Interview with UK Practitioners Who Were Detained in Beijing, Part 1

Interview conducted on Thursday 14/02/02 at Heathrow Terminal 4, 17.15pm.

We had been to the Summer Palace, a famous tourist attraction on the afternoon of Wednesday 13/02/02 and returned to the youth hostel in the early afternoon to find 20-30 police officers milling around outside. they spoke to Robert Gibson,a member of our party, and told him that we should all go to our rooms and wait. We complied and Robert followed.

The police entered our room and began searching through our belongings. They did not speak to us and did not produce a search warrant or explain why they were doing this. Then they made it clear that they wanted our flight tickets and passports. After some attempts to reason with the police, we felt that we should cooperate and handed over the required items. We asked to speak to the British Embassy and were told that we did not need to as we were not under arrest. We asked to leave but were told that we could not do so. Effectively prisoners. We sat down on our beds and refused to go with them. The police tried to force us to go but we held tight, resisting passively. They grabbed Rosemary who was the smallest and lightest, also the only woman in our UK group, dragging her towards the door by her arms and hair, then proceeded to throw her down several flights of stairs where she was moved along on the ground. She was calling out "Falun Dafa Hao" [Falun Dafa is Good]. Other tourists entering the hostel were shocked to be confronted by a Westerner being dragged along by so many police. We could not let Rosemary go like that so we hurried after which is what they were expecting.

Outside the Hostel, they herded us into a waiting police van. Earl Rhodes went to get on to the bus through the rear doors, shouting out "Falun Dafa Hao". The van driver attempted to hit Earl with the open doors by going into reverse suddenly: the harmful action rebounded on the police standing near the open doors and they were pushed out of the way and Earl was able to continue shouting. Robert Gibson was pushed roughly by the head into the van, which was very poor conduct towards a 70 year old elderly person.