Standing up Again after Being Tortured to Paralysis

My name is Yang Yuzhu. I am 52 now and I started to practice Falun Gong in late 1998. Before that, I suffered from a lot of diseases such as myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, shoulder blade pain, rheumatism, lumbago, menstrual disorder as well as other problems. No matter how much medicine or how many herbs I took, there was no improvement in my health. After one of my relatives introduced Falun Gong to me, I decided to give it a try, with a mind that it would not do me any harm even if it was not true. To my surprise, however, the lumbago that I had suffered from for so many years suddenly disappeared after I learned the first set of exercises. Then all my diseases disappeared one after another with the progress of Fa study and practice. When I really experienced the state of being without any illness as our Teacher had described, my gratitude to Teacher was beyond description. Dafa teaches people to be a good, selfless person who is always considerate of other people, enlightening to the meaning of life. However, just as I was getting rid of diseases and beginning to work well at my job, on July 20, 1999, Jiang launched the terrible nationwide suppression of Falun Gong.

In order to clarify the truth and let people know that the suppression was wrong, I exercised my constitutional right as a Chinese citizen, and went to appeal in Beijing. After I walked into the appeal bureau there, I found that many policemen were stationed there, forcibly searching whoever came to appeal for Falun Gong, confiscating their personal property and Dafa books. Then they divided the visiting Dafa practitioners according to where they were from and sent them back to their local jails or detention centres. All the repatriated Falun Gong practitioners were falsely charged with "disrupting social order."

After I was sent to the local jail, a policeman named Li Jianguo robbed me of the only 20 yuan I had left. In the jail, the guards had the drug addicts monitor the Falun Gong practitioners. A drug addict was instructed to monitor me. She prohibited me from practising Falun Gong and studying Dafa, and beat and swore at me from time to time. Some fellow practitioners' relatives sent money to them, but the head of the inmates often used the money without the practitioners' consent, to buy expensive food from the jail.

According to the specific terms of the law, anyone committing "disruption of social order" should be jailed for only 5 days, but the police prolonged my imprisonment unreasonably. During my detention, they charged me 5 yuan every day for food. A month and a half later, before they set me free, the police also extorted 700 yuan from my family as the so-called guarantee of not going to Beijing again [500 yuan is equal to the average monthly salary of an urban worker in China]. So far, the money has not been returned.

In May 2001, I was arrested again for telling people about the truth of Falun Gong. I was taken to the "610 office" of the police department to be tortured [the "610 Office" is 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]. There, the Deputy Police Chief, Peng Luyan, and some other policemen bound my arms behind my back with nylon wire, and then put mop handles under my arms and raised them till my feet were off the ground. My arms were severely sprained by this torture and it was unbearably painful. After that they threw me to ground. Peng stomped on my head with his foot and beat me with a wide leather belt. The torture lasted for hours until the symptoms of my heart disease reappeared. After that, they handcuffed me to a heating pipe. With the help of Teacher, I managed to escape with righteous thoughts, and then had to move from place to place in order to avoid being arrested again.

In order to discover my whereabouts, the police often harassed and threatened my relatives. As a result, my sisters, who also practice Falun Gong, had to leave home. This was at a time when my brother was terribly ill and needed dialysis. The policemen were never considerate of the fact that my sister-in-law could not be away from his bed, and they kidnapped her in handcuffs and brought her to the "610 office." They threatened her to find out my whereabouts. She was not released till 2:00 a.m. Due to the scare my brother's disease accelerated, and he died soon afterword. At my brother's funeral, the police planted many secret agents, and tried to arrest my sisters there. Later they found two of my sisters and took them to the "610 office" of the police department. They were tortured terribly in order to find out my whereabouts and finally sent to jail.

I was found by the police on June 10, 2003. Upon being arrested and taken to the Shanhaiguan Police Station, I held a hunger strike for 2 days. Then I was taken to an office of the city's "610 Office" for interrogation. Because I shouted "Falun Dafa is wonderful!" on the way to the office, a policeman surnamed Lin punched my neck and head, causing my face to become swollen and distorted. Upon arriving, a policeman named Xu Yingbing grabbed me by the handcuffs and dragged me up to the sixth floor, and together with a policeman surnamed Lin, they bound me with white nylon wire. After stuffing a dirty rag in my mouth, six policemen began to torture me simultaneously. Some of them kicked and beat me wildly, some took turns grabbing me by the hair, and others stomped my fingers on the ground. Wang Xianzeng, Vice Leader of the department, poured water into my nostrils. At night, they handcuffed me and locked me to a metal chair. They interrogated me in turn but failed to get any answers. Finally they showed me a fabricated confession that they wanted me to sign, but I gave them no response.

The next morning, in order to escape from further persecution, I managed to jump out of the window of Wang Xianzeng's office. I fell to the ground from the sixth floor and passed out immediately. Fearing that my life was in danger, the police sent me to the city hospital. Experts from Beijing and other doctors diagnosed that the injury would lead to severe paralysis.

When I fell from the sixth floor, my terrible appearance caused by the torture shocked all the people that were passing by. The police lied and said that I had carelessly fallen while cleaning the windows. Due to the police torture, there was a big blood blister on my head and several patches of my hair were missing. I was blue and purple all over and was bleeding from my nose and mouth. The bones of my arms and legs were fractured, my ribs and muscles were badly sprained, and my spine was injured in several places up to the neck. After I woke up I could not move, and every muscle was terribly sore and painful.

I firmly believe in the power of Dafa, so I was unmoved by the hypocrisy of the evil.. After convalescing at home for months, the supernormal power of Dafa manifested in my body again as I studied the Fa and practised the Falun Gong exercises. I could stand up and step outside again! I used my own experience to clarify the truth to people so that they would realise that Falun Dafa is indeed wonderful.