7 Year Old Practitioner Ruthlessly Beaten by Tiananmen Square Police

In July of 2000, my child decided to go to Beijing with me to kindly tell the facts about Falun Gong to the government. The same day that we leased an apartment in the Qingta residential area of Beijing, we were abducted by the Qingta Police Station. The police confiscated my laptop computer valued at 20,000 Yuan without giving any sensible reason. The police also confiscated thousands of Yuan from another practitioner. We held a hunger strike to protest the mistreatment, and we were released after three consecutive days of hunger strike. [ Yuan is the Chinese currency. The average monthly salary of an urban worker in China is 500 Yuan].

On July 20, my son and I went to Tiananmen Square, to say, "Falun Dafa is good!" to the public. We were arrested and pushed into a vehicle by some plainclothes police officers. My son was seven years old at the time. In the vehicle, the police violently twisted my son's hands and ears, and did not let go even though he was crying loudly from the pain. I also was badly beaten by the police. The police struck me in the ears, bruising and causing swelling to my face and ears. We were later detained in the basement of the Tiananmen Square Police Station. The police tried to deceive my child, trying to trick him into denouncing Teacher, but my son did not respond to them. Later on, the police took a 9-year-old boy to another room and closed the door. They slapped the boy's face hard, causing bruises and swelling. They wanted to force the boy to tell them his mother's name and address.

We were illegally detained from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. My son had a stomachache due to hunger. It wasn't until he was rolling around in pain that the police finally released us. Later, I ran into my younger brother at Tiananmen. He had come to Beijing to find me. My brother told me that he checked into a room at a nearby hotel, and that on July 20 plainclothes police had rushed into his room. They beat my brother before asking a single question. After the beating, they asked my brother if he practised Falun Gong and then did a complete search of his luggage. Even after they knew that my brother was not a Falun Gong practitioner, they were not satisfied, so they further intimidated and forced my brother to denounce our Teacher, threatening to arrest him otherwise. My brother was frightened and dumbfounded. He felt great fear about staying in Beijing any longer because he saw that even people who did not practise Falun Gong were being persecuted. He asked me and my son to leave Beijing as soon as possible.

It was very late at night, and the three of us stayed at a hotel. We could not get travel tickets for the same day, so we bought the tickets for two days later instead. The three of us stayed at another practitioner's home at the Qingta residential area. The next morning, a police officer from the police station recognised me, so he detained three of us in a small jail cell at the police station for two days and nights. They tried to force my brother and my child to denounce our Teacher. My child indignantly questioned the police, "It is wrong to swear at others. The police should not hit and swear at others, so why do you still make people swear at others?" In the very hot, small cell, the three of us were detained groundlessly. We could not sleep or bathe. We were illegally detained there for two days and nights, and they did not release us until the scheduled time for our tickets out of town.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/6/26/52903.html