Beijing: City of Terror

By Xin Mingming

I thought the high pressure persecution policies throughout the Chinese system would be a little "restricted" when it came to a world renowned city like Beijing, because the Party wants to present a good image to the international society, and attract foreign investments. However, I was wrong. One by one "not so horrifying" stories revealed the city was covered with lies and violent terrors.

I met with Ms. Wang in the United States; she came from Beijing to visit her family. She is in her 60's and used to be an engineer. She is very small, very quiet, and practises Falun Dafa. In China, she lives in her husband's company dorm. No one knows her name since she is so quiet, especially because she talks with such a small voice.

Ms. Wang said, ever since the persecution toward Falun Dafa began in July 1999, her employer and police from the local substation repeatedly came to talk to her; her home phone was bugged; and, she was followed and abducted many times. Once, on her way to collect her retirement salary, she saw someone using his mobile phone, and soon afterward she was abducted by more than 20 people and taken to the local police station. For several days, the police stayed in their car right in front of her house from 6 a.m. to midnight, keeping her home under surveillance. People saw about 7 police there at all times, so they asked the police what were they doing, and the police told them that they were monitoring her. Since then, she has become well known.

Ms. Wang smiled when she spoke about how the police dealt with her, a woman with such a small frame.

It is rather funny, but more terrifying than what we have seen in movies "like the Jewish people who were persecuted by the Nazis, or Chinese people being persecuted in past political movements. In modern society, where do you ever see 20 police abduct a helpless 60-year-old woman?"

I asked her, can we find your story in any newspapers or websites? She said she never wrote them down, because compared with the cruel torture stories endured by Dafa practitioners exposed on Clearwisdom.net, her story is "too plain."

While she told me it was "too plain" to report, I thought to myself, "an engineer in her 60s, monitored, followed and abducted near her home--if all these things happened in America, the media would inform everyone, causing a general condemnation." After carefully reading about the persecution in Beijing on Clearwisdom Net, I started to understand why she said it is "too plain."

On the afternoon of January 5, 2004, Ms. Men Xiangrong, a resident of Fengtai District, Beijing, took her 16-month-old daughter, Men Xiaoyuan, to the playground. She was followed home by a plainclothes officer because she was passing out truth clarifying materials. Police and "610 Officers" surrounded her house and abducted her at 8 p.m., taking her to the Fangcheng Police Station. She and her daughter have been missing ever since. On January 6, the second day after Ms. Men's and her daughter's arrests, the police from the Public Safety Bureau, the "610 Office" the Neighborhood Office and Police Station, and Security Guards had a meeting and then claimed unanimously that they had released Ms. Men and her daughter. However, her husband has gone to the local Police Station, the Police Station in Fengtai District and Beijing City, even to the Public Safety Bureau, the State Department Appealing Office, and the Central Government Appealing Office to look for them, but has not been able to get any information about their whereabouts at all. The local "610 Office" viciously told him to file a "missing persons" report at the local Police Station.

On April 5, 2004, a 65-year-old Falun Dafa practitioner, Ms. Dong Xiuqin, was abducted in Wangfujing Street while posting truth-clarifying materials. She was detained in the Qiliqudongcheng Detention Centre in Shahe County, Beijing City. After 4 months, we heard both her legs had been shattered..

A 28-year-old college graduate, Ms. Xu Lei, who was a former employee of Qingshan Credit Union in Lin-an, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, was arrested while going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in 2001. Police in Beijing put her in a metal cage together with 3 German Shepherds.

Falun Dafa practitioner, Mr. Lin Shusen from Beijing, is 30 years old. He was arrested by police from the No.1 Department in August 2000, because he printed truth-clarifying materials. The Chaoyang District Court sentenced him to three years in prison. He was sent to Qianjin Prison located in Chadian, Tianjin City (now called Qianjin Prison of Qinghe Department, Beijing City). In order to force him to renounce his faith, the police tortured him by depriving him of sleep, forced brainwashing sessions, etc., but nothing worked, so police finally used electric batons to shock him.

Mr. Lin recalled, "On the morning of February 1, 2001, the 6th Section warden Liu Boquan, and Xu and the section head Cai, together with other police officers, started to shock me with electric batons. They ignored the fact that my body had already become extremely weak 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-Volt electric batons to shock me continuously for five minutes on my head and neck. Seeing that I didn't give in, they became even 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. With hundreds of thousands of volts they continuously shocked me. The air was filled with the smell of the burnt hair and skin. "(Ref: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/5/14/48052.html )

One Falun Dafa practitioner from Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province was abducted in January 2002 on Tiananmen Square. Police sent her to the Dongcheng Detention Center. After 8 days on a hunger strike, she was deceived and told she was going to receive a check up at the Beijing Police Hospital. Instead, she was taken to a dark basement. The basement was full of torture cells with monitors and hidden microphones. Handcuffs and shackles were placed on every bed. Terrible screaming and noise from electric baton shocks filled the air. She described the scene: There were "police carrying electric batons and cursing, like ghosts from hell. They violently force-fed Falun Dafa practitioners, injected unknown drugs, shocked practitioners with electric batons, punched and kicked, or cuffed practitioners very tightly onto the beds. The practitioners were not allowed to move, not even to use the toilet...Two or three police came and forced me onto the bed, cursing and pulling my hair, force-feeding me through my nose. They could not insert the tube, so they pulled it out and tried my other nostril which made me vomit and caused extreme pain. They would not take the tube out, which made it hard to speak, or breathe easily..."

Mr. Li Yuanchun is a lecturer at the Central National University. Because he appealed for Falun Gong many times, not only were his letters of appeal withheld, he was detained at the Qinghe Detention Centre of Haidian District and Tuanhe Labour Camp. The guards threatened him by saying, "You will either die or go crazy."

If all these terrifying facts still made me feel far away overseas, the following case forced me to look at the bloody persecution and forced me to think about what should I do when I see hand-knit sweaters with "made in China" tags.

A woman, in her 60s, lives in Sanlitun, Chaoyang District, and is a retired factory worker. On the afternoon of February 4, 2002, she was arrested while visiting another Falun Dafa practitioner. Police ransacked her home and sent her to a labour camp. First police tortured her, then they forced her to attend brainwashing sessions, and finally forced her to do labor. She had to pack more than 300 thousands pairs of chopsticks within 40 days, otherwise she would not be allowed to sleep or bathe. Later she was transferred to Daxing Women's Labour Camp, where she was force to hand-knit sweaters, scarves, gloves, and dog-sweaters. The woman recalled, "These products are exported and are of very high quality. The work caused severe pain in my hands, arms, and back; even scabies grew on my buttocks. The police would not allow us stand up to move around even a little. Police and prisoners would beat and curse us as part of their daily routine..."

Ms. Wang's calm smile appealed to me. Maybe her story is not as bloody as the above cruel cases. But exactly how many more of these "too plain" terrors are happening in Beijing right now? During the past 5 years of persecution of Falun Gong, Beijing has become a real city of terror.

"610 Office:" A national agency created to persecute and "reform" practitioners, while destroying Falun Dafa. It has absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/8/12/81549.html