French Practitioner’ s Experience from the Tiananmen Square Appeal

Hélène Petit’s Testimony on the Tian An Men event

On November 20th, we went to Tian An Men to appeal peacefully in the name of the Falun Gong practitioners who are illegally persecuted in China and abroad. We went and meditated on the square to uphold the principles of « Truth, Compassion, Tolerance ».

I remained in this state of meditation for a few long minutes. When an iron-like hand grabbed my arm, it almost did not affect my focus. I felt it going away, frenetic, as if it did not know which practitioner to grab first.

Then the hand – was it the same ? (my eyes were closed) – came back to grab my right arm while another hand took a firm grip of my left arm. Remaining in the lotus position with my hands still in position, I felt lifted off the ground. They were taking me away to a police van. As we arrived at the door of their car, I could hear them say in Chinese « Force her legs open, force them open ». I realized that my lotus position prevented them from taking me into the car.

After I got into the car, I saw them drag a young male practioner half unconscious into the police car. And then they pulled an old lady practitioner by the hair over the body of the male practitioner who had been left lying right after the entrance door.

Looking around me, I wondered what I was doing there. Only then did I see that Chinese people were on Tian An Men, gazing at the scene of those Western Falun Gong practitioners getting arrested by the Chinese police. So I opened the window and stuck my head out to shout to them what I had come to China for « Falun Dafa Hao, Falun Dafa Hao ! (Falun Dafa is Good !)». The policeman in the front row threw me back to my seat and tried to strangle my neck with his hand. I felt that I might die, as I was not able to free myself from his hand and, as a practitioner, I did not want ot hit him back. Finally he released me upon seeing a male practitioner behind who shouted his indignation « Aren’t you ashamed to be treating a woman like this, you, a policeman ».

Free, I sat back and opened the window again, we had arrived at the police station close to Tian An Men and I saw only two Chinese men standing close to the police car, I told them « Falun Dafa Hao, ni men ye zhi dao, (Falun Dafa is good, you too, know it, I aslo said look at how the police is treating good people) ». They smiled at me and looked away. The same policeman took the strap of my hand bag to strangle and immobilize me. At first I resigned and just stopped moving, thinking that there was no way out of his grip. I could see his face red with fury spitting insults at me. I was surprised to feel neither agression nor fear inside of me. I remembered Falun Dafa’s requirements not to treat humans as enemies and to be benevolent in all circumstances.

At the policie station, they tried to separate us in order to interrogate us the way they like, resorting to various manipulations. When they tried to have us go down to a cell, my girlfriend and I insisted on staying together with the group, and not going separately. We held each other tightly. So they threw us down, my friend and I, from the top of the stairs.

Ater ten hours of detention, I felt tired and weary of witnessing the policemen’s constant efforts to ridicule us, submit us to interrogations and repeatedly take pictures of us. When my phone rang, I eagerly took it out of underneath my clothes, tired of having to hide it, eager to hear my French fellow practitioners on the line. That’s when six of them threw themselves at me because I was resisting giving them my portable, my last link to the outside world. A policeman took advantage of the scene and tried to force his hands into my genitals. (Following the advice of a fellow practitioner, I was later able to memorize the number of the policeman who had assaulted me: 013133).

I went to Tian An Men to peacefully appeal in the name of Falun Gong practitioners who are tortured to death in China and I was myself beaten. Considering the violence the Chinese police resorted to against foreign practitioners in full daylight, one can imagine the horror of the treatments they inflict upon Chinese practitioners in the secrecy of forced labor camps.

When the mere fact of meditating and unfolding a banner saying « Truth, Compassion, Tolerance » leads Westerners to be beaten up by Chinese authorities, one realizes that the persecution organized by the Chinese regime is not a Chinese problem, but a universal issue.

The persecution against Falun Gong is not a political issue since practitioners are not against the government. For a foreign government to condemn the persecution of people who cultivate benevolence is a question of humanism.

I would like to thank the French governement that had us freed, Olivier and I, promptly. But I encourage them to condemn the way two French citizens were treated by Chinese police. Not only, because our phones were taken away, we were not able to contact our Embassy, but we were beaten up and humiliated precisely for coming to deliver the message of peace « Truth, Compassion, Tolerance ».

Through this testimony, I appeal to all benevolent people to help us find a solution to the persecution organized against Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Hélène Petit, a French practitioner of Falun Dafa.