A Letter to Readers of the Chinese Business View Detailing My Personal Ordeal of Being Tortured and Persecuted

Dear Kind Readers and Fellow Countrymen,

On December 28th, 2004, I read a report entitled "Falun Gong Concocted 30 Tortures, Fabricated Lies and Invented Fake Photos to Vilify the Government by Accusing It of Persecuting Falun Dafa Practitioners" on the news page of the Chinese Business View. Reading this report, I felt a surge of emotion, as memories of both my own torture and those suffered by other Falun Gong practitioners I have known leapt into my mind. In order to help my fellow countrymen and other kind readers make clear distinctions between right and wrong, and to safeguard your legal right to know the truth, I couldn't help but take up my pen to write a brief account of my own experiences with words found deep in my heart.

I am a Falun Dafa practitioner from Xian. Please forgive me for not revealing my name due to the current illegal persecution of Falun Gong by the current regime of the Chinese Communist Party. I began practising Falun Gong in 1997 and benefited a great deal, both physically and mentally, from the exercises and from cultivating the principles of Falun Dafa, "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance." My heart nature and moral standards have risen and illnesses that lingered for years have now disappeared. In 2000, I went to Beijing to peacefully appeal in an effort to let both the leaders of the Central Government and other citizens know the truth and the benefits from practising Falun Dafa. For this, I was arrested and sentenced to two years of forced labour. I appealed several times, stating innocence, but my appeals were all rejected. I learnt that once the Central Government established its position on Falun Gong, making appeals based on true experiences was no longer allowed.

During the two years I spent at the detention centre and the forced labour camp, I suffered from inhuman torture administered by both the prison guards and the drug addicts who worked for them. My torture included beatings (punching, kicking, pulling hair and slapping the face), being denied sleep for four consecutive days and nights while wearing handcuffs and shackles (this was repeated countless times) and being cuffed and hung up outside for the public to view, for as long as four consecutive days and nights in biting cold weather out in the rain or in the snow. Someone sent a cotton-padded jacket to me, but the prison guards ordered it returned, and instead forced me to wear the "restraint jacket" made by the forced labour camp. My hands were cuffed from behind and I was forced to stand, facing a wall, for several days and nights without sleep. I was beaten by drug addicts who tied my hands to a bed frame and beat me with police batons. Once I was on the verge of death after being beaten with an "8.1" (August 1st is Chinese Army Day, hence the name) Police Baton. I was black and blue from the waist all the way down my legs. When I raised the issue of this violation to the prison guards at the forced labour camp (according to Criminal Law: "Detainees have the right to be free from corporal punishment, maltreatment and insult."), female guard Yang Xiaojuan, and others, replied that, "A document issued by the Central Government allows us to use this method to punish Falun Gong practitioners!"

When some other Falun Dafa practitioners and I went on a hunger strike to protest our inhuman treatment, we were force-fed. When other practitioners and I submitted a joint letter to the forced labour camp officials asking them to stop using illegal torture methods to persecute Falun Dafa practitioners, they put us in isolation for several months. The various tortures that the Falun Gong practitioners around me suffered are too numerous to record. The prison guards used pliers to pull out practitioners' healthy teeth, they cuffed them to a cement pole outside for several hours while it was snowing. Some of the practitioners were handcuffed to an iron gate for 49 days in biting cold winter; some were not allowed to touch their beds for several months (every day they were only allowed to sit on a tiny stool to nap for three to four hours); some were in comas as a result of being beaten; some were physically crippled or in a state of mental collapse; still others were forbidden to use the toilet.

One day as I made my bed at the forced labour camp, I found a heart-wrenching 20-page indictment revealing the tortures that Falun Dafa practitioners had suffered in the forced labour camp. This indictment, which had been hidden underneath the bed, recorded several dozen torture methods including: squatting in horse-riding step, sitting on a Tiger Bench, being slapped on the face by drug addicts, being forced to crawl on the floor while the drug addicts rode on them as if they were horses and having socks or dishcloths stuffed into their mouths so that they would not be able to shout. I, who do not shed tears easily, could not keep from sobbing.

In the forced labour camp even the self-described "dregs of humanity" would use various torture methods to persecute Falun Gong practitioners at the instruction of the prison guards. The current forced labour camps and detention centres are aptly described as "the hell of this human world." Such a description contains no exaggeration. Even the drug addicts said that inside the forced labour camp the prison guards taught them nothing good, but they did teach them how to be cruel.

In 2003, when I returned home from the forced labour camp, I presented to the leaders of related departments a report called, "Personal Experiences of Persecution Suffered by a Falun Dafa Practitioner," which exposed the illegal acts by those who are paid to uphold the law as they persecute Falun Gong practitioners. I also presented a VCD containing Falun Dafa practitioners and government officials from over 50 countries appealing to the Chinese government to stop persecuting Falun Gong, plus a segment telling the truth about the staged "self-immolation" at Tiananmen Square. My intention was to draw the attention of related government departments to this matter. The legal department conducted an investigation and found the facts of the report to be basically true. However, I was arrested and detained for six months by the 6-10 Office (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) for speaking the truth about this. During my detention I was beaten, deprived of my right to go to bed and suffered both corporal punishment and the restriction of my personal freedom.

Under the law everyone enjoys freedom of religious belief. Despite this fact, I was deprived of my rights to work and to live by both the 6-10 Office and my work unit simply because I persisted in cultivating "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance." When I sought help from the Shaanxi Appeals Office, I was refused entrance to the Appeals Office because I was involved with Falun Gong. When I sought help from several law firms, I was told that because the Central Government had already defined the nature of Falun Gong as a "political" issue, lawyers were not allowed to defend Falun Gong practitioners. One lawyer told me, "It is China's national condition that once you have been branded with a political "hat" the law becomes useless. We are unable to do anything about it."

The Chinese Business View reprinted stories from the Central Government's media department that claimed that Falun Gong practitioners "invented" 30 torture methods. From my both own experiences, and what I have seen and heard about, the number of torture methods suffered by Falun Dafa practitioners far exceeds 30. The Clearwisdom website has received a great many articles exposing the tortures used in the forced labour camps, so the statement in Chinese Business View that "Clearwisdom felt like it had found a priceless treasure" (with which to malign the government) is absolutely untrue. All of the tortures that Falun Dafa practitioners suffered during their illegal imprisonments have been hidden from the public. We need to use all the modern communication tools possible to awaken what people know in their hearts to be true, and put and end to these criminal acts! When Falun Dafa practitioners get out of prison and stage "torture re-enactments" to show the truth of what they have endured, can you say that they are "fabricating lies," "creating fake photos" and should consequently be labelled as "slandering the government?" Law Enforcement Officials rearrested Liao Yuanhua and ten other practitioners of Hubei Province for doing exactly this. Would you describe this as right or wrong?

The Chinese Constitution provides every citizen with freedom of speech and freedom of the press. I think it is absolutely wrong for officials of the government to use their power to suppress those who dare speak the truth.

The media should fairly and objectively report the current realities of modern society. Before 1999, we could find reports of grand celebrations of Falun Gong, which had been spread far and wide, both within China and throughout the rest of the world. On July 1st, 1999, however, Falun Gong was illegally suppressed and by the very next day all people could find was repeated propaganda about the faked "self-immolation," and bogus reports about insane murderers (said to have become so from practising Falun Gong), all of which totally deviated from the teachings of Falun Dafa. People could do nothing more in response than heave a sigh.

Finally I'd like to say a few words from the bottom of my heart to the readers of Chinese Business View and my kind fellow countrymen. During the various political disturbances brought about by small but well-positioned factions, if you can remain calm and reasonable, rationally consider what is being said without either blindly following or having strong emotional reactions, and do nothing that will assist those acting with malicious intent, you will help us all from becoming seriously misdirected. For the glorious future of both ourselves, and our descendent's, to safeguard the legal right of all kind-hearted people to learn the truth, for the proper guidance of our country and society, and to achieve truth, justice and the light of hope for us all, let us exert all of the strength we have!

A sincere adviser