Final Words of Mr. Chen Yanru, a Practitioner from Jiangsu Province

The article below was written by Mr. Chen Yanru, a Falun Gong practitioner, right before his death in April 2008. It has taken such a long time for us to receive his statement due to the dangers involved in transmitting such a message. Police monitored, arrested and brutally tortured Mr. Chen for his belief in the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and released him only when he was on the brink of death.

Below are his words.

My name is Chen Yanru. I was born in 1947 and I live in Jingjiang City, Jiangsu Province.

I first started to practise Falun Gong at Jingjiang Park in late 1996. After two months of cultivation I was free of my illnesses, which included severe heart disease. Besides diligently doing the exercises and studying the Falun Gong books, I also made lots of banners that informed people about the miraculous power of Falun Gong and its incredible contribution to society. Between 1997 and 1998 I got up at 2:00 a.m., and would learn to memorise the Falun Gong books and do the exercises. At 4:00 a.m. I would ride my bicycle to the countryside and introduce Falun Gong to the villagers there. It was really easy, even a long bike ride of up to 20 miles was easy. My body had returned to a prime state of youth.

When Jiang Zemin and his villainous group of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials began persecuting Falun Gong in 1999, I appealed in Beijing in October and December 1999. I was arrested by the police, who detained me, gave me a prison sentence, and used sleep deprivation and extortion in an attempt to break my will and force me to renounce my belief.

Police officer Zhang Yueping, and four others from Chengbei Police Station, Jingjiang City, broke into the home of my daughter-in-law's mother at mid-day on May 26th, 2001, when my wife and I happened to be visiting her and our 14-day-old granddaughter. I was arrested and taken to the Xinya Hotel in Jingcheng City. When the officers had eaten lunch, they started to fall asleep, so I was able to escape. During a meeting for all police officers, Chen Hangao, the head of the Politics and Law Committee, said, "We must cast aside the murder and arson cases, and focus all of our energy on arresting Chen Yanru." They distributed thousands of leaflets with my picture on it and made sure every police officer had one. I heard that they spent 430,000 yuan¹ on my case alone.

Officer Zhang Yixin, who handled my case, later told me that officials from the State Public Security Bureau had assigned two officers to come to Jingjiang City, just to oversee a task force set up to arrest me. It turned out some practitioners who had left China had exposed facts of the persecution in the U.S. media. The authorities feared that I would also try to flee China, so they couldn't rest until I was arrested again.

I managed to live hidden away for more than 100 days. Agents from the 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) and the police didn't know where I was, so they turned on my family and relatives to find out my whereabouts. I thought, "I will not let anyone be persecuted on my behalf. I will go and face them myself." I decided to return home.

When I arrived in Jingjiang City I phoned home and asked my wife and son to come to a nearby park. I did not know that our home phone had been tapped for a long time, and was arrested at around 10:45 p.m., right after leaving the park from meeting my wife and son. I was taken to Chengbei Police Station, where the deputy chief, Zhang Yixin, walked up to me and whacked me straight across the face, rupturing my left eardrum. I kept hearing a buzzing sound in my left ear for many years and was unable to hear properly. They then handcuffed me, pushed me into a vehicle and drove me to Yuejiang Police Station.

At Yuejiang Police Station, I was hung up on metal railings, with both of my hands raised up over my head and handcuffed to metal railings. I was hanging there with only the tips of my toes touching the ground. The unbearable pain made me scream for help. They said, "This is the middle of nowhere. No one can hear you, even if you scream at the top of your lungs."

I was interrogated by three officials. Politics section deputy heads, Zhou Su, Sun Wen and Gu Wenzhou, beat me. Zhou Suping went into my bag and took out the Falun Gong book Zhuan Falun and slapped me across the face with it numerous times. When he was tired, he told the other two to continue. They also took turns to beat me with a motorcycle helmet until the helmet cracked. They later took off my belt and, with another belt, put the belt buckles at the back of my knees, and violently stood on them. My sweat was pouring down like rain, and I became dehydrated. They knew I was thirsty, so they brought water and pretended to give it to me. Just as I was reaching out for it, they poured the water all over my face. I passed out from the pain several times and they would douse me with cold water until I came to, and then continue with the torture. They only stopped stomping on my legs when the belts snapped.

The police had their rules regarding the torturous method of "flying an airplane." The maximum duration for this torture was to be two hours for each session, but I was left hanging in this excruciating position for four hours. They also made fun of my suffering. Gu Wenzhou lit a cigarette and shoved it into my right nostril, which made me cough and cry uncontrollably. I couldn't help but scream. Gu Wenzhou said, "Keep shouting. I'll put another one in your left nostril." Sun Wen took off his socks and shoes to slap me around my mouth with his filthy socks.

The officers eventually stopped this method of torture the next day, after they had lunch. I was then taken to the detention centre, where they took money off me to pay for the broken helmet that they used to beat me with. After nearly one year in the detention centre, they never allowed me any family visits. Even when they transferred me to Hongzehu Prison, they still would not let me see my family, and they never provided my family with the sentencing papers from my trial.

After spending several days in Hongzehu Prison, my family went to the detention centre and tried to see me. They were told, "He has been transferred and is not in Jingjiang City anymore." I was first held in the "Entrance Division" of the prison with the new inmates. My food consisted of mouldy rice for several months, which gave me serious stomach problems that I could not bear. The prison officials used a variety of torture methods to try to make me renounce my belief, but I cannot bring myself to recall the brutality of the horrible things they did.

Shortly after being released from prison and on my way home, agents from the Jingjiang 610 Office accosted me and forced me into their car, in November 2006. I started vomiting and then was coughing up blood. It lasted for six hours. Three days after I was released, I found that I had a gastric haemorrhage, and was taken to the hospital for a blood transfusion. It cost 6,000 yuan for the five-day treatment, and I was diagnosed with terminal stage gastric cancer that had spread to my liver and spleen.

As I lie here dying, and about to depart this world, I am determined to write down the incidents of brutal torture and mistreatment that I have experienced, to use as evidence of the evil deeds used by the CCP and to appeal to the world--please remember the atrocities of this persecution.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/7/3/226401.html