Jilin Province: Four Years of Atrocious Torture Recounted by Female Dafa Practitioner

The Chinese ruling Party has forced many tribulations upon me because of my steadfast belief in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance. I lay on the verge of death several times during their atrocious tortures. In 1999, the Chinese Party illegally removed me from my government position and detained me multiple times. The persecution has shattered my once happy family and forced me to become homeless in order to escape further persecution. The following is an account of the Chinese ruling Party's persecution against me over the past four years.

I. Falun Dafa Cures My Illnesses; The Chinese Communist Party Persecutes Me for Speaking the Truth about Falun Dafa from My Personal Experience

Prior to practising Falun Dafa, I suffered from many ailments that caused me intense pain. In June 1998, a friend of mine gave me a copy of "Zhuan Falun" [the main text of Falun Dafa] as a present. The first time I opened the book, I couldn't stop reading until I had finished it. I felt like a blind person who had suddenly regained her vision. "Zhuan Falun" answered the questions that I often pondered but could not find answers for. Thus I decided to practise Falun Gong. Then a miracle happened: Several months after I started to practise, all of my ailments disappeared without a trace. I made a decision: I will become the best among the best people, by cultivating myself according to the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance.

Jiang Zemin started to persecute Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. I tried to approach the National Council's Appeal Office in Beijing on September 20, 1999, to speak the truth about Falun Dafa from my personal experience. However, I had to postpone my appeal, seeing that the National Council's Appeal Office was surrounded by police officers who detained everyone who tried to approach. I returned home but came back to Beijing on October 25, 1999. As soon as I arrived at Tiananmen Square, several police officers approached me and demanded that I curse the founder of Falun Gong. I told them that I wouldn't curse or use violence even when I disciplined my son. The police officers said, "This woman must be a Falun Gong practitioner!" Before I could even say anything, they pushed me into a police car and threw me into Fengtai Stadium. When I arrived, Fengtai Stadium was filled with Falun Gong practitioners that the police had abducted in Beijing. There I witnessed police officers savagely beating Dafa practitioners. We were detained in Fengtai Stadium for one day and one night. During that period of time, we were denied food and the use of the toilet. Afterwards, we were transferred to Miyun Prison.

First, the police officers in Miyun Prison savagely beat and cursed Falun Gong practitioners. Next, they stripped off our clothes and body searched us. Then we were forced to squat with our feet together for an extended time. Throughout the ordeal, many practitioners lost their strength and balance, and collapsed on the ground. Feeling I had reached my physical limit, I sat down on the ground and started to practise Falun Gong's sitting meditation. Several male police officers ran to me, restrained me against the floor, and shackled both my hands and feet. Those iron shackles were handmade by the police officers in Miyun Prison. They weighed a total of 33 to 44 lbs. and were thickly coated with reddish rust. I was handcuffed behind my back with this type of iron shackle while the police officers removed my shoes. They then dragged me to the courtyard covered with sharp gravel, and forced me to walk in circles with only my socks on. I once slowed my pace, and a tall and stout policeman kicked me in the back. I fell on my knee from the impact, and had to struggle for a long time to get up with my hands weighted down behind me with 44 lb shackles. Several hours later, I was completely worn out, but the police officers still would not let up. They immediately held me up by my arm and dragged me, forcing me to jog in this fashion. The police kept dragging me with my feet grinding against the rough ground until they were too exhausted to continue. My socks were completely torn through at the toes and could not protect my feet. My feet were severely injured from the abrasion, and both my wrists and ankles had swelled so much that the rusted shackles bound them tightly, resulting in even more injuries and bleeding. The severe abrasions disfigured my wrists, ankles and feet so severely that the injured areas resembled bloody, festering masses. Nevertheless, the police officers at Miyun Prison would not remove the shackles. In fact, they kept me in these shackles for six days and six nights. Because of the heavy shackles, I had no choice but to sleep upright against the bed board every night instead on lying down on it. I could not use my hands to feed myself or to use the toilet. To add to the humiliation, I was menstruating at the time. I could not use my hands, and I was denied access to any toilet paper or sanitary napkins, leaving me no option but to soil myself. The pain and psychological humiliation was beyond description. By the time I was transferred to Jilin City Detention Centre, my ankles were festering from the abrasion that my anklebones were visible, sending me into spasms of agony, literally to the bone. For half a year after the rusty shackles were finally removed, I had difficulty walking on my own. Even today, large and highly visible scars remain on my ankles, silently telling the story of the brutal torture I endured.

The police illegally detained me three times because I appealed for Falun Dafa, even thought my appeal is a right warranted by the Chinese Constitution. Each time, I was subjected to tortures of different severity. In addition to the physical and mental tortures, the police extorted 4,000 yuan from me [500 yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China].

On February 15, 2000, the police abducted me while I was exchanging cultivation experiences with a fellow practitioner. I asked a police officer what right they had to arrest me for talking to my fellow practitioners. He said, according to orders from the top, it took only two Falun Gong practitioners appearing in the same location to constitute an illegal assembly and justification for an arrest. The police then detained me in the Qingdao Police Station in Jilin City where I was forced to spend the night. The police also stole my wallet and took the 300 yuan I had. The next day, I was transferred to the First Detention Centre in Jilin City. The disciplinary guards at the detention centre ordered the inmates to watch us and prevent us from talking to each other or practising Falun Gong exercises. Twice I was punished for practising the exercises by having to squat for a long time. One time, they forced me to squat for over 10 hours. My legs were so swollen afterwards that I lost the ability to stand. I started a hunger strike to protest the illegal detention and tortures. On the sixth day of the hunger strike, the disciplinary guards tortured me with by force-feeding me a mixture containing two handfuls of cornmeal mixed with half a pound of salt. [Note: Overdose of salt in the diet will result in stomach cramps, diarrhea, kidney damage and poisoning. This is evidence that forced-feeding is used to torture Falun Gong practitioners, not to resuscitate them or prevent them from dying of hunger while on hunger strike.] During the force-feeding, I already started to develop a lower stomach cramp and stomachache. As soon as the torture finally ended, I struggled to sit up despite my frail condition, because I knew I was ready to vomit. No sooner than I sat up that I started to vomit everything out. As a result of the forced-feeding, my lips and mouth were injured, and my stomach pain were so intense that I stood bent over and holding my stomach. For a very long time, I could not eat normally.

II. The Dark Forced Labour Camp

On March 8, 2000, I was sentenced to one year at the Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp in Changchun. Seven other Dafa practitioners were locked in the same cell with me. One of them was Ms. Wang Rui, who had just turned 18 at the time. We were all detained in an isolated hut. To introduce us to the labour camp life, Ms. Hou Zhihong, a disciplinary guard in the 4th Squadron who administered new inmates, gave us a warning: "Whoever practises Falun Gong will be punished with painful torture." Then she pulled over a Dafa practitioner, Ms. Gao Liang who had done absolutely nothing, and shocked her with an electric baton for a long time. "Better not let this happen to you!" she warned us.

Every day we were forced to sit still and remain in a stiff position on the bed board. Under the watch of prison inmates, we were not allowed to talk or move. Every day we were forced to sit still for over 10 hours. On other days they made us perform forced labour for 17-18 hours a day. On worse days we were forced to work for even longer hours and slept no more than 2-3 hours a night. If at anytime we slowed down the pace, we were subjected to beatings and curses. The long hours of forced labour and the denial of a minimal amount of sleep often caused the elderly Dafa practitioners to collapse. I wrote many petition letters to appeal, and petitions for lawsuits against the staff of Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp and Jiang Zemin, but never had I received any response. When I asked the disciplinary guards what had happened to my petitions, they said, "What is the use of writing those letters? Do you think we are going to send these letters? Do you realise that we already have several sacks of similar letters from Falun Gong practitioners?" Once when I mentioned the petition letter again, the Captain of the 4th Squadron, Ms. Guan Wei, started slapping my face violently. To avoid hurting her hand, she grabbed a clothes hanger and kept hitting me with it until she had broken the clothes hanger into pieces.

Later on during our incarceration, over ten of us began a hunger strike, demanding our unconditional release, but the staff of the Camp responded to our protest with abusive forced-feedings. They restrained me to the bed and forced a thick rubber tube that was not designed for medical use into my throat. They tried for a very long time to put thin corn porridge (or clear corn soup) into the non-professional hard rubber tube without any success. It caused me to choke and made me think I was going to die. For some reason my will to survive helped me to push away the disciplinary guards and I sat up. I pulled out the tube right away, knowing that I had experienced a close encounter with death. I felt extremely weak and I could not stop coughing, but the disciplinary guards pretended to hear nothing. They pulled the next Dafa practitioner over, and inserted the hard rubber tube, which was fresh from my throat and thickly coated with my mucus and phlegm, into her throat. Regardless of the number of practitioners they force-fed, they used the same hard rubber tube throughout the torture without cleaning the tube at all. As a result of this abusive forced-feeding torture, I suffered from constant coughing and often coughed out blood.

On May 13, 2000, Dafa practitioners in the 4th Squadron began another group hunger strike, protesting the illegal detention and persecution. This time the Chair of the Administration Department at Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp, Ms. Yue Jun, with the assistance of her staff, tied us up on frames with steel mesh [a conductor of electricity]. While torturing us with the abusive forced-feeding, they shocked us with electric batons on the mouth, neck and the rest of the body. The steel mesh sprang up with each electric shock, accompanied with sparks all over the place. During the abusive forced-feeding and electric shock, the hallway outside the "health centre" at Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp was filled with a frightening mix of noises from the electric batons, crying, wailing, and retching. Ms. Yue Jun walked toward me and said, "Since you are the only Dafa practitioner I know here, I will make you an example to the others!" She attacked me with the electric shock baton for a very long time. During the shock torture, large blisters started to appear on my entire body, including my neck. When my sweater was burned and torn from the high voltage of electricity, she removed my sweater, tied me to the steel mesh, and resumed the shock torture for such a long time that it seemed like the electric shock would never end. In the end, everything turned dark before my eyes. I was in agony.

In July 2000, in order to attain the goal of making each and every Dafa practitioner renounce Falun Gong, the Captain of Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp, Ms. Zhang Guimei, carried a hard rubber club and a wooden baton with her at all times, torturing Dafa practitioners at will. During that period of time, the determined Dafa practitioners constantly suffered from all kinds of atrocious tortures. The entire forced labour camp was enveloped with terror. One day, a disciplinary guard tried to make me read a book that slandered Falun Dafa. I refused to comply, so I was forced to stand while holding the book over my head for three consecutive days. Each time I was forced to do so for at least two hours. It was such a painful muscle strain that I started to suffer from a painful involuntary spasmodic contraction of my arms. Nevertheless, I refused to read the book. On the 4th day, Caption Zhang Guimei summoned me into the forced brainwashing room where she shocked me with two electric batons at the same time. She used one electric baton to shock my face, and the other to shock my body. Meanwhile, she tried to scare me: "Open up your eyes and look at the fire sparks!" I could not have opened my eyes even if I wanted to, due of the impact from the electric shock on my face. In fact, I started to drool involuntarily. She tortured me in this fashion for the entire morning, but I did not give in. Instead, she was at her wits' end, in the presence of my righteous spirit. By the time she stopped the torture, the large blisters on my body had been broken open by the electric shocks. My clothes were damp with body fluids and mucus. When I exited the room, my face was burned black, deformed, and swollen. In fact, my eyes were so swollen that I could only see through tiny slits. Some fellow practitioners were terrified at the sight of me and burst into tears. That night, I was unable to sleep due to the excruciating pain. I felt as if I had been grilled over a fire.

In August of 2000, Captain Zhang Guimei decided to resort to a new approach, which she called "negative reinforcement." She locked several of us who maintained our steadfast belief in Dafa into a small warehouse, and made us sit absolutely still in the double lotus with our arms behind our back for eight hours every day. A disciplinary guard, Ms. Zhang Xiaohua said, "I will shock whoever dares to move with an electric baton!" We were also denied the use of toilet. All of us ended up having blisters on our legs which filled with blood. Some of us kept retching and experienced excruciating pain. A fellow practitioner, Ms. Wang Xiufen, twitched her body a little bit, and several guards dragged her to the front where they punched and kicked her. Then Ms. Wang Xiufen was forced to continue with the double lotus position immediately afterwards. They tried this "negative reinforcement" approach for three consecutive days, but none of us gave in.

III. The Evil Police Hospital

Before I was sent to the police hospital, the staff from the detention centre asked for two thousand yuan from my younger brother, saying the money was needed for my medical treatment. On December 9, detention centre staff, guards, and a doctor from the local medical station all got in a car, to put me in custody at the police hospital. They kept threatening me, saying that they had many ways to deal with me in the police hospital. Ms. Wang Kefei was persecuted to death there in 2001.

Once inside the police hospital it was like being inside a closed cage. I continued my hunger strike. The guard locked my hands and feet to the bed so that I couldn't move. Then he tried to insert a thick rubber tube into my stomach. The tube was too thick and couldn't be inserted after several attempts, and this caused me to cough and lose my breath. The guard didn't care at all and kept inserting the tube into my nose. After a long time the tube was finally inserted. By then I was sweating profusely and had no strength left. They said that "more was coming," and started inserting a catheter tube into my urethra. It was tremendously painful and I trembled all over. I couldn't breathe and was in extreme pain, and I felt like I was drifting between life and death. They threw me on a bed and put me on intravenous drip. The guard shouted, "Nobody is allowed to care for her." The urethra tube slipped out and they didn't put it back, leaving me lying in my own urine on the wet blanket.

There were two other prisoners in the same room, one a Dafa practitioner. Seeing the urine-soaked blanket, she put a spittoon under my lower back to help collect the urine. After one night, my lower back was severely injured causing intolerable pain. That night I had phlegm in my throat all the time and I couldn't move because I was chained to the bed. I almost suffocated to death. The other practitioner was very compassionate and she helped me remove the phlegm. The next day she left this place so the guard said, "she is gone, see who else will look after you!" For four days I had the tube in my stomach and was fed only once with the milk powder and orange juice my brother bought for me. They didn't remove the tube because they wanted to leave it in, to cause me pain. After the tube was left in for long time, my throat began to swell and I coughed continuously. No one looked after me while I was restrained tightly on the bed. I could only move my head a little when I needed to cough the phlegm out, so it was all over my face and body. The urethra tube slipped out and my urine dripped onto the floor. The other criminal prisoner used my cotton trousers to wipe the floor clean, and cursed me for me soiling the environment. During the day the regular criminals accused me of being dirty and went to stay in other rooms. Before they left they opened the window purposely to let in the cold air. That was in December in Northern China (the average temperature is between minus 20 and minus 30 degree Celsius) and I was wearing only underwear. In addition, the bed was wet and I was only covered to my chest. I couldn't move, and I endured pain, cold, blame and humiliation every day.

My prison roommate said that she had stayed here for over one year and had seen too many people tortured in this way. For example, Ms. Yu Lixin, an employee of the city government, had to endure the same torture, and then she was tossed out into the hallway. Ms. Yu Lixin went on hunger strike for four months, and nobody took care of her. Later she was force-fed, the urethra tube slipped, she was soaked in urine and had bedsores all over her body. She was persecuted by the police in the hospital until she died from the constant abuse on May 4, 2002.

They forced intravenous injections in me and always left the needle in me. I had to beg a roommate to pull the needle out. When she was not in good mood she would swear. Sometimes the needle moved, and nobody cared about it. The needle moved in my muscles and legs. My feet were very badly swollen and I was trembling due to the pain. On the second day a doctor examined me and called the forced labour camp.

On the third day after the intravenous injection was over, no one came to remove the needle. I didn't beg them this time. I looked at the empty bottle and slowly closed my eyes [note: It is common medical training and procedure to never leave an empty IV bottle connected to a patient. If the air from the bottle enters into the vein of the patient through the IV needle it can cause an embolism and kill them.] I had been tortured beyond tolerance, and thought it was all right to die. If I died, I died because of the persecution. Not knowing how long had passed, I opened my eyes and I saw the empty bottle still up there and I was still alive. A warm feeling came to my heart. My compassionate Teacher! I must do well not to let down your benevolent salvation!

At that time the guard came in accidentally and saw the empty bottle. She blamed my roommates for not watching me. On the fourth day, fearing responsibility should I die, the forced labour camp let my brother take me home. I had finally escaped this evil place.

IV. Life Outside the Prison

The police had arrested me six times since 1999, and caused my family a great deal of pain. Before the police threw me into the forced labour camp, they forced my husband to divorce me against our will. Hence, I had no home to return to after I was released and I became homeless. Later I moved into my mother's home and stayed with her and my young brother for a short period of time, but the police frequently came and harassed us. Sometimes the police would even break into my mother's home in the middle of the night, causing my mother and brother to live in fear and terror. In addition, the police fired me from work in 1999, because I appealed for Falun Dafa, and thus cut off my income. Later, my former employer granted me 150 yuan every month which was only enough to pay for the most minimal living expenses in the urban area of Jilin City. However, I could not pick up the paychecks in person because I was in jail, nor could I authorise anyone else to pick them up on my behalf. After I was released from the prison, I went to the bank to pick up the paychecks, but the bank teller refused to give them to me because I was a Falun Gong practitioner. Thus I was robbed of my most minimal and only monthly income of 150 yuan.

On June 30, 2003, the police force in Gangyao Town, Longtan District was told by an informer of my truth-clarification activities, and abducted me. On the same day, the police ransacked my mother's home and confiscated all of my Falun Dafa books. My 74-year-old mother was so terrified during the raid that she nearly fainted several times. That night, I was thrown into Jilin City First Detention Centre. The cell only had one large bed but was packed with over 20 people, so I had to sleep on the floor. At the detention centre we were forbidden to practise the Falun Gong exercises.

I started a hunger strike as soon as I arrived at Jilin City First Detention Centre. I told the head and the disciplinary guards that they shouldn't persecute Falun Gong practitioners simply because we believed in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance. They replied, "We are merely following the order from the top. Now that you are here, you must comply with our laws." On the third day of my hunger strike they started to torture me with abusive forced-feedings twice a day. They made seven to eight inmates who had no medical training perform the savage torture. Together, they restrained me and pinched my nose while pressing down my tongue with a spoon to pour in the liquid food. Sometimes, they poured the liquid into my nose, adding to the insufferable pain.

On the fifth day of my hunger strike, the head of the Centre threatened to punish all of the inmates in the cell with sitting in a fixed position for an extended time together with me, as well as denying them any break in the courtyard if I continued with the hunger strike. (Because Jilin City First Detention Centre does not allow any visits, the inmates can only see their families standing on a distant hill during the break in the courtyard, which is given only once in several days.) The head had meant to incite the inmates' resentment toward me with the threat. He also made me sit on the floor all day long. On the sixth day, they ordered the inmates in my cell to make me stand still for one day and one night. The inmates kept punching me until I almost collapsed every time I twitched or dozed during the standing torture. My cheek, nose and lips were injured from the inmates' frequent and hard pinching. In fact, my check became prominently swollen. Later they inserted a stomach tube in me and left it in for several days. They also denied me sleep. Once, I collapsed to the floor, and the inmates pulled me up and woke me up immediately telling me to stop "acting." They watched me day and night to prevent me from pulling the stomach tube out. I pulled the stomach tube out many times, but each time I was subjected to a brutal beating.

I endured the most insufferable pain inflicted upon me and struggled to clarify the truth about Falun Dafa to the inmates in my cell. They agreed with my reasoning, and said, "It's true that you Falun Gong practitioners do not fight back when you are beaten or sworn at." On the eleventh day of my hunger strike, the staff from Gangyao Town Police Station came to pick me up. One of the inmates in my cell held my arms and begged me not to leave. She said, "I want to learn Falun Dafa from you." When I finally left the cell I saw her collapse on the floor, and I felt an intense sadness. A disciplinary guard saw what happened and approached me saying, "Falun Dafa is indeed all about the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance. Today I truly witnessed the compassion in Falun Gong practitioners. In fact, I believe you have done the right thing to clarify the truth about Falun Dafa."

I was originally sentenced to two years in the forced labour camp, but the laboru camp had to release me because my health had dropped below their minimum standard as a result of their atrocious tortures. Thus I survived and escaped the torture at the forced labour camp once more. However, the local police forcefully warned me, "If you refuse to repent and give up Falun Dafa, we will arrest you again." Despite the release, I was forced to leave home and go into hiding in order to protect my family from the police's terror again.

This concludes some of the typical cases of the persecution I have suffered so far. After all, we can never finish presenting the infinite number of crimes that Jiang has committed against Dafa practitioners. Finally, I wish to say that no tribulation of any kind will stop the righteous and kind people from believing in and longing for Falun Dafa and its principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance!

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/11/17/60737.html