Individual Accounts

  • Guards in Wangcun Forced Labour Camp Cruelly Tortured Me

    To try to force me to give up cultivating Falun Gong, the guards used all sorts of torture means. I remained handcuffed 24 hours per day for 141 days, until December 2000. I was detained in a 40-square-foot cell with a coffin-shaped bed. I was cuffed onto the metal gate and forced to stand holding the gate for 79 days. They did not allow me to sleep for the first ten days. If I closed my eyes, the guards would punch me, beat me, or curse me. By the tenth day, I could not bear such inhuman torture. I requested that they let me sleep during the night. Just because I dared to raise such a request, more than a dozen guards, each holding an electric baton, shocked me for the whole morning.
  • Witnessing Ms. Tian Huiying's So-called "Suicide Attempt" in the Sanshui Women's Forced Labour Camp

    Ms. Tian Huiying was killed in a so-called "suicide attempt" in July 2005 as claimed by the Sanshui Women's Forced Labour Camp. She was 50 years old. I witnessed the entire process of her being persecuted. A car drove out of the cafeteria in the labour camp and struck Ms. Tian Huiying. The wheels of the car drove over her legs and feet. She immediately lost consciousness. Later on, police said that Ms. Tian had run towards the car to commit suicide and that the people who were monitoring her could not stop her. In fact, there were no guards at the scene. Moreover, the two criminals who were monitoring Ms. Tian were very strong young men. The car hit her on purpose.
  • Disabled Wife Appeals for Her Husband's Rescue

    In 2008, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) arrested my husband again, allegedly for the sake of the Olympic Games. On July 13th, 2008, police broke into my home. They covered my husband's head with a black plastic bag and forced him into a police car. They searched my home and seized expensive items. They also destroyed my electric fan. My husband has been detained in the Shuangfengsi Detention Centre for more than five months, and we are not allowed to visit him. Recently, we learned that he will be brought to trial at Shuangqiao District Court on December 15th, 2008. I call for the immediate release of my husband.
  • Calling for Immediate Release of Mr. Yu Chao and His Wife Ms. Zhu Tong

    Since the persecution started in July 1999, my sister-in-law Ms. Zhu has been arrested for calling for justice for Falun Gong by unfurling a banner in Tiananmen Square. In August 2002, a few months after she was released, she was arrested again with my brother by six police officers, for speaking out on the Internet against the persecution of Falun Gong. My brother was beaten when he tried to resist being arrested. They were sentenced to nine and eleven years of imprisonment respectively. Their son, Huhu, has been deprived of his parents' care.
  • A Mother's Lament

    My son, a Falun Gong Practitioner, has been thrown into jail, and whether he is dead or alive is unknown. I feel anxious every day and I frequently have nightmares. I am already in my seventies. My son has been imprisoned three times. On this last awful day, the whole family was working in the fields. I witnessed with my own eyes how a gang of policemen pounced on my son and handcuffed him while forcing him into a police car. At the same time two men held me back as I struggled, and kept me from resisting their unlawful arrest of my son. I fell to the ground as my heart was broken. I could only watch helplessly as the police car drove away with my child!
  • A Practitioner Recounts the Torture of "Desensitization" at Beijing Women's Prison

    On March 11th, 2004, I was taken to the Beijing Women's Prison. Since I refused to give up my belief, I suffered the most brutal tortures, both mentally and physically. Mentally, they forced me to watch video programmes and read books that slandered Falun Gong. They wanted me to write "confessions." Physically, they tortured me with sleep deprivation, forcing me to stand still all night in military postures. They would punch and kick me whenever they were not happy with me. Sometimes I was only allowed to use the toilet once a day. Verbal abuse, humiliation, kicks and punches, and slaps in the face were common practice. They attempted to use force to press me into giving up my belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance.
  • Ms. Wang Hongyan's Personal Account of Being Tortured in the Shulan City Detention Centre and Heizuizi Women's Labour Camp

    Ms. Wang Hongyan, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested on March 3rd, 2007, and her home was ransacked by police. She suffered inhumane persecution at the Shulan City Nanshan Detention Centre, and was later sent to Heizuizi Women's Labour Camp where she was ruthlessly tortured again. In the detention centre police ruthlessly beat Ms. Wang. Then a policeman poured a whole bottle of hot pepper liquid into a tube and said they were going to insert it into her nose. He splashed the liquid into Ms. Wang's eyes, and she couldn't open them.
  • I Long for Freedom

    When my two older sisters and I were arrested and sent to a detention centre, harshly punished, beaten, and forced to do hard labour, our father's hair turned grey overnight. When one of my older sisters, who was persecuted to the verge of death, was again arrested, our mother cried and shouted bitterly. She attempted to lie under the wheels of a car to stop her daughter's persecution. In a detention centre I was forced to do hard labour every day, and if I didn't finish my work on time, the guards deprived me of sleep. Only a small amount of hard rice noodles, which were cooked without any oil, was provided, and I saw insects floating in the muddy vegetable soup.
  • Please Help Free My Mother, Ms. Ma Lingxian

    The Chinese Communist Party began its persecution of Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. As a result, my mother, Ms. Ma Lingxian, was subpoenaed twice, fined three times, her salary reduced, her promotions were cancelled twice, detained three times, and her home was ransacked seven times. She was sent to the Nanmusi Forced Labour Camp and was harassed numerous times by officials. All this took its toll on both my mother's psyche and our family's finances. On July 19th, 2008, my mother attended her first class reunion in 30 years in Xichang City. She was arrested again after only two days. The reason was that during the Olympics, the local government had to keep "sensitive" individuals under surveillance to prevent any public appeals.
  • Ms. Zhang Hejun Severely Tortured: Feet Fractured, Fingers Burned, Force-fed Hot Peppers

    On April 11th, 2008, I was arrested by police officers. They were afraid that I would escape so they broke my right foot. When I arrived at the National Security Division office, four strong men stripped me of my clothes and handcuffed my hands to the back of a chair. They force-fed me something that immediately made my lips swell and become numb. To prevent me from crying out, they covered my mouth with a rag. Then, they force-fed me chilli pepper powder, red flower oil (burning herb extract), boiling water, and inserted dirty water through my nose. They also used toothpicks to put chilli pepper powder up my nose, which hurt very badly. I was in so much pain and could hardly breath, then these four men grabbed my legs, two men on each side and pulled them apart.
  • My Family Suffered Decades of Persecution Due to the Chinese Communist Party's(CCP) Tyrannical Rule

    I started practising Falun Gong in the year 1996. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, I was arrested, beaten, detained, fined, my house was ransacked and my family was implicated. Because I married another Falun Gong practitioner, the CCP personnel wanted to make me undergo a forced abortion. After appeals from various parties, the regime officials failed in their evil plan. The persecution my family had suffered is a clear manifestation of the cruelty of the tyrant CCP.
  • The Tortures I Was Subjected to in a Lanzhou Brainwashing Centre

    At the end of 2004, I returned to work after I was released from three years in a forced labour camp. From 2005 to 2006, my workplace kept asking me to write a so-called Guarantee Statement to declare that I wouldn't practise Falun Gong any more. I refused. On January 9th, 2007, Public Security Bureau police dragged me out bed and took me to Lanzhou City Brainwashing Centre. They tried force-feeding me. They pulled me up by my hair and made me face up, then they tried to push a plastic feeding tube through my nose. They tried numerous times without success. I almost suffocated to death, and I struggled due to the agony. They stepped on my legs so I could not move. The handcuffs rubbed the flesh off my left wrist. Later they forced drugs into me. The drug was bitter, numbing, and caused nausea. I was tortured on and on.
  • I Am a Chinese Citizen That's Been Deprived of My Rights

    Ever since 1999, when Jiang Zemin's [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] regime started persecuting Falun Gong, my family has not had a single normal day. The joyous life was no more. It is a fact that I have benefited both physically and mentally from cultivating, and that my family lived in harmony and all of my illnesses were cured. I didn't understand why they wouldn't let us practise. As a Chinese citizen I went to petition. My rights as a citizen permit this, and I told everyone who was there of the physical and mental benefits of practising Falun Gong. On September 18th, 1999, I went to the Office of Appeals in Beijing to petition, but I was taken away by the police before I even reached the office. The next day I was sent back home to a local detention centre. Later I was sentenced to forced labour.
  • The Brutal Torture I Suffered at Shenyang Women's Prison

    I was arrested on November 9th, 2003 for distributing leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong. In April 2004, I was sentenced and sent to Shenyang Women's Prison in Liaoning Province. I was assigned to Group 3, Ward 1, infamous for its brainwashing of Falun Gong practitioners, with a high success rate in "transforming" [forcibly renouncing Falun Gong] the practitioners. Police officer Li Zhe directed convicted murderers to torture me around the clock. They tied me up and beat me, stripped me naked and poured cold water on me. They also put drugs in my meals. During the time they were drugging me, I was having mental breakdowns and suffered from depression, with frequent panic attacks. To this day I still do not know what drugs they used on me.
  • On the Eve of the Olympics, an Unbreakable Will

    In an image that so rarely escapes from China, Zhang Lianying is telling her story of horror. In Beijing Women's Forced Labour Camp Zhang was slapped, kicked, beaten, strangled, abused, deprived of sleep, had her private parts attacked. She was beaten or strangled into a coma 14 times. She says all parts of her body were violated and injured. Because she refused to renounce Falun Gong she recounted: “They tied up my hands and feet, lifted my feet and tied them to a chair, and used a rope from strips of bed-sheets to tie my neck to the back of the chair—so tight that I could not move."