Young Female Practitioner: Tortures I Received from Police in Beijing

During the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2001 I unfurled a banner at Tiananmen Square. Several police officers appeared immediately and two of them twisted my arms behind my back and dragged me into a police van. I was sent to the Qianmen Police Station and locked away in a large jail cell. Many other practitioners from different provinces were also detained there. Sometime after our arrival, we were sent to a huge courtyard where it was so dark that we could not clearly see where the yard was. Several police officers tried to force us to register our names and be photographed. I refused to cooperate with them. Four or five of them held me down and pressed my head and four limbs to the ground as they took a photo of me against my will. They then took all of the female practitioners to a room where several policewomen asked us to take off our tops and trousers, and they searched our bodies. They said to us hypocritically, "We are looking out for you. If the other police did this search they would beat you. If you became injured they would insist it had happened before you arrived here." They then attempted to force us to tell them our names and addresses. None of us did. We were then taken away in a police car. Another female practitioner and I were forced into the trunk of the police car, where we had to squat down together. We almost suffocated from the strong smell of petrol as we rode all crammed together in the small trunk.

At about 10:00 p.m. we arrived at the Mentougou Police Station. The police handcuffed me to a chair and started interrogating me. They first tried to manipulate me. After they failed to get what they wanted, they changed their attitudes. An obese policeman who used swear words came in and said, "Get her to cooperate more quickly! Why waste time on useless words with her? The other one has already confessed and was released." He became very impatient when seeing that I was not affected by his words. He blew cigarette smoke in my face causing my eyes to tear profusely. He instructed a young policeman to cut my hair haphazardly with a pair of scissors, saying this was my "tonsure" ceremony. After all methods had failed on me, the obese policeman told the young policeman to hang me up with my hands cuffed behind my back. The young policeman was unable to hang me up, so they used a stick to do so, with one end of the stick inserted in my handcuff and the other end inserted into a closet. Both my feet were lifted above the floor. My arms felt as if they were being torn from my body and it was extremely painful. The handcuffs cut deeply into my flesh with unbearable pain. They continued to tell me that "If you tell us your name and address, we will release you immediately without notifying your family or local police." When I could no longer tolerate the torture I told them what they wanted to hear. I thought they would now release me, but I was again handcuffed to the chair. I asked them, "Didn't you promise to release me as long as I told you my name and address?" They said, "Do you really think you can believe our words?" I knew I had been tricked. It was already about 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. and they were tired from torturing me. So they handcuffed the other practitioner and I together in the same room and had two policemen watch us.

The next day they couldn't locate me in their computer data network because I had not told them the name I used on my ID card. They started interrogating me again. A policeman who was in his forties asked me, "Are you married?" Then he said to himself, "One glimpse of her can tell that she is still a virgin." I asked, "How can this have anything to do with whether or not I tell you my name and address?" No sooner had I said this when several policemen started laughing viciously. The policeman in his forties said, "You look the same age as my daughter. Tell us right now, otherwise you'll surely feel regret after you have a taste of that." All the police officers in the room started laughing loudly after he said this.

A short time later, a man in a white uniform, probably kitchen staff, came into the room. Upon seeing me, the man laughed in a lewd way and said, "Oh, here comes another one!" I felt instinctively that they had tortured many female practitioners. The policeman in his 40s said to the man in the white uniform, " Soon I will let you have her for an hour." All the men in the room laughed lewdly after this remark was made. I suddenly realised how they would treat me next.

After talking with the man in the white uniform, the policeman gave him some white pills. The man asked twice for more of them. I knew the pills must be bad stuff. I would not let these people torture me and ruin my life, so I decided to run away. I told them I needed to use the toilet and when they refused to allow this, I started to walk out. Seeing that I was determined, two of them followed me to the toilet. When I walked out of the toilet, I realised that the street was just outside the gate. I thought that as long as I could run out of the gate, I would be on the street and could shout for help. At that time, one of the policemen went to check with the man in uniform and the other one also lowered his guard because I was handcuffed. I ran toward the gate, but only made a few steps before they caught me and pushed me to the ground. Four or five of them began kicking and beating me. The young policeman who almost lost me got angry and wanted to torture me, yet he was stopped by the policeman in his 40s who scolded him for his negligence. They pulled down my sleeves and put the handcuffs on again over the cloth, telling me that no one would know even if they did kill me. They also told me that no practitioners could bear the torture for more than fifteen minutes.

Two of them tied a rope to my handcuffs and then used the rope to hang me up in the air in a garage. They also continuously kept pushing my head down. The weight of my whole body fell on my wrists and I felt agonising pain. I soon realised why they had pulled my sleeves down before handcuffing me - this way the handcuffs did not leave noticeable scars. They sealed my mouth so I could not make any noise. After I could not bear the torture any longer, I told them my address. After that, they took me down and sent me back to the detention centre. After arrival there, I met the practitioners who had been detained in Qianmen police sub-station and saw that all of them had been tortured. Later they sent me back to my hometown and sentenced me to two years of forced labour. In the forced labour camp, I worried very much about the other practitioners detained in Mentougou Police Station. I learned that the specific torture they used on me could lead to permanent injury of one's hands. The torture caused my hands to swell severely and I could not feel my hands for a long time afterward. I also could not move my neck, and the watering of my eyes was at times quite profuse. After practising the exercises for an extended period of time however, my symptoms disappeared.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/1/6/118130.html