Fellow Practitioners Who Didn't Give Your Names: Where Are You?

Another practitioner and I went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in December 2000. We were arrested and jailed at the Haidian Detention Centre in Beijing. On New Year's morning, 2001, the police loaded Falun Gong practitioners onto buses and we were sent to the northeast area. One bus held 50 practitioners. Endless numbers of white buses travelled one behind each other along a curving mountain highway. The police said, "It is a secret where you are being sent. All we can tell you is you are going to the northeast area." (Translator's note: People usually call the three Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Jilin the "northeast" area).

Appealing for Dafa in Beijing

On December 28th, 2000, another practitioner and I went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa. As soon as I got on the train, I felt like all of my fear was gone. My mind was empty, and the only thought I had was to go to Beijing and speak out for justice. The practitioner who accompanied me was very young. She had been to Beijing once and had very strong righteous thoughts. I kept encouraging myself in my heart and told myself that I would appeal, even if I would have to sacrifice everything. The train environment was noisy and crowded, but our hearts were peaceful and clean. Our minds were holy, filled with sacredness and dignity.

After we arrived, we made contact with the practitioners who had arrived in Beijing before us. We felt warm. We also saw some young practitioners with their parents. Each young practitioner had a megaphone shouting, "Falun Dafa is great; Falun Dafa is righteous" on Tiananmen Square. They ran away when the police came. One boy said that he was very thirsty. An adult asked why he didn't buy water. He answered that all the money is from Dafa practitioners' savings, and it should be spent on "materials exposing the persecution." I almost cried when I heard this. I asked one youngster, "You came here with your parents to appeal for Dafa, but what about your school?" He/she answered, "I learn by myself wherever I am." I asked, "When are you going home then?" He smiled and answered, "When the persecution ends I will go home." I could not help crying. Another practitioner said, "Those kids study the Falun Dafa teachings very well. When the adults are studying the teachings, they do their homework nearby. If an adult misses one word when reading, the children know and point it out."

While we were talking a couple of practitioners returned. They had been arrested the previous day when appealing on the square, but they refused to cooperate with the police. The police could do nothing so they released them. Looking at the fellow practitioners' great spirits, all of us were very happy. The beings cultivating in Dafa are truly great!

On the morning of December 30th, before we left for Tiananmen Square, a fellow practitioner and I took a lot of flyers with us. She asked me if I was afraid. Actually, I was a little nervous. I knew it was due to my fear. Due to that fear I had already missed two opportunities to go to Beijing to appeal. I told her, "What am I afraid of? This is a good opportunity to get rid of my fear."

The police were everywhere in Beijing at that time. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were afraid that practitioners would go to Beijing and expose their criminal behaviour. They used numerous tactics to persecute practitioners and block the road. Despite this, thousands of practitioners set aside their fears and went to Tiananmen Square, demonstrating the beauty and righteousness of Dafa to people in peaceful and rational ways.

We walked to the centre of the square. We didn't pay attention to anything else. All we saw was a group of elderly people forming an orderly queue, led by an old lady whose face was pink and energetic. Each of them held a yellow flag that said, "touring." All of a sudden, they opened several banners that said, "Falun Dafa is good." They also started shouting, "Falun Dafa is good; Falun Dafa is righteous; Falun Dafa is suffering unjust treatment; Redress our Teacher's reputation."

The police rushed toward them. They grabbed the old folks' hair, beat them down and stepped on them. A foreign tourist took photos of this scene. One policeman grabbed his camera from him and smashed it on the ground. Right then the other practitioner and I took out the flyers and spread them among the crowd. We were also shouting, "Falun Dafa is good." One policeman stopped me and punched me in the face. He also cursed me. I saw a ray of white light in front of my face and I didn't feel any pain at all.

The policeman held my hair and pulled me into a police bus. Practitioners who were already on the bus opened the windows and shouted, "Falun Dafa is good." The practitioner who had come with me was pulled into the bus, but she rushed out. Several policemen ran after her. All the tourists were shocked.

I was sent along with other practitioners to the Qianmen Police Station. The police unloaded us and drove the bus to the square again. The buses used to arrest practitioners didn't stop running that day. Later, since the police had arrested so many practitioners, they sent many of us to detention centres later. The police station was used only as a temporary jail for practitioners.

The parking lot in front of the police station also became a place for practitioners to appeal. The shouting of, "Falun Dafa is good; Falun Dafa is righteous; It is no sin to be a good person" never stopped in the parking lot. As long as there was a practitioner to initiate it, all the practitioners would follow. Our voices came from the origin of our being. It penetrated the clouds and many layers of heaven. Dafa practitioners' hearts had only one pure thought: "appeal for Dafa." All of the policemen bowed their heads when practitioners were shouting.

The practitioners were from all over the country and all different social classes. Some of them were old, and some of them were holding babies. They came to Beijing merely to say the words, "Falun Dafa is righteous." Everyone's pure thoughts and actions built an everlasting monument to Dafa.

A Conversation with policemen in the Haidian Detention Centre

It was already night when I arrived at the Haidian Detention Centre. As soon as I entered the cell, the female criminals stripped me of my clothing. They would not even allow me to keep my underwear on. They searched my clothes very carefully. One of them cut open the heavy clothes; they were afraid I might have brought in paper with writing on it. Right after the search, when I put my clothes back on, they pushed me into a prison cell where eight or nine practitioners came over to help me. I found that one of my trouser legs was gone, so I told the police officer that. He said that he would help me to find it, but when he turned his back I heard him mutter, "It has already been burned."

There were twenty of us in this cell. We had to sleep together, one next to another. We had to sleep on our sides in order to fit. When I needed to get up to use the toilet, the head of the cell would complain "Why are you so troublesome?"

The next day the police questioned me. They asked me what my name was and why I went to Beijing. I said, "I came here to appeal for Falun Gong." The policemen yelled, "Where are you from? How did you get here? By which train did you get here?" I knew that all the police departments all over country had local agents in Beijing. As soon as they learned that practitioners from their area were arrested in Beijing they would contact the agents and take the practitioners back to their hometown for further persecution. So I didn't tell them where I was from. The policemen could not get any information from me, so they started cursing and yelling, "We would beat you if you were not an old lady." They tried to take photos of me, but I turned my face away, not cooperating with them.

At 2:00 a.m. during the 2001 Chinese New Year's time, the police woke us up. They numbered everyone who refused to tell their names and yelled, "If your number is called, you need to come out." The criminals said, "They are going to send Falun Gong practitioners to some other place." My number was called. Fellow practitioners helped me to organise my things. The selfless help between practitioners really demonstrated the greatness of Dafa.

There was a pile of several thousand shoes in the detention centre yard. I tried to find my shoes. One policeman asked why it took me so long. I answered, "I have to find them. The weather is so cold." He kicked me on my lower back and yelled, "Do you still want to live?"

Many practitioners were sent to the northeast area

There were about 50 practitioners on my bus. When the bus arrived in Beidaihe City, the police took a meal break. I heard one policeman say to his family on the phone, "Our destination is a secret. It is in the northeast area." As mentioned above, there was an endless line of white buses filled with practitioners travelling along this curving mountain road. I could not see the beginning or the end. I told a police officer I needed to go to the toilet. He answered, "We didn't give you food or water. Why do you need to go to the toilet?" I told myself, "Since they will not allow me to go to toilet, I will hold."

When the Sujiatun concentration camp was exposed, I realised that some practitioners in those buses might have been sent to this camp, or others in the northeast area.

At 5:00 p.m. the buses stopped. Around us were high mountains. We were stopped on a plateau. Many gun-toting soldiers surrounded us. Twenty of us were transferred to a smaller bus. I don't know where the other practitioners were sent. One policeman said, "We are in Chaoyang now." I looked out through the window and saw a sign saying "Chaoyang." We went further, for a long time. Finally, we were jailed in a detention centre in a county.

After we got into the detention centre, the police said, "You won't have food or bedding tonight." More than ten of us were jailed in a room. It was very cold, but we didn't have any quilts or blankets. None of us felt cold, however; instead, we all felt indescribably comfortable.

The second day one police officer said to us, "You guys were arrested in Beijing. You need to think about it and tell us where your hometown is; then we will ask your local police to take you home." We asked for water. He yelled, "Do you think you are higher than others, just because you are from Beijing? Water? We only have water to flush the toilet. Go there, if you want water."

We discussed this among ourselves and decided to start a hunger strike. The next day the same police officer came and yelled, "Those of you who were arrested in Beijing! If you still don't eat, we will starve you to death, and then throw your bodies into the mountains. If you don't tell us your names, your dead bodies won't be collected and they will become food for the tigers and wolves." We just kept chanting, "Suffocate the evil." The policeman ran away muttering, "I won't talk to you."

One policeman came and beat a 17-year-old high school student practitioner. We protected her and yelled, "Why are you beating her? We don't allow you to beat a good person." An older policeman came and said, "Don't recite anymore. When you recite together, the sound is so loud! How scary it is! I was fined 100 "yuan¹" because of you last night."

The police were afraid that we would be hard to handle if we were all together, so they separated us. Before we arrived the detention centre was full of local practitioners who had been all "reformed²." Another two practitioners and I were incarcerated with some local practitioners. Chatting with them, we learned that those local practitioners had suffered a lot to appeal for Dafa. Their living conditions were very poor, and they really suffered hardships. In order to go to Beijing to appeal for Dafa, they had to climb the mountains, and sometimes had to pick the remote, difficult paths to avoid the police. They had low quality food, and ate blocks of ice for water. Some of them had to walk for dozens of miles to get to the train station, but they were all arrested before the train took off. One practitioner said, "The police took everything from me. They even took away an old sewing machine!" We told them how fellow practitioners appeal for Dafa in Beijing; how great those practitioners are; how they put down their fear. One local practitioner said, "What is wrong with us? We didn't appeal; instead, we were all "transformed" and even attack Dafa." Another local practitioner said, "Our minds were controlled by evil. One wrote the "guarantee letter³," so everyone followed. It is a sin! We should renounce our reformation." Another practitioner said, "Yes, we should take back what we wrote before."

The awakening of the practitioners shocked the authorities. The head policeman yelled, "Those who were arrested in Beijing, I tell you not to make trouble! Those who were "reformed" were set to be released in a few days. It is you who made them stay here instead of going home! Also, you local ones: I am telling you not to follow along with those Beijing ones. They can go home if they tell their names and the name of their hometown! Where can you go if you refuse to reform? If you make trouble again, we will send you to the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp and let you have a taste of Masanjia."

The local practitioners told us, "They sent practitioners to many different labour camp, and sent those who were very steadfast to Masanjia."

I was released, but where are the other practitioners?

I was very calm in the detention centre. I thought, "I cannot be jailed here. I need to go back to appeal. All local Falun Dafa materials are in my home, so I need to go back to give the materials to other practitioners." Just because of this pure thought, my family found me in this detention centre. My identification was thus not exposed, and I was released.

Before I left, a practitioner from Shanghai gave me her home phone number and asked me to inform her family to get her out of there. Also, she told me to try and avoid the police in Shanghai. She told me that her family was against Dafa. The first thing I did after getting released was to call her family. Her husband said, "There is no such person in my family!" His tone of voice told me how cold he was. I told him about his wife's kindness and what circumstances she was in. I was hoping that he could accept his responsibility. This man hesitated for a short time and then denied he was her husband. Thinking of the incarcerated practitioner I called him five times, but he refused to talk to me. Finally he said again, "There is no such a person in my family. If you harass me again I will call the police!" His coldness made me feel sad.

Facing the CCP's evil and cruel crimes, my heart is pained. You practitioners who were arrested with me, where are you?

Their firmness made the authorities shake, yet they would still use any vile methods against them. Human beings can never imagine how evil and cruel they are. The demonic nature of the CCP predetermined that they would sacrifice the welfare of the whole country and its people to keep their power. Its cruel, ruthless, bloody and terrifying nature has already penetrated into the Chinese people's souls, and altered and distorted the Chinese people's traditions. They are eroding people's kind natures with the promise of economic development. Dafa practitioners who obey the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance have nonetheless exposed the CCP's cruelty with their unbelievably strong wills.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

2. "Reform or Transform" Implementation of brainwashing and torture in order to force a practitioner to renounce Falun Gong. (Variations: "reform", "transform", "reformed", "reforming", "transformed", "transforming", and "transformation")

3. "Guarantee Statement": A statement to declare that one is remorseful for practising Falun Gong and guarantees not to practise Falun Gong again, not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and never again associate with any Falun Dafa practitioners.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/4/24/125950.html