief, and how they repeatedly triumphed over threats of death. Inspired by the beauty of Falun Gong and its practitioners' undying courage and compassion despite the injustices against them, Amy Lee decided to tell the stories of Falun Gong with her heart and her brushes in order to awaken people's consciences and senses of justice.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2004/12/25/30458.html
