An Account of Jilin Province Practitioner Mr. Pan Zhaowen's Arrest and Persecution by National Security Agents

On December 13th, practitioner Mr. Pan Zhaowen from Jilin Province was secretly arrested by local national security agents. After the Minghui website reported this incident, many practitioners inside China and abroad were very concerned. Mr. Pan Zhaowen went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Failing to force Mr. Pan to renounce Dafa after exhausting their methods, the national security agents then extorted 10,000 yuan¹ from Mr. Pan's relatives and released him before the Chinese New Year. They claimed that Mr. Pan participated in the interception of TV signals and operated an underground publishing place somewhere in Jiaohe.

After Mr. Pan started practising Falun Gong, he became very healthy. However, since he was force-fed by the national security agents, he developed pain in his stomach several times. He could not even sleep due to the pain. Another practitioner, Mr. Li Qiang, had the same problem.

The following is an account of Mr. Pan Zhaowen's secret arrest and persecution.

On December 13th, 2005, Mr. Pan Zhaowen and his friends were meeting to talk about business. At around 4 p.m., Mr. Pan left and was soon followed by national security agents. He was too busy talking to the taxi driver about the truth of Falun Gong to notice that he was being followed. When he was dropped off near a branch of Jiaotong Bank on Jiefang North Road, there was a black Honda parked by the curb. A couple of agents surrounded him and handcuffed him. Mr. Pan asked, "Who are you? Why did you arrest me?" They refused to answer and pushed him into the car, covered his face with a piece of black cloth, and took him to a secret place.

Mr. Pan again asked who they were and why they brought him here. He was told that someone would tell him later. After a short while, someone who looked like the leader of the group came over and asked him, "What is your name? We invited you here to help you." Mr. Pan asked, "Do you handcuff your guests?" The man lost his temper and claimed that it was for security reasons. He continued to ask where Mr. Pan lived, but Mr. Pan refused to answer. Then he replied, " I know all about you." "Why did you still ask then?" Pan asked. He replied, "I just wanted to see your attitude." They left after that. Later, a group of security officers used a piece of clothing to blindfold Mr. Pan and drove him to Changchun city.

When he got out of the car, Mr. Pan Zhaowen shouted, "Falun Dafa is good!" They all got very scared and threatened Mr. Pan not to do it again. He was taken to a 60 square metre room with surveillance cameras and microphones for interrogation. Pan was made to sit on a metal chair with his limbs shackled. After he was locked inside a metal structure, they took off the blindfold. Right in front of him, there were three spotlights below the interrogation platform.

Security agents named Zhang and Sun took turns interrogating Mr. Pan all night, and they issued something for Pan to sign, but he refused. They kept saying that Mr. Pan had organised and participated in the interference of broadcasting and operated an underground publishing house. However, they did not have any evidence. When Mr. Pan asked why he was brought here for interrogation and torture, they said it was for his safety.

Mr. Pan went on a hunger strike to protest. Some agents threatened that they would throw him out to the dogs, but Pan did not waver. He used all the opportunities to clarify the truth to the guards and the interrogators, persuading them not to do wrong and consider their own futures.

He told the nurses who force-fed him that he was a Falun Gong practitioner and pointed out they were abetting in the persecution.

Due to him being shackled to the chair for a long time, his legs got so swollen that he could barely take off his pants. On New Year's Day, the national security agents, fearing that he might die, pretended to show that they cared about him by arranging a meeting for him to meet with his brother Pan Zhaofeng in a hotel on Xi'an Road in Changchun City.

On December 31st, Mr. Pan stopped his hunger strike, making the agents think that they had succeeded. They arranged for him to meet with his two other brothers, Pan Zhaotian and Pan Zhaorui, who had turned against Dafa, in an attempt to "transform²" him. But after two meetings, they still did not succeed. Then they brought in two former practitioners who had turned against Dafa to brainwash Pan Zhaowen. Three days later, they stopped after getting concerned that the former practitioners were being influenced by Mr. Pan, instead of the other way around. In the meantime, they kept threatening Mr. Pan, telling him from time to time that he would be sent to the public security bureau, he would be put on trial, or his family members or practitioners who had been in touch with him would be arrested.

Due to the publicity of the news of Mr. Pan's arrest being published on the Minghui website and practitioners exposing the persecution, the national security agents had no choice but to release Mr. Pan shortly before the Chinese New Year. However, they extorted 10,000 Yuan before they released him, and refused to return Pan's IBM X31 Notebook and Dell X51 Palm Reader, which were worth 20,000 Yuan.

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")

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/7/16/133145.html