A Practitioner's Experience of Torment and Anguish

I began to practise Falun Dafa in early 1999. In July 1999, just when I started to experience the beauty of Falun Dafa, Jiang Zemin's regime initiated its bloody persecution. Many fellow practitioners visited government offices to clarify the truth, but they were arrested, beaten and sent to detention centres and labour camps. Practitioners attending universities who refused to sign the "Three Statements" or" Five Statements" [prepared documents to denounce Falun Gong] were not issued diplomas. They were not allowed to apply for graduate studies. Practitioners in teaching positions who did not write the "regret letter" were threatened with brainwashing classes or labour camp sentences. People's lives were grossly violated. It caused the practitioners tremendous psychological damage.

In July 2000, I went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa. The police arrested me at Tiananmen Square and forced me into a police van. They warned me, "Shut up! Behave!" I saw blood on the seats. A young policeman wiped his shoes with our banner and stepped on it afterwards.

Six fellow male practitioners ages 20 to 60 and I were sent to Beijing's Xicheng District Police Headquarter. I refused to cooperate with the police during photo taking and fingerprinting. Four policemen twisted my arms to my back and grabbed me by my hair. Because I refused to tell them my name and address, they kept me up for the whole night and tortured me. At about 4:00 a.m. the next day they transferred me to the Xicheng District Detention Centre.

I was forced to bow down against the wall and raise both hands backward, so that my back and arms touched the wall [police officials have named this position, "Flying the Airplane"]. Since I could not stand without moving as they required, they whipped my buttocks with rubber-soled shoes and caused heavy bruising. I strongly protested against the abuse and refused to follow their orders. Four criminal inmates threatened to beat me up. I stopped their aggression with a firm stance. At noon, the police forced several dozen practitioners to squat outside because we refused to tell them our names and addresses. We were verbally abused and forbidden to talk.

In the afternoon we were sent to Langfang City. On our way there, dozens of police vans passed by. Each van carried about ten people, including women with babies, old and young people. In the Langfang Detention Centre they forced us to do manual labour. We rose at dawn to work every day. We were given two meals a day with only steamed corn bread. In the evening we slept on the cement floor, so overcrowded that everyone could only sleep on his side. The heat kept me from sleeping. Two days had passed. I still refused to tell them my name and address. The local police took me and several other practitioners for enquiries. After I refused to talk, the police captain and the political instructor handcuffed me together with a female practitioner in her 40's and forced us to stand under the burning sun.

They promised that I would be freed and could return home by train if I tell them my name and address. I was fooled and told them my name and address. They immediately dropped their promise. They forced my family and employer to pay 2,000 Yuan [Yuan is the Chinese currency. The average monthly salary of an urban worker in China is 500 Yuan] and pay for an expensive dinner to bail me out. It cost several thousand Yuan in total.

In October 2001, because I was persistent in practising Falun Dafa, police from Division One of my hometown police department arrested me. They took all my Dafa books without a search warrant. In the evening, they led me blind-folded to an unknown place. In the enquiry room, they handcuffed me to a tiger bench (a torture device). Two policemen in their 20's told me that they had forced an older lady to stay outside in the winter for a whole night. She fainted in the cold and was injected with medicine to wake her up in the morning. They threatened to beat me so badly that I would lose control of my bowels and bladder. They said that to avoid the pain, it would be better if I cooperated. I said no. They drank some alcohol and then slapped my face. They also shocked me with an electric baton and poured cold water on my body to intensify the shock. Then they cuffed my hands backward, and pulled my hands against my back. The handcuffs cut into my wrists; blood was everywhere. The nerves on my hands were injured so badly that my hands felt numb and were without sensation for months afterwards. An older policeman in his 40's taught his younger partner how and where to beat me to cause more pain and how to make me lose control of my bowels.

On the second night, the police sent me to a detention centre, where I was strip-searched. Every day we had to get up at 4:00 a.m. and were given a palm sized piece of newspaper to be used as toilet paper. We were allowed to wash our faces once every two weeks. More than a dozen people shared one basin of cold water. Every day at 7:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. was mealtime. Everyone got a bun or a corn meal bun weighing about 100 grams and a small bowl of vegetable soup. During the day, we were forced to sit still and recite the detention centre rules. During the cold winter we had to sit under the open window everyday. A fellow practitioner in my cell went on a ten-day hunger strike to protest. He was tortured by force feeding. Because he had scabies all over his body, the criminal inmates whipped him with shoes. They even called it "beating the scabies." His buttocks were beaten bloody. Another practitioner next door was forcibly chained because he refused to recite the rules. Another practitioner was sent to a labour camp after his hunger strike.

Because of my firm belief in Dafa, the police sentenced me to one and a half years in a forced labour camp, the Chaoyanggou Labour Camp, whose medical clinic filled out a physical exam form without any medical examination to qualify me as being fit to do hard labour. At the beginning they forced me to sit next to an open window as the cold winter breeze came through. They forbade any movement or talking. I vomited so badly that I could not eat anything. I complained but no one responded. My trouble with eating continued for several months. The labour camp police brainwashed me daily, which included viewing videos and reading books that slander Dafa. They forced us to write reports on our "thoughts." We were told to include language that badmouthed Dafa and Teacher.

Steadfast Dafa practitioners were subjected to extended or renewed sentences. After they exhausted all possibilities to keep practitioners in this labour camp, they sent practitioners directly to brainwashing centres. For those who still refused to give up practising Dafa, the police would not hesitate to re-sentence them to labour camps or even prison terms.

From December 24 to 26, 2001, hundreds of Dafa practitioners were sent to the Chaoyanggou Labour Camp from Tonghua, Liaoyuan and Siping, cities in Jilin Province.

That night quite a few practitioners were brutally beaten by the police and criminal inmates. A practitioner from Division One was brutally beaten by the police after he tried to stop Deputy Director Wang from beating other practitioners with a wooden board. Practitioner Li Ou from Division Four went on a hunger strike after the police forcibly transferred him to Division Five following his protest for mistreatment. The camp police force-fed him with hot and salty corn soup until he lost consciousness. They had to rush him to a hospital emergency room. After he woke up, the police picked him up and sent him back to the camp for continued torture. The salt made him extremely thirsty, yet the police refused to allow him to drink water. They didn't even allow a wet towel to clean his face. The police demanded that Li Ou stop his hunger strike before he was allowed to drink water and wash face.

Dafa practitioner Bai Xiaojun from Division Four refused to be brainwashed. After he had scabies all over his body, the guards ordered some criminals inmates to pour salt water on him to cause severe pain. Because Jin Qihui from Division Five resisted the brainwashing, police encouraged several criminal inmates to beat him on his lower back, causing severe injuries. He had to stay at a 90 degree bowing position and his legs were too weak to carry any weight. Even after that, the police still dragged him to the dinning hall for public humiliation. At the beginning of April 2002, perpetrators from the "610 Offices" [an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems] in Jilin Province and Changchun City ordered that the transformation rate for practitioners to give up Dafa had to be 90% or higher. Consequently, police in the labour camp worked overtime on Saturdays and Sundays. Loud sounds from torture and screams were heard all over the camp. In Division Six, determined practitioners were called into the office one by one. The police would torture them and then send them to a cold shower. On a Sunday morning at 1:00 a.m., everyone in the camp was awakened by loud and painful screams. Shortly after, a frightening, dead silence settled over the camp.

Under this kind of terror, I suffered extreme physical and mental damage. I went into depression and stayed very quiet. Because of my labour camp sentence, my nearly 70-year-old parents also suffered tremendous mental trauma. My mother became bedridden for a long time. My father lost a lot of weight and became ill-tempered. Because of police harassment, my brother's job was also put in jeopardy.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/7/3/53380.html