Why Are Good People in Prison Instead of with Their Families?

When I was in college I had a gastric ulcer. My health became worse when I finished school and started to work. My stomach started to give me trouble again. I often had fevers and felt uncomfortable all over my body, and I suffered from insomnia. My health was worse than that of an old person.

In spring of 1997, I got to know Falun Gong through a classmate who was a practitioner. When I first attended the study group and read the article entitled "Genuine Cultivation," Master's benevolence and the purity and righteousness of Falun Dafa deeply touched my heart. I started my Falun Dafa cultivation. Since then, there was no more pain from my stomach. I could eat anything. I felt light, balanced and happy. I could fall asleep right away and suffered no more from anxiety.

The college classmate who used to support me in practising Dafa and knew that Dafa rescued me was my ex-husband. Not long after we were married, the persecution against Dafa had begun. The local police kept checking me every day after "April 25" and threatened him as well behind the scenes. His work unit and persons from his immediate department also put pressure on him. During that time we temporarily stayed at his brother's apartment, whose work unit put pressure on his brother not to allow us to stay. We suffered with this situation for a few months.

Until July 20, 1999, my ex-husband was scared and was afraid of being implicated. He started to beat me. I was just silently suffering. He knelt down to beg me to give up the practise. I stopped practising for a few days, but I awoke and cried at midnight every day. I resumed the practise. He started to refuse to eat what I cooked and stopped talking to me. Later he said he would rather have a wife who was not as good as me as long as she did not practise Falun Gong, to bring him a peaceful life. I thought as a couple we couldn't suffer together and go through tribulations as well. He pushed me so hard that I agreed to get a divorce. I felt very hurt. I lost my home and stayed at my work unit's dorm.

At the end of October 1999 I asked for a leave and went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa again. I was arrested immediately after I walked into the yard where the Appeal Office was located and sent to my hometown's Beijing Liaison Office. I spent a chilly and windy day there without any food. The next day my work unit sent me to the local police station and then to a county detention centre where I was detained for half a month. When I was released, people from my work unit came to pick me up and then charged my brother 300 Yuan for "transportation fee." [Yuan is the Chinese currency. The average monthly salary of an urban worker in China is 500 Yuan.].

I was under the close watch of my work unit. I was not allowed to freely leave the factory or the dormitory building. The situation lasted until I met my current husband. Just before I married, the local police station authorities wanted to know from my work unit leaders where I was going to be married and wanted to follow me, even on my wedding day. I sternly refused to answer such an enquiry.

We formed a truly wonderful family. Both work units, though, kept pressuring us to write a "guarantee statement." When I was pregnant, I was transferred from a relatively easy job to an extremely tense one. I had to work with my back bent all day long. When I was five months pregnant, I couldn't keep up the fast pace. I felt short of breath sometimes. I couldn't eat well and was exhausted. I was not allowed to take a leave, a request that was denied with the excuse that higher authorities had to be informed and special permission must be obtained, since I was a Falun Gong practitioner. Their purpose was to force me to give up Falun Gong. Without any other way out, I wrote a statement to protest the persecution against me and handed in my resignation. [The so-called "Guarantee Statement" is a statement to declare that he or she is remorseful for practising Falun Gong and guarantees not to practise Falun Gong again, not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and never again associate with any Falun Dafa practitioners].

My work unit supervisor came to my house and directly pressured my father who came to see me. My father worried too much and had to be sent to the county hospital the next day. Since then I have never seen my father smile again. He suffered from dizziness and couldn't stand without losing balance since then. The secretary of the department told my husband, "If she wants to quit her job, she has to state that she wants to quit her job because of her own health problems; otherwise authorities from the local police station will not allow it." We rebuffed his suggestion because the statement I wrote was to protest the persecution against me and I therefore had no other choice but to quit my job.

My husband was often called "to have a talk" to force him to give up his beliefs. We peacefully lived our own life at home but they didn't leave us alone. All kinds of pressures came without end. In spite of this situation, my husband decided to go to Beijing to appeal for Dafa during the New Year holiday, since it would be difficult to go after the baby was born. Sadly, we have had no news from him since he left. His work unit sent me a letter and claimed he got fired. I refused to accept the letter.

Ten days or so before the baby was born, three plainclothes police from his work unit or the police station came to my house at around 10:00 p.m. and started to search my house without showing any identification. They told me that my husband reported his name under torture and with concern for me, but then escaped. They wanted to catch him by monitoring me. I was shocked and called the neighbours to expose these men. I told them I would not conspire with them to persecute good people. After two hours, they apologised to me and left, but I was already in the extreme pain of pregnancy. My father-in-law came and took me to his home.

Later I had a difficult labour and suffered one day and one night. My husband could not be with me. I didn't tell my own family about my situation in case they were worried about me. My baby was born and looked very lovely and intelligent.

Just after I was gradually released from my pain, 40 days later, the baby suffered a little cold and was sent to a hospital. Two days later, just before we were going home, while I was washing my face in the toilet, a woman patient in another bed in the same room wanted to play with the baby and tried to feed the baby milk. She somehow choked the baby since she didn't know how to feed an infant. I rushed in when I heard the baby crying. My child was revived after several attempts but died after much suffering. I am a practitioner. I didn't blame anyone for the accident, but my heart was filled with pain, facing these tribulations of my two closest family members.

After returning from maternity leave, the city where I lived started to hold brainwashing classes. My colleague Xiao Qi was sent to a brainwashing class by the work unit after she went back to work from maternity leave. I wrote a letter to my work unit and asked for a long-term leave. I stated that I had to take a longer leave of absence because of my personal suffering and the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners. The day that my work unit informed me to go back work and they had called several police officers to wait for me at the factory gate. Because of this, I didn't go back to work. In the fall of 2000, the director and the other leaders from my workplace announced that I was fired. At the same time, they sent another practitioner to a brainwashing class. Police officer Zhang, in charge of resident permits from the security department, even wanted to cancel my residency permit.

Police officers have come to both of our parents' homes, searching for my husband and me. They even fiercely grabbed the phone number from my old mother's hand, and stole our only wedding picture from my husband's home.

Last year, at the end of the summer and the beginning of the autumn, I was arrested when I was attending an experience-sharing conference in a certain county. Many policemen surrounded me in the yard and grossly abused me, kicking me and burning me with cigarettes. Keeping to firm righteous thoughts and compassion, I didn't give in and didn't cooperate with them. I was cuffed for three days while I held a hunger strike to protest. The first time they wanted to take my picture, the police chief slammed my head against the wall and two others tried to hold me. They used a metal plate to hit my bare feet. The second time when they forced me to have a picture taken, my body showed signs of my life being in danger and I was sent to a hospital for emergency treatment. A police supervisor duped me, telling me that I would be released once I got better. The next day, though, I was sent to a detention centre.

Since I didn't commit any wrongdoing, I refused to recite the prison rules and held several hunger strikes. I kindly and patiently clarified the truth to people around me and used all kinds of methods to refuse to have my photo taken. I had been force-fed during these hunger strikes. Because my oesophagus was very narrow and had been ruptured several times, they couldn't insert the tube and several times I almost suffocated, and was close to death. They kept repeating this to torture me. One of the practitioners had been tortured to death during force-feeding. They still didn't let me go. I was not allowed to see my family or accept any clothes from them. I was cuffed with hands and feet and was forced to have an infusion.

Later on my health became worse and worse. I suffered a decline in heart function and I could not breathe well. I had the symptoms of heart disease. After I finished my last public letter, I couldn't see clearly. I didn't want my family to worry about me. However, they understood my kindness and suffering and couldn't bear to see me detained. My brother was called in and paid 4,500 Yuan to bail me out without any receipt. I heard later that there was not a single prisoner inside who said bad words about Dafa. They already knew Dafa was good.

During the long detention term I had moments of wavering. I had desires to go home so I could practise and cultivate, but I knew I could not reach my goals by compromising. I could have had a happy life, family and good career, but the persecution took away all these and even almost the lives of all my family. It is a catastrophe for the kind, common people. Furthermore, persecuting righteous believers and cultivators is the shame of all Chinese people.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/6/5/51664.html