A Personal Account of Being Brutally Force-Fed

On December 16, 2000, while on my way to appeal for Falun Gong in Beijing, I was stopped and had my personal belongings illegally searched. Immediately following the search I was abducted and taken to the Harbin Railroad Detention Centre in Heilongjiang Province. In protest of the persecution I asked that I be unconditionally released, and eight other practitioners and I started a hunger strike appeal.

At first the police spoke to us in a very soft, friendly tones; they then threatened us and eventually they began force-feeding us. They brought in five strong young male criminal inmates who pushed me down. Four of the criminal inmates each forcefully held down one of my limbs while a fifth one held down my head. The head of the jail, Xu Changbao (a male around 30 years old), carelessly squeezed my nose and used forceps to separate my teeth. He then picked up a big bowl and used it to quickly pour high-density salt water into my mouth. The other practitioners who were also on hunger strike with me received the same treatment. Without waiting until we swallowed the salt water, Xu Changbao would again force-feed us with another bowl of extremely salty water causing us to cough and vomit. I used my tongue to block out the salt water and vomited it out. He became very angry seeing me vomit and continued forcing me to drink the salt water and shouted, "force-feed them to death and let's see if they want to eat or not!" My neck, cotton jacket, and the clothes I was wearing became all wet, causing me to become extremely cold. Due to not eating for several days, my stomach felt very uncomfortable as if it was burning from the salt water. We had to suffer this kind of force-feeding every day.

On January 4, 2001, Xu Changbao was on duty once more. Again, he brought over five criminal inmates to press my head down and used two forceps to hold my teeth and tongue. Then he poured extremely salty water into my mouth. I was choked so badly that I immediately sat up. He was very angry and forced me down again and kept pouring salt water down my mouth causing me to cough and vomit. Each of us suffered from this force-feeding method for at least a half an hour. There was another practitioner who was older than me. She suffered from the same force-feeding from Xu Changbao, and could barely breathe. Her face turned pale and it took some time for her to be able to breathe again, but she was so weak that she could not walk and we had to carry her back to the jail cell. After she came back to the cell she lay down on the floor for a long time. Her hands became very cold and were still handcuffed. She could not move at all, but nevertheless the police shouted, demanding that she sit upright right away. She curved her body and painfully lay on the floor. She even told me her will in case she died.

In September 2002, I was jailed in the Harbin Drug Rehabilitation Centre's forced labour camp. We started a hunger strike because they forcefully took away Teacher's articles from us. On the fourth day of the hunger strike, they began force-feeding us. First they force-fed Gao Shuyan (a 32-year-old Harbin resident who was being detained for the second time in labour camp) and Yang Ruiqin (a Hulan resident, over fifty years old, who was also being detained for the second time). They dragged these two practitioners into the toilet. The male police held them while the female police did the force-feeding. Both practitioners refused to cooperate. Yang Ruiqin's lips bled from the force-feeding. On the fifth day of the hunger strike they forced us into a hospital room to force-feed us using a tube. The length of the plastic tube was more than three feet long. The tube was forced into my stomach through my nose, making me feel very nauseous. It felt like the contents in my stomach were turned upside down; the mucus in my nasal passages became bloody and tears were pouring from my eyes. Sometimes the nurse was not in a good mood and was therefore careless while force-feeding us. They would scold me while quickly inserting the tube into my body, causing my nose to bleed. It was truly unbearable. The nurses all came from a public security hospital.

In October 2002, Gao Shuyan, Wei Jun, Zhang Guixiang, and I were protesting because we were only being given one meal a day. Zhang Guixiang started a hunger strike. The police brought in two criminal inmates to administer the force-feeding. In order to reduce their sentences, criminal inmates would madly torture us in front of the police. The inmates sat on top of Zhang Guixiang's body, pressed her head down, and force-fed her. However, by that time she had already been on a hunger strike for eighteen days. She couldn't stand up straight or sit properly because she was so weak. Later on they gave her IV drips, but she did not cooperate. Therefore she was tied to a bed and then given the IV drips.

Practitioner Tang Zengye, from Daqing City, went on a hunger strike in protest of the persecution. Every time she was force-fed, the police would pull her already-weak body from the bed to the floor, then drag her from the fourth to the third floor and make criminal inmates block the door to prevent the bloody scene from being seen by the rest of us. Police officer Zhao Wei (a female around 30 years old and the vice division leader), used an electric baton to shock Tang Zengye's face and said, "Let's see if you dare to go on a hunger strike again." Later on this practitioner was tied to a bed and injected with IV drips.

These inhuman people not only force-fed us, but also demanded that we pay for it. Practitioner Xing Yuzhen went on hunger strike for 39 days and the police claimed that their force-feeding her had cost more than a thousand yuan [500 yuan is roughly the average monthly salary of an urban worker]. They asked her family to pay this cost before she could be released.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/11/15/60634.html