My Experience of Appealing in Beijing

A Female Dafa Practitioner in China

It was a winter day. I took a train heading for Beijing, and I arrived in Beijing at 10:00 p.m. Because it was dark, we did not know which bus to take. Then, we returned to the waiting room in the train station where we met two other Falun Dafa practitioners from my hometown. It was now time that the tickets would be checked (beginning at 12:00 a.m.). Six or seven police officers came over and asked us to recite profanities and to condemn the founder of Falun Gong. They said that if we refused to comply, then we could be identified as Falun Dafa practitioners. The police officers uttered foul words while they forcibly searched our bags. They emptied out all the contents of our bags on the ground. (How could our country hire such people to take care of the public security?) While the police officers were questioning other people, we took the opportunity to walk out of the waiting room.

After daybreak, we approached Tiananmen Square. Right after we set foot on the Square, a person in plain clothes asked us if we practiced Falun Gong. I did not pay attention to him. Then he gave a hint to the armed policeman ahead and asked him to hold me back. He asked me, "Are you a Falun Gong practitioner?" Then he asked a police vehicle to drive over, and two policemen forcibly dragged me to the van. I shouted loudly,"Come and see. The police want only to arrest people!" They pulled me into the van. I found that the van was already full. The police took us to the Tiananmen Police Station. And one by one, they asked for our names and addresses. We all refused to tell them. They seized our hair and collars, and pushed us to the back yard. I saw that there were a lot of Falun Dafa practitioners in the yard. One practitioner's face was swollen due to the beatings. The police seized her hair and pushed her to the yard. She shouted loudly, "Falun Dafa is good!" We shouted together, "Falun Dafa is good. Restore the reputation of Li Hongzhi!" Our voices reverberated through the skies. Each and every policeman there was extremely vicious. Later, there were more and more practitioners coming. So they divided us and sent us to different locations. Some practitioners and I were sent to the Huairou County Detention Center in Beijing.

When we arrived at the detention center, we were forcibly stripped and searched all over the body. They destroyed everything that we took with us. After finding money from my body, they threatened me, "If you tell me your address and name, I'll return the money to you. If not, we'll tear up the money." At that time, I thought I would rather tear up the money than tell them. So I took the money, tore it up and threw it on the ground. A policewoman was enraged and brutally slapped my face. As a result, my face became swollen. She seized my hair and knocked my head against the wall, kicked me, and repeatedly slapped my face. I felt no pain, just numbness. Then I was pushed to the courtyard in the cold. There were almost 140 people detained there, including elderly people and children. We were exposed to the cold from noon until past midnight, and the prisoners watched us. (What kind of regime is this? Bad people are controlling good people.) During this period of time, we were not allowed to squat, use the toilet, or talk to each other. The Falun Dafa practitioners did not eat or drink anything throughout the whole day. It was not until past midnight that the guards took us into the ward and numbered us. There were no blankets on the wooden beds. We had to curl up our bodies and sleep on the ice-cold bed.

The next day, we went on a hunger strike. When I was interrogated for the first time, the vile policeman asked for my name and address, but I refused to answer. Then he asked me, "Why did you come to Beijing?" I said, "I came to appeal. Li Hongzhi is innocent." He said, "Now that you dare to come, why do you not dare tell your name and address?" I responded, "To avoid the local government, police and family members from being implicated." The vile policeman said, "Do you think that we can't deal with you if you don't tell us?! Wasn't the June 4th incident (the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989) suppressed by the armed forces? Why don't we dare adopt the same way to deal with you?!" Later, he asked me to sign the detention card but I refused. I said, "I didn't violate the law." That policeman was irritated and he said, "You have violated the law simply because you came to Beijing. I will sign it for you if you don't sign." Afterwards, I was forcibly taken to the windy hallway where I was made to stand in the cold for an hour.

From then on, we were interrogated everyday. They asked only one question, "Tell or not?" If not, they would brutally beat and kick us, force us to stand in the windy hallway, not allowing us to wear coats or shoes. Some Falun Dafa practitioners had to stand in the snow barefoot and only wore thin cotton knit clothes. At one time, they stood barefoot on the freezing floor for four hours, only wearing thin sweaters. Their feet were frozen stiff. In the afternoon, they continued to stand outside for another four hours. (It was only quite a while after they returned home that feeling started returning to their feet, at which time they suffered from severe pain. Their ears were marred due to the brutal beatings, and they could not hear anything, and it was only after quite a while that they regained their hearing). Sometimes, right after we laid down to sleep, the police would pour ice-cold water on us, and the Falun Dafa practitioners in the ward were all soaked to the skin. The vicious police often cursed us. It was a very cold in winter in Beijing. What was shown on TV simply deceived the viewers. Huairou Detention Center is a hell on earth.

I was detained in Ward 25 at first, and then was transferred to Ward 20 with two other Falun Dafa practitioners. The women prisoners tried to force us to eat, and tried to persuade us for a while. After we refused, they stopped persuading us. (We told them that we were innocent, and that we requested to be released without charges). Later, we learned that they had obtained the Fa. The next day, we were transferred to Ward 22. Even under such conditions, we still shared our experiences, practiced the standing exercises and recited Hongyin (a collection of Master Li's poems) frequently. On the fifth day of our hunger strike, they force-fed us with some corn paste that had a lot of salt in it. It made us very thirsty, and we vomited. When they force-fed us for the second time, they inserted the tubes into the trachea, almost causing death by suffocation. When the vile police wanted to force-feed us for the fourth time, we all refused to follow them. They asked the male prisoners to carry us. The female guard seized my braid, and together with a male policeman, they pushed me onto the bed. They brutally beat me. Then several prisoners held and force-fed me. However, to my surprise, they released me that afternoon. Up to that point, we had been on a hunger strike for 12 days.

Source: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2001/11/3/15350.html