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."

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!"

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.

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.

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 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."

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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."

When Falun Gong practitioners are sent to the Shanxi Women's Prison, the guards there directly confine practitioners in a solitary confinement cell, where practitioners are forbidden to sleep, wash themselves or even use the toilet. Moreover, the guards allocate tasks to other prisoners, ordering them to "'Transform' [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] practitioners no matter what methods you use." This encourages prisoners there to unscrupulously persecute Falun Gong practitioners in order to curry favour with the prison administration.

Ms. Yue Changzhi, 70, twice appealed for justice for Falun Gong, and was arrested and detained multiple times. After being forced to leave home to avoid being arrested again, the police put Ms. Yue on a nationwide wanted list. Later, the State Security Ministry arrested her younger daughter in Beijing, tortured her, and finally arrested Ms. Yue Changzhi at her younger daughter's home. They sentenced her to four years in the Beijing Women's Prison. Due to the many tortures she endured, Ms. Yue's life was frequently in danger. Her spine was fractured in two places and because she received no treatment or rest, her spine was seriously bent, and her lower back twisted severely.

Falun Gong practitioner Liu Yuhe from Jilin Province was sentenced and sent to Jilin Prison, where he was tortured. His family members' demands for justice have gone unanswered. To protest the persecution, Mr. Liu went on a hunger strike, but the prison guards tortured him with forced feeding. Mr. Liu suffered severe injuries in prison. He lost control of his bowels and bladder and was in critical condition. He was taken to a hospital for emergency treatment. His family authorised a lawyer to sue Jilin Prison officials for abusing him, but the prison authorities threatened the lawyer with retaliation. To rescue Mr. Liu, his family filed an accusation with the Jilin Province justice system, and demanded that he be released on medical parole. They have yet to receive a reply.

Ms. Xia Jinyu is a fifty-seven year-old practitioner. Ms. Xia was held in detention for forty days after taking care of a Falun Gong practitioner on July 26th, 2001. She recounts her experience in detention: "An officer struck me, saying that what he did was good for me. I questioned them as to how that could possibly be good for me. Even though I was under arrest, I wouldn't have allowed others to suffer such torture. Then, that officer stood up and hit me again. The left side of my face was bleeding; the right side was stained with blood. After midnight, they took me to a room infested with mosquitoes and handcuffed me to a metal stool."

In November, 2000, I went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practise Falun Gong. I was arrested and detained in the Erzhigou Detention Centre for 15 days and forced to perform labour for more than 14 hours daily. In December, 2001, I went to Beijing again with other practitioners. We hoped to petition and deliver letters for the right to practise Falun Gong to the Beijing Petition Office. Police took me to the Dongxihu Detention Centre for another 30 days and tortured me. Then they took me to a brainwashing centre. Three people that had renounced Falun Gong beat me and threw me on the ground. My back was injured and was sore for two weeks. They also burned my fingers with a cigarette butt.

On December 22nd, 2009, at 6:50 in the morning, I opened the door to go to school. A group of people rushed in, and without saying anything, they began to madly take all our Falun Gong materials. They took away many Falun Gong books, two computers (one of which was my dad's work computer), a printer, a cassette recorder, and some CDs and cassettes. After they made a huge mess in my home, they arrested my entire family and took us to Dadong Police Station. Later, they took my mum to Baifang Detention Centre in Dandong City, where she is to this day, still being tortured.

My name is Pei Fei and I am a Falun Gong practitioner from Jilin City, Jilin Province. On April 29th, 2009, my mother, also a practitioner, and I went to the Sixth Team in Yongqing to distribute Falun Gong materials. We were reported to the authorities by a young woman and were arrested by several government officials dressed in black, some of whom were police officers. Our materials were confiscated, and I was savagely beaten. They also attempted to send me to Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp in Changchun City.

Dr. Huang Pingping, a 32-year-old Falun Gong practitioner, graduated from Jiamusi University in Heilongjiang Province. After graduation, she went to the hospital in Shan County, Shandong Province to work as an obstetrician in 2002. She was arrested by the police and sent to the Shandong Province No. 1 Women's Forced Labour Camp for two years of forced labour for practising Falun Gong.

77-year-old Mr. Chen Binggan has suffered from persecution. He recounts: "Since the persecution began in 1999, I have been arrested more than 20 times, held for a total of over 1,500 days. My residence has been searched and ransacked over a dozen times. The first time, the town government officials asked me if I practised Falun Gong. After I replied positively, they arrested me. Later, I was arrested numerous times, even when I was sleeping in my bed. Since I knew that I had not done anything wrong by following Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, I refused to submit to the vicious pressure from the government; I refused to write any statement to denounce Falun Gong. I have been tortured many times. The tortures that I suffered include being hung up and brutally beaten."

Mr. Wang Qiming, 69 , was arrested by police, and all kinds of barbaric torture was inflicted upon him at the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. Wang Qimin describes his experience: "We were forced to sit on board, watch fake news and slanderous videos made by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and answer endless questions every day. The practitioners who refused to be "transformed" [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] were punished by having to stand against the wall. You could not close your eyes, and your nose had to touch the wall. There were people watching you all the time, and they kept extending the duration of the punishment. If a practitioner still refused to be "transformed," he would be taken to a special room to be tortured by the "Stretching Bed" method."

Ms. Guo Wenyan and her family from Ningxia Province were seriously persecuted. Because she refused to give up her belief, she was fired by her company. Officers from the local police station and the Security Section of her previous workplace went to her home regularly to harass her family, confiscated her personal property, and even arrested her many times. Her second baby was killed by officials from the local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when she gave birth. Her husband, who used to be a police officer, developed a mental disorder due to the persecution.

Ms. Sun Rui is a teacher from Dalianhe Town, Yilan County, Heilongjiang Province. Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999, she has been detained four times and held in forced labour camps for two years. She has been extorted out of eight thousand yuan while in custody. In addition her workplace didn't pay the salary owed to her, amounting to four thousand yuan, and they also demoted her pay by two levels, resulting in a loss of over ten thousand yuan. Her total economic loss reached thirty thousand yuan.

Ms. Zhang Hui is a retired doctor and a Falun Gong practitioner. In September 2007, after she put up some Falun Gong flyers in a public area, she was arrested. One month later, she was sent to the Sanshui Forced Labour Camp in Guangdong Province. During her labour camp term, the 60-year-old woman was subjected to a variety of tortures. She recounts: "Criminal inmates often tortured me. One day drug offender Zhang Hua grabbed my arms and bent them behind my back with all her strength. The pain was unbearable. After a while, I lost feeling in my arms, and my elbows swelled up and turned purple. I was later sent to Sanshui Hospital, where a CT scan revealed a head injury and a broken bone at my lower back."

Six police officers broke into my home on September 29th, 2006, and ransacked it, making everything a mess. They took away my personal belongings, such as Falun Gong books, a computer and a printer, and confiscated three thousand yuan. They took my non-practitioner husband and me to the Changsheng Police Station. I was then persecuted at a detention centre for more than 40 days and then sent to a forced labour camp. I couldn't study the Falun Gong teachings and practise Falun Gong exercises while in detention. My former illnesses returned. As I went to the toilet one morning I fainted and fell down. The police doctor there had no pity on me and kicked me with full strength, saying I was pretending to be ill. The guards still forced me to do heavy physical labour and I had a heart attack.

Mr. Liu Cheng is a practitioner who has been imprisoned as a forced labourer three times. During his three imprisonments, he suffered numerous tortures, such as brutal beatings, hung up by hand cuffs, sleep deprivation, electric shocks, iron chair, "buckle poking soft ribs", "scratching muscle seam", "gripping testicle", "five horses splitting a body", "lasting stretching", "hang thousand weight at waist".

In March, 2007, a fellow practitioner and I went to a small town to distribute leaflets and tell people the facts about Falun Gong . We were reported by a villager and police tried to arrest me. I would not go with them. Yang Shaoliang dragged me on the ground for several metres. Later they detained me in the detention centre. On March 12th, Liu Jianping interrogated me. They handcuffed both of my hands. When they could not get answers for their questions, he took a book and slapped my face hard with it twice. At the detention centre, since I did not agree to give my fingerprints, the director of the detention centre ordered criminals to put shackles on my feet.

Li Yuhua has been detained four times since 1999. She was detained in the No.2 Detention Centre of Yilan Town for 267 days, where the food, such as corn buns and cabbage soup, was dirty and contained grass, soil, rat faeces, flies and other contaminants. She was also sentenced to a four-year term at the Wanjia Forced Labour Camp in Heilongjiang Province. Between 1999 and 2003, she was detained at a detention centre or forced labour camp. In a detention centre she was force-fed. She recounts: "Two prisoners held my hands and others pinched my nose to stop my breathing through the nose. Another pinched my face. One used a chopstick to probe my teeth and another brushed my throat with a tooth brush. Then, they poured salt water into my mouth and I was almost asphyxiated."

I am a mother in my 70s. In September 2009, my son, Lu Zhiyong, came to visit me but was arrested on his way home. I have been worried about his well being ever since. Recently I heard that he will be tried in Heishui County Court. In 2001 police arrested Zhiyong for going to Beijing to make an appeal for Falun Gong. They sent him to the Xinhua Forced Labour Camp for an 18-month sentence. Zhiyong was tortured in many different ways in the forced labour camp. He was forced to stand still from 6:00 a.m. to midnight. The next day, he was beaten in the chest so brutally that he was unable to talk or even move without a great deal of pain. He was tied up with very thin ropes eight times within ten days; he was shocked with one to four electric batons at a time; and he was beaten with a club covered with nails.

On August 26th, 2009, Jiang Zongping, a Falun Gong practitioner from Neijiang, Sichuan Province, was sent to the Neijiang Brainwashing Centre by local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) personnel. Ms. Jiang recalled the torture she endured in the brainwashing centre: "I was detained in the brainwashing centre for more than forty days. During those days, I was forced to watch the videos that they produced to condemn our teacher and Falun Gong. They employed all kinds of lies and dirty words to defame Falun Gong and our teacher. I was forbidden to make a single movement."