Individual Accounts

  • Remembering Doctor Shen Yueping

    Ms. Shen Yueping worked at the Maternity and Child Care Centre in Yunsi, Yunnan Province in July 2009. While at the Yunnan Second Women's Prison, her captors subjected her to excruciating torture that led to a perforated lung. She was then sent to the Kunming Third Hospital for treatment and died there. Ms. Shen treated people kindly. She lived a very simple life. She contributed silently to others and never showed off. I admired her wisdom and pure heart that were a result of Falun Gong cultivation. She often said, "We practitioners should be nice and cultivate our character according to Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance; we should become better people, not merely good people."
  • Tianjin Detention Centre Force-feeds Practitioners Unknown Drugs

    I am a Falun Gong practitioner from Tianjin. Police broke into my home on December 3rd, 2001. They arrested and took me to the Beichen District Detention Centre. I joined other practitioners held there in a persecution protest hunger strike on December 5th. The guards dragged me from the second floor to the ground floor and began force-feeding me. There was a large-size plastic bowl which contained unknown liquid drugs. The guards tied my arms and legs to a metal chair that had its base affixed to the ground. They grabbed my hair and pulled it so that my face was upward. Then, two women wearing white coats inserted a tube into my nose and began pouring whatever was in the bowl into my stomach through the tube. It felt awful. One of them said, "Don't even think about getting it out. The tube has reached the bottom of your stomach!"
  • Firsthand Account of Persecution Suffered by a Factory Worker

    On September 10th, 2005, police came to my home. They ransacked it. I was detained at the Dezhou City Detention Centre. Wu Zhenyuan and Zhang Xikun from the district political and protection section extorted 20,000 yuan from my family, threatening to send me to a forced labour camp if the bribe was not paid. In the detention centre, I went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. On the tenth day of the hunger strike, they began to force feed me. Prisoner Wang Wenjuan, the detention center's doctor Jiang, and three other people made me lie down, tied my limbs to the bed, and held me down as I struggled and the doctor inserted the feeding tube. Instead of inserting the tube down my oesophagus, he inserted it into my trachea. Immediately I couldn't breathe.
  • Ms. Ma Xianling from Beijing Narrates Her Experience of Being Persecuted

    I was arrested in 2004 while I was giving out Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution with another fellow practitioner. We were reported and arrested by police. They tried to force me to tell them the source of the materials and also the names of my fellow practitioners. I refused to co-operate with them and they started to beat me. I was forced to sit on a cold metal chair, and was confined to a small cell, but no matter how they persecuted me, they could not change my heart of being determined in cultivating Falun Gong. Half a year later, because of the fact that I was severely persecuted, I was bailed out for medical treatment.
  • Recounting the Persecution that Liu Zhimei Suffered During Her Time at the Beijing Detention Centre

    Falun Gong practitioner Liu Zhimei, 20, was detained at Beijing Detention Centre. Once, Ms. Liu went with the guards to be interrogated. However, she didn't return until two months later. The cell she was locked in was extremely small, with enough space for only a bed and a toilet. She wasn't allowed to change her clothes or take a shower during those two months. There was a big camera on the ceiling to monitor her around the clock. The area she was confined in was full of similar small cells and she heard painful screams from fellow inmates being tortured. I recently heard that Liu Zhimei suffered a mental breakdown, and I felt very sad.
  • Ms. Huang Yixiu, a Peasant Farmer, Detained Many Times

    Ms. Huang Yixiu has been detained four times, totalling 761 days, simply because she practises Falun Gong. She recounts: "More than a dozen practitioners, including myself, were arrested and detained on July 18th, 2000. 610 Office agents violently beat practitioners. We were forced to work slavishly during the day. If any of the practitioners did the Falun Gong exercises, they were beaten black and blue with electric batons. After we were maltreated for 19 days, we were taken back to our villages by local police and tortured. They exposed us to the burning sun, forced us to squat for long periods of time, and bound us together for display to the public. We were also forced to wash cars, do cleaning, and do 1-metre-deep weeding with our hands. Despite the forced labour, we were often deprived of food."
  • Falun Gong Practitioner Ms. Zhang Xiao Tortured in a Labour Camp

    One of Ms. Zhang Xiao's relatives introduced her to Falun Gong in 2006. Agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) misled her father into believing that Falun Gong was bad and he reported her to the police. She was arrested and sent to Huhehaote Women's Forced Labour Camp in Inner Mongolia, where she was severely persecuted and nearly suffered mental collapse. She recalled: “On August 1st, 2008, commander Yuan and his wife Ma, force-fed me. When I vomited, they gathered the vomit and used it to continue the force-feeding. They did this twice a day, one or two days apart, with help from a few others, one of whom was doctor Yu. On August 2nd, I was forced to lie on a filthy, urine-soaked mattress, and was not even given a drink of water.”
  • Mr. Chen Yong Tortured in Yingcheng City, Hubei Province

    After Chen Yong began to practise Falun Gong his illnesses, such as schistosomiasis and hepatitis vanished. Additionally, he improved mentally. After 1999, he was tortured because he told people the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution. He was sentenced twice to forced labour and taken to the Hubei Forced Labour Camp in Shayang. He recalls: “When I was in Shayang Forced Labour Camp, three people tortured me…day and night, both physically and mentally. I could not go to sleep until around 4:00 a.m. but had to get up around 5:30 a.m. They also shocked me with electric batons. A month later, I was forced to perform hard labour.”
  • Mr. Wang Changbai Recounts Years of Persecution

    Taoshan Police Department officers took me into custody at the Qitaihe No.2 Detention Centre, where I was subjected to gross abuse and mistreatment. I was whipped with a leather whip, hung up, and had cold water poured over my whole body. I was subjected to the "flying airplane" torture method and many other things were done to me. I was faced with fear, hunger, and cold. I was released in mid-May 2000 following nearly six months of detention. I also lost my job. My elderly father and sisters all suffered greatly. My father's hair quickly turned grey.
  • Changchun Practitioner Ma Haiyan and Her Parents Persecuted for Ten Years

    After July 20th, 1999, I went with my parents to Beijing to appeal to higher authorities for the right to practise Falun Gong. However, police officers detained us in Tongxian Detention Centre for over ten days and tortured us. We were beaten and forced to squat down with our legs apart, bend our heads down with our arms up against a wall, or stand for a long period of time. Furthermore, we were fed food that had sand and insects in it, and forced to take showers in an open area while the guards hit our backs with wet towels. My father was also beaten by several people. After we were taken back to Changchun, they immediately sent us to Balibao Detention Centre.
  • Persecution Suffered by 59-Year-Old Ms. Wang Li

    Because I have persisted in practising Falun Gong I have been detained three times for a total of six months, sent to forced labour for two years, and forced to pay 3,800 Yuan since 1999. During my detention my husband divorced me. In June 20th, 2000 I was arrested by police and held in a detention centre. I held a hunger to protest. They began force-feeding me. Five criminals and the centre's deputy head handcuffed me onto a chair. One pulled my hair up against the chair, two held my arms, and one held my nose so that I could barely breathe and had to open my mouth. Another criminal inserted an empty water bottle into my mouth with the bottom cut off, and then poured water containing much salt into my mouth. I almost suffocated.
  • Epoch Times: Shen Yun Artist Exposes Decade-Long Persecution against Her Family

    On the night of Feb. 13th, the elegant Chinese lady playing the two-stringed Chinese instrument on the stage of the Bezemes Family Theatre in St. Louis was Mei Xuan, erhu soloist of the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts. How could anyone guess that she endured 4 years of hard labour in a dark Chinese prison and even suffered unimaginable tortures. When asked about her life in the prison, Mei Xuan replied: "Prisoners made clothing for export. They had to get up at 4 a.m. every morning and work 13 to 14, often even 17, hours a day...There were about 200 prisoners, she said, and every day some of them died--some from exhaustion, some from illnesses that were not treated, some from work-related accidents, some from beatings by police, some simply went crazy, and some committed suicide."
  • Older Practitioner Ms. Zhao Xiuyun Describes the Brutal Torture She and Other Practitioners Endured While Imprisoned

    Ms. Zhao Xiuyun describes the brutal force-feeding she experienced at the Daxing County Prison: "The deputy prison head said, "Use a thick tube!" The guards pinned me on a bed, held my head, my arms, and my legs and began force-feeding me. They connected one end of the tube, which is as thick as one's thumb to a machine that is used to pump someone's stomach and inserted the other end into my nose. The tube was too thick and abrasive and instantly scraped the flesh off on the inside of my nose, mouth and throat. It took them a long time to get it into my stomach. They mixed cornmeal and salt with boiling water into a porridge, and hurriedly poured it down the tube, with chunks of undissolved salt. I struggled and held my breath to prevent the food from entering my throat, and the tube fell off the machine twice. The pain was excruciating and I screamed."
  • An Insider Exposes Atrocities at the Qianjin Forced Labour Camp

    I was held at the Qianjin Forced Labour Camp in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province for one year. The detainees were mostly prisoners of conscience, including Falun Gong practitioners and petitioners. True criminals were few. Bad people were assigned to discipline good people. One could not live at ease if one did not tell lies or did not do bad deeds there. Falun Gong practitioners suffered the most because they were too upright, opposite of the behaviour of the guards.
  • Older Woman Subjected to Persecution Due to Her Belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance

    Because a 63-year-old woman practised Falun Gong and upheld Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, she was forced to leave home and move from place to place, and was also incarcerated in a forced labour camp. In her words: "I was detained and strip searched. They also didn't allow me to do the Falun Gong exercises or study the teachings. Two female guards watched my every move and then reported to the 610 Office agents. There was bits and pieces of glass in my meals, and the mattress I slept on was electrified between midnight to 5 a.m. In less than a week, I had kidney failure, pain in my liver and spleen, and my heartbeat had accelerated. I woke up suddenly every night, so I just got up and did the exercises. My mind was blank, and I lacked strength and vomited blood everyday."