In August 2003, at the end of my term, I was released from prison. That ended the difficult and nightmarish experiences I suffered in the hell-like Qianjin Prison. Today I want to expose what has been going on inside Qianjin Prison, now officially called the Qianjin Prison of the Beijing Qinghe Prison Administration Division and the abuse and torment under persecution I personally suffered for the past three years there.
My name is Mr Lin Shusen, and I was born in 1974. I have a Bachelor's degree and I am a Dafa practitioner in Beijing.
In August 2000, people from the First Division of the Beijing Police Department took me against my will because I printed 20 copies of Dafa truth clarification material. The Chaoyang District Court in Beijing then unlawfully sentenced me to three years of imprisonment. Since January 17, 2001, I was illegally detained and forced to serve the sentence in Qianjin Prison at Chadian/Tianjin City. Members of the former Dafa Research Association Wang Zhiwen, Ji Liewu, Li Chang and other practitioners are now detained there.
I was in the first group of Dafa practitioners who were unlawfully sentenced and imprisoned. Ever since the moment I was put into the prison, the evil personnel started to persecute me in order to force me to renounce my belief in Falun Dafa.
On January 18, 2001, the 2nd day I was imprisoned, they began a programme of brainwashing and physical violence against me. At that time, I was extremely weak physically because I had been detained for over four months in Chaoyang District Detention Centre, Beijing and the Beijing Police Department located at Banbuqiao. I also had severe scabies infections all over my body and I was suffering enormously from intense itching.
I was forced to run daily soon after I was incarcerated in Qianjin Prison. That was during the coldest season in Chadian and in the cold wind that chilled one to the bone. I had to run 50 laps around the basketball court in the morning and 50 laps in the afternoon. The prison guards claimed it was me to "rehabilitate" my physical condition; actually, the guards wanted to have me freeze in the cold weather and said I would not have to run anymore if I renounced my belief in Falun Dafa. Each time after running I felt extremely exhausted and painful. With the sweat soaking into the wounds of the scabies infections, I suffered a feeling that was hard to describe. Comparing the physical pain I suffered in the prison, the psychological torture was even more painful. The wardens, systematically, found some material about the legal system and some material that defames Falun Gong and everyday they forced me to read this information again and again, in order to brainwash me. But the cruellest means was to deprive me of sleep. I was only allowed to have two and a half hours of sleep each day. The criminal prisoners assigned to follow and watch me were with me around the clock. If I closed my eyes they would jab me awake right away. When they tried to brainwash me using force, I kept on clarifying the truth about Dafa to the wardens with a compassionate mind. The wardens at last had nothing to say; all they could say was such sentences as, "be aware of the situation" and so on, showing that even they felt discouraged [by the lies].
By the end of January, because of the extreme sleep deprivation, I became so sleepy that my nervous system turned numb; I could almost fall asleep at anytime, even when I was standing up. But as soon as I closed my eyes, the criminal prisoners who were monitoring me would jab me awake right away. Over those 15 days of both mental and physical torture they failed to "reform" me, because I firmly believe in Dafa.
On January 30th 2001, a TV station aired the monstrous frame-up of the "Self-immolation on Tiananmen Square" and the evildoers arrived in overwhelming numbers. The wardens and people from the "610 Office" in the Qinghe Police Division wanted me to write down my feelings towards the deception; therefore I put on the paper, "This incident is to slander Falun Gong and to interrupt the normal life of the society." The wardens became angry. They finally discarded their hypocritical masks and showed their brutal and ferocious nature.
On the morning of February 1st 2001, the 6th Section warden Liu Boquan, and Xu and the section head Cai, together with other police officers, started to electrically shock me. They ignored my extremely weak body and my severe scabies infections, and ignored also that I had been suffering their torture for the past 15 days. They started to use two 33,000 Volts electric batons to shock me continuously for five minutes on my head and neck. Seeing that I didn't give in, they got more violent! They borrowed a whole barrel full of these batons from other sections. All the police who were on duty in the 6th Section at that time came to me. Each of them held one or two batons and they continuously shocked me. To suppress my painful and intense struggle, they cuffed my hands behind my back and stepped on me. I couldn't move at all. They shocked me on the sensitive parts of my body including my palms, the arches of my feet, my head, neck and my genital area. Hundreds of thousands of Volts and continuously shocked me. The air was filled with the smell of the burning hair and skin.
This was a torture when I felt living was worse than being dead. Each minute or each second felt as long as one century. It was felt as if the flesh on my body was being cut off in small pieces, with numerous knifes, and I had extreme difficulty breathing; I was struggling at death's door. It was an extremely painful suffering. At that moment I felt the taste of an ancient torture described as "Cut in pieces alive." By around noon I could not stand it anymore. I finally collapsed. I was forced to write down the "statement to renounce my belief." After that, a warden told me that they had used eight electric batons at the same time when they were "reforming" me.
According to my knowledge, most of the cases where practitioners renounced their belief resulted because of high pressure and savage torture.
Xu Chengzao was the first practitioner who was forced to serve the term in prison in the 2nd Section. He was a government official, a former Party member and a deputy director for the community committee in Beijing's Shunyi County. The wardens tried both "hard and soft" tactics for three months to get him to renounce his belief. They failed. After they had used up all their tricks, the wardens instructed the criminal prisoners who were assigned to follow and monitor him to torture him through the the whole night.
Li Baoshu was the principal of a school in Beijing. Since he shouted out loud, "Falun Dafa is Good" in the prison in 2001, he was shocked with eight batons by the political instructors Cao, Chen and other wardens. Almost all the practitioners were shocked with electric batons when they started their prison term there. Kicking and beating by the criminal prisoners were common occurrences. I was beaten twice by a criminal prisoner named "Zhang Tao, nicknamed "Bighead Fish," beat me twice with a belt.
Tang Jichang was a practitioner held in the new Qianjin Prison. He was imprisoned in mid-September 2002 and was a hemiplegic (semi-paralyzed). When they tried to force him to renounce his belief in Falun Dafa, they forced him to stand still for a long time, sometimes up to 18-19 hours in a solitary compartment. He was forced to stand straight without making a single move and he was only permitted four hours sleep per day. This torture lasted for a week. His lower leg eventually swelled up as large as his thigh.
There were many of incidents of these kinds of torture in the Qianjin Prison.
On March 3rd, 2001 I was transferred to the most vicious section of the prison--the 2nd Section. This was a "strictly monitored" section, which was a cruel and brutal environment. This section was run almost the same way as that of the "concentrated training team." Every day that passed I was under extreme mental stress. When under the strict monitoring, we had to sit on a small stool, 10cm high (4 inches), with two hands on the knees and with legs closed. They did not allow any gap between the two knees and our back had to be straight. We were forced to sit this way from 5:00 a.m. in the morning when we woke up, until 10:00 p.m. at night. We were not allowed to make a single move and even our vision could not shift and were forbidden to speak. They assigned one criminal prisoner to each Dafa practitioner, to watch him from behind; any slight move would earn him kicking and beating. We were required to conform to the wardens brainwashing program and renounce our belief which they described as a "new life". The wardens clearly understood that everyone had not truly renounce their belief, but with their brutal methods they framed everything with lies and controlled everything with horror and inhumanity. I spent a seemingly endless nine months in the 2nd Section suffering this inhuman treatment until I was transferred out of there after I suffered a mental collapse that resulted from enduring relentless torture.
From the moment I was forced to write the "renouncing my belief statement" against my will, I felt extreme hurt and bitterness in my heart. I felt bitter and ashamed to face Teacher Li and Dafa. This mental pain and suffering was much worse than the physical torture I endured. It slowly consumed some practitioners' will, depressed them, caused them to become dejected and plunged them into a self-blaming mode for a long time.
By July 2001, the 2nd Section had detained more than 20 practitioners. Li Chang, a member of the former Falun Dafa Research Association and Zhu Keming, a native Hong Kong Dafa practitioner were also transferred to the 2nd Section from the North Division. Ji Liewu was separately detained in the 5th Section. The police were trying hypocritical ways to force him to renounce his belief at that time. Wang Zhiwen and others were detained in the 7th Division of the Qianwei Prison.
However, force can't change a practitioner's heart. On July 21, 2001, the prison guards wanted us to put on a show in the Juvenile Forced Labour Camp about our life after renouncing our belief. Before we went, our Dafa practitioners all agreed among ourselves that we would use the opportunity to explain the facts about the persecution on the stage and expose how we were tortured into renouncing our belief. But due to too many evil factors and due to our human attachments, including fear, we didn't make it. On July 22, the second day after we came back from the Juvenile Forced Labour Camp, all the Dafa practitioners in the 2nd Section collectively declared that their actions of renouncing their belief were null and void. This action jolted the evildoers heavily. Qinghe Police Division officials and persons from the "610 Office" were shocked by the simultaneous declaration by practitioners that they still believed in Falun Dafa after being subjected to the strongest and most brutal means the authorities had contrived to brainwash them. Practitioners actions made the evildoers realize that the "reformation" they wanted to obtain from practitioners would never come true.
On November 1, 2001, I read a letter written by a person from a labour camp in Beijing after he had renounced his belief and became brainwashed. That person had a post-graduate educational background. I was taken in by it and also started to agree with his understandings which were contrary to the principles of Falun Dafa. During a later forum, I did things that shamed me before Teacher Li and have put a blemish on Dafa. On November 8, the 2nd Section hosted a forum including people who used to practise Falun Dafa, practitioners' family members, wardens and criminal inmates who were assigned to monitor Dafa practitioners. The forum further included the spouses of Li Chang and also Yang Jie, my ex-wife whom I was forced to divorce after I was imprisoned, one of my former college classmates, and the family members of some other practitioners.
On November 18, 2004, construction of the new prison building was completed and we were moved into the new building. The new "Qianjin" prison was formed by consolidating four existing prisons - the old Qianjin Prison, Qianwei Prison and two other prisons.
In late November of 2001, due to the long term torture and the stressful life since I was imprisoned, I started to have frequent nightmares and woke up from nightmares, screaming. One time, because I sat on the bed with legs crossed, Chen, a political instructor on duty dragged me out and electrically shocked me. He then locked me into a small compartment. A few days later I was again dragged to the office and shocked by a team head named Liu. Such torturing severely disturbed my mental state and finally led to my complete mental collapse. I suffered a nervous breakdown that lasted for seven months. I have doctor's medical diagnosis certificate from the Qinghe Hospital in Chadian.
After I regained my rational awareness, an inmate in the 11th Section who was assigned to monitor Dafa practitioners told me that I had been transferred to the 11th Section in mid-December 2001 and in the following seven months I had been confined in a small compartment. I was often handcuffed, shackled and forced to wear a straight jacket, tied up in it all day long, lying on a bare wooden board except for the time I went to the toilet. I could not make a single move. My family was unable to get any information about me then. In mid-July of 2002, I regained my rational state of mind.
I passed the rest of my days there in the 12th Section and was released in August 2003 after I had completed my term. That was the end of the three years of hell in my life in this world. Carrying the entrusted legacy, wishes and expectations from many practitioners, I left the place that I'll never forget, and left my painful experience there.
The persecution I suffered is just a very small example of the persecutions that hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have suffered. Right now, numerous Dafa practitioners are still suffering from the persecution. Here I call on to all the kindhearted people with a sense of justice and intuitive knowledge: please, reach out your hands of help, to stop the evil persecution that is happening in Mainland China and to hunt down the head criminal.
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/3/25/70869.html
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