Savage Torture Could Not Shake My Righteous Belief

For what purpose do people live? Why are there people living in this world? I had no clue until August 1995, when I had a chance to read Zhuan Falun [the main book of Falun Gong's teachings]. It was then that I understood why people have to suffer pain and all kinds of diseases, and I came to realise the true meaning of life. Since then, I have been practising cultivation.

At that time, I suffered from hyperthyroidism, and medical treatments in the hospital had been unsuccessful. The doctors drew my blood once a week, and I had already lost confidence in the therapy. In addition, neither Chinese herbs nor western medicine helped me recover from my diseased cervical vertebrae. However, I stopped taking all medication from the day that I began my cultivation. I practised the Falun Gong exercises every day and followed the standards of Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance, as explained in the books. With the elevation of my moral character, my health situation improved, and I found that I was now able to do housework. The cervical vertebral disease that had tormented me for years disappeared, so I was finally able to totally relax and sleep well, free of disease.

Studying the principles of Falun Dafa further, I continued to gradually raise my moral standard. After coming to understand the relationship between loss and gain, I didn't pursue personal gain any longer. Later, when I was persecuted, our department director told his boss that I was the most reliable finance person in the workplace because I have never misplaced a single penny.

For years, I saved the hospital for which I worked so much in medical insurance, and never took home any free medicine for my child. Someone once assumed that I was being foolish for going to the drugstore to buy medicine out of my own pocket, but being an upright person, I had a clear understanding that I should give virtue the highest priority.

But since July 1999, when the persecution of Falun Dafa began, the group of people who chose to practise cultivation has been suffering unprecedented persecution. Fellow practitioner A and I were illegally detained in the hospital's basement five times, with the longest period of detention lasting four months. The hospital director issued the order to "Show no sympathy."

During the first fifteen days of detention, the hospital authorities put us into forced labour. Under close watch by mid-level officials, under the burning sun we were forced to pull out all the weeds, some of which had grown as tall as a person, from the corners of the yard. With everyone looking at A and me through windows, we felt very uncomfortable. However, I remembered Teacher's words. As practitioners, we must suffer the toughest hardships of all and have a heart of great forbearance. With no hatred or discontent, and taking hardship as joy, we overcame it.

Fifteen days later, we were both locked in a dark, humid, water-leaking basement from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. every day. With two benches and a desk, A and I had to sit face-to-face for fourteen hours at a time. With the strength of Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance, we braved our journey forward.

Then the persecutors took us to the psychological examination meeting, where they asked us some strange questions. However, I told them that we had no psychological problems, and said, "You guys should be standing on the side of justice!"

The next day, the vice-secretary of the Party Committee unlocked the door and claimed, "You two are suffering from mental problems."

Because we adhered to our beliefs and were outspoken with the truth, we were suppressed and deprived of human rights at their whim. Some practitioners have even been tortured to death.

At about 11:30 a.m. on October 26, 2000, practitioner A and I were taken to the security office for questioning, and then locked in the basement overnight. The next day, the hospital's security guards read us a statement of detention, but we protested and refused to sign it. Nevertheless, they handcuffed us and sent us to the First Detention Centre.

There, we suffered all kinds of torture. The guards, along with the jailed criminals, drew up plans to abuse Falun Gong practitioners. Jumping at the chance for a reduction in their terms, the criminals wilfully cursed and beat us, and forbade us from talking to one another. In spite of this abuse, we endured with great compassion and tolerance.

The guards chained us with fetters that were intended for prisoners on death row. Because so many people were jailed there, the fetters were in short supply, so they chained me together with Ms. T, thus making it very difficult for us to move. On two different occasions, I was chained to a metal chair, which kept my hands and feet immobile for days. As a result, my arms and legs became swollen, yet the perpetrators refused to let me use the toilet. I reminded them that it was the most basic of human rights, but Officer Liu claimed, "You have no human rights." In the detention centre, all kinds of torture were used on Falun Gong practitioners, even on the elderly women among us. In one instance, the guards had to break the handcuffs to open them because they were too tightly locked on my wrist. In another instance, they handcuffed me from behind with one arm from over the shoulder and the other wrapped around the waist. (1) Due to my arms not being long enough, the handcuff cut into my flesh so deeply that it made my hands first turn red and then dark. I couldn't help shaking from the pain, and the sweat from my fever left my clothes soaking wet. When Guard Wang feared the seriousness of my condition, he tried to unlock the handcuff, but it wouldn't budge. He cursed me loudly and had to spend half a day trying to open it. My fingers were numb for days before recovering.

To protest the persecution, I held hunger strikes several times, forty-eight days in total. On three occasions, the abusers admitted me to Ankang Mental Hospital, where I suffered even more cruel forms of torture. On my first visit, they forced eight of us, who had not eaten or drunk anything for nine days, to wash ladders. Then they employed a few male drug addicts to hold us down while they injected us with drugs that damaged the nervous system, prior to binding us to beds for infusions of an unknown liquid. Each day, they hung us up several times from the metal fence outdoors. (2) Ms. T fell unconscious and became incontinent.

After being injected with drugs against my will, I had to sleep for two days. The feeling was difficult to describe. I was weak and limp, shivering with cold and short of breath, as if I was having a heart attack. In a trance-like state, I felt that I would rather die than live that way. Meanwhile, my fellow practitioner, a former third-class police superintendent (equivalent to the rank of Major), fell unconscious to the floor upon being injected. Later, I realised that molecules or cells in this dimension shouldn't suppress my body, which had been gradually replaced by high-energy matter. Since that realisation, the drug had no effect upon subsequent injections. It really is true that the level of one's character cultivation determines the level of one's gong.

One day, a guard used all of his strength to kick me with his boots. When I landed several meters away, he then struck my face, which immediately went numb. My eyes were so sore that they constantly teared up. On another day, two directors and several drug addicts isolated me in a ward to torture me with an electroshock therapy device. They placed two electrodes on my temples and said, "Give her forty milliamps." (Thirty milliamps is normally used current level for certain mental disorders and for drug addicts) With my eyes closed, I could see greenish yellow electric current, which was so horrible that it is difficult to describe. At that moment I recited Teacher's words,

"When it's difficult to endure, try to endure it. When it looks impossible and is said to be impossible, give it a try to see if it is possible." (Zhuan Falun)

I have no idea how long it took, but those persecutors became scared when they saw no response from me. They checked my pulse and then stopped the torture session. It was my righteous belief in Teacher and Falun Dafa that helped me to pass the test.

The staff members of Ankang Mental Hospital left no means untried in torturing Falun Gong practitioners. At night, they always handcuffed or bound our hands to the beds when we went to sleep. They also violently force-fed those of us who went on hunger strikes. One day, while force-feeding a practitioner from another province, because the tube wouldn't go through, the female director kept striking her face with all of her strength, and she continuously moved the tube up and down to insert it down her throat. We later saw that the victim was vomiting bloody saliva, but it was not over yet. The director transferred the victim into another ward, and kicked others out the door. In the lobby, we heard the noise of electric shocking and cursing. When we eventually went in there, we saw that the practitioner's face had become disfigured by so much blistering and her whole body was bruised black and blue. After torturing her for days, they assumed she couldn't eat food anymore, so they had the detention centre authorities come and take her away.

After five years of enduring such inhumane persecution, Falun Gong practitioners have never responded with violence. We keep following the principles of "Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance," which have turned so many people around. In jails, some of the drug addicts and criminals have begun practising Falun Gong and learning the principles. They treat Falun Gong practitioners as the most reliable people. Even D, a homicide criminal, regretted not having learned Falun Gong earlier. Otherwise she would never have become a murderer. Although she had only an elementary school education, step by step she learned to recite Lunyu (a collection of Teacher's poems) and many of Teacher's articles.

Coercion cannot change people's hearts, and nothing can change people's recognition of the principles of "Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance." Although the persecutors have tried every means to block our messages, the persecution has been exposed to the world's people. We will definitely bring Jiang to justice.

Notes:

(1) This torture is known as "Carrying a Sword in the Back." The practitioner's hands are tied behind his back with one hand over the shoulder and the other hand against the lower back. The police then apply a great deal of force to pull the two hands toward one another and handcuff the two hands together.

(2) This torture is known as "Cuffed and Hung Up." With hands cuffed, and both feet off the ground, or with only the toes touching, one is hung up by the handcuffs, from a basketball support, the beam of a house, or other tall structure. The hands and arms will soon become numb.