Persecution Stories of Two Practitioners in Guojiatun Town, Shandong Province

I.

I am a practitioner in Beigezhuang Village, Guojiatun Town, Zhucheng City, Shandong Province. I started practising Falun Dafa in April 1998 and have followed Teacher Li's teachings on improving moral character, and tried to do well to reach the standard of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. My spinal disease has disappeared since I started practising Dafa. I feel like I was given a second life.

Because of the persecution that started in 1999, I went to Weifang City to appeal. After I returned home, all the officials in my village went to practitioners' homes and forced us to give them Dafa books, exercise tapes, and other materials. They watched us and forbade us from going out.

During the peak of the persecution in 2000, TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, the army, police, special agents, and all Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government departments were involved in the brutal persecution against Dafa and Dafa practitioners. Our conscience would not allow us to do nothing when Dafa was being defamed. We decided that we should go out to appeal for Falun Dafa.

On July 5th, another five practitioners and I rode bicycles to Beijing and arrived at around 10 o'clock the next morning. We were arrested by the police at Tiananmen Square and sent to the police branch located on the east side of the Square. The police officers forced us to report our addresses and then transferred us to the Weifang City Office in Beijing.

Before we were transferred to the Weifang City Office, the police officers from Weifang City took all of our money. A car was sent from Zhucheng City to where we were detained and took us to Guojiatuan Town in the early morning of July 8th. Six people from the township Party Committee dragged us to the eastern courtyard to beat us, with the director of the police branch, Qin Jie, as the leader of the perpetrators. They kicked, punched and beat us with spiked rubber batons. They used electronic batons to shock us on our heads, forced us to stand in the horse stance, as well as other tortures. The torture lasted the entire morning.

At around 11 o'clock, a group of police officers, led by Cao Jinhui from Zhucheng City Police Station, came and called me up to the second floor. They asked me if I wanted to continue practising Falun Dafa. I said: "Yes. Dafa is so good, I will practise for the rest of my life." Before I could finish speaking, the police officers started to beat me with their shoes. In half an hour, my buttocks became black. The police officers eventually stopped beating me. However, they forced me to press my hand onto an ink pad, and then forced me to rub my face with the dirty hand. They yelled at me, saying "If you wipe it off, we will beat you to death!"

At noon, the hottest time of the day, we were forced to pluck grass with our bare hands in the police branch's courtyard. We were already dizzy due to the beating, yet they forced us to stand out in the baking sun after we had finished pulling out the grass. The police officers forced us to put salt in our mouths. They made us drink salty water instead of fresh water. After four o'clock in the afternoon, when we could not stand any longer, we were brought to a meeting room and told that we could go home if we claimed to give up practising Dafa. Under such conditions, I "renounced" Dafa.

After five o'clock, I was transferred and detained at the village Party Committee Office of Beige Village. The village officials had a meeting in the evening and forced me to give them 8000 yuan¹. The director of Guojiatun Town Police Branch Qin Jie, the officer in charge of household registration Sun Junwu, and some village Party Committee members went to my home every day to ask for the money. My husband had no choice but to sell the crops we saved for our own survival and reluctantly gave the 3000 yuan earned from the crops to Sun Junwu. However, they did not let me go but continued to ask for another 5000 yuan, which was impossible for my family to afford. Thus, I was transferred to Zhucheng City Detention Centre. No one came to pick me up after my detention period had been expired for half a month. The director of the detention centre called the township police branch, asking them to inform my family to bring me home. Qin Jie did not tell my family about this but continued to use dirty tricks to force my husband to give them the 5000 yuan. In the end, my husband heard from someone else that I was waiting at the detention centre and went there to take me home.

In March 2000, Qin Jie and Tao Muzhai, deputy Party secretary in charge of politics and law at the township Party Committee, searched my home with a group of gangsters at around one o'clock in the morning. Qin Jie wanted to arrest me, but I managed to run away. Qin Jie chased me in a car for over five kilometres, but he did not catch me. I arrived at my sister's place around four o'clock in the morning but only stayed for two hours. I then went to Hedong, Gaomi County. At eight o'clock, Qin Jie and his group went to my sister's home to look for me, but I only returned to my sister’s place from Hedong after 10:00 a.m. I stayed there for several days until Qin Jie stopped searching for me.

The following year, my family and I were harassed by the police every few days. At around 11:00 a.m. on December 20th, Qin Jie and Tao Muzhai, leading a group, came to search my home again. They did not find any Dafa materials, so they stole the fireworks I had made for my part-time work, a kitchen knife, and a scale.

Qin Jie also sent me to the police branch and detained me there for four hours in order to have my family bring money to them. Since my family members did not do what he expected, Qin Jie transferred me to the detention centre and detained me for 15 days for which I had to pay 500 yuan. The director of the detention centre, Sun, called the township police branch and the village committee to inform my family to take me home. Qin Jie, Tao Muzhai, and the village Party Secretary brought my family member to the detention centre to pay my fine of 500 yuan, but they did not release me. Rather, they sent me to the brainwashing centre of Zhucheng City to try to "transform²" me. There were five or six former practitioners there, shouting things to defame Dafa and Teacher, going along with CCP's lies. Their stupid acts actually strengthened my righteous thoughts. I did not believe them; rather, I was steadfast in believing in Teacher and Dafa. I went on a hunger strike for four days. The brainwashing centre staff ran out of tricks and said to me, "This is not a place for you to enjoy retirement, you must go home since you don't want to eat." I was released.

In 2002, the police often went to my home to conduct a search, and in particular, they liked to knock on the door in the middle of the night. The young and elderly members of my family were all scared, and my neighbours also felt frustrated.

Qin Jie may have transferred to the Police Division of Transportation, Zhucheng City in 2003. However, his evil behaviour in persecuting Dafa and practitioners brought karmic retribution. He was diagnosed with oesophagus cancer in 2005 and now stays in a hospital in Jinan. He is unable to eat.

In December 2004, the police officers came to search my home twice.

In December 2005, Tao Muzhao and another 10 gangsters raided my home. One of my family members asked them what they were looking for. They said that they were checking the security. Tao Muzhai asked me if I was still practising Falun Gong, but my husband asked them to leave. Qin Jie is gone, and now it is Tao Muzhao who is carrying on the persecution in my area.

II.

I am a practitioner in Guojiatun Town. I started practising Falun Dafa during the Spring of 1998 and regained my health. At that time, I preferred practising the exercises to reading the book Zhuan Falun.

The persecution against Falun Gong was carried out by Jiang Zemin and his followers beginning July 20, 1999. In order to make the practitioners in my village give up their practise, the village officials brought us all to the village Party Committee Office and forced us to give them Dafa books, lecture videos, and exercise music tapes. I was scared due to all the "movements" initiated by the CCP in the past, so I gave them my books and wrote a letter "renouncing" Falun Gong. I was thinking that I could still continue practising at home and I would not stop doing it because Falun Gong had helped me get rid of all my diseases. Now I realise that it was a wrong understanding because I was trying to hide my heart of fear.

Practitioners and I were still practising at home, but dared not do it in public. In the conversations with fellow practitioners, we realised that it was because of Dafa that our diseases were cured, and we were the direct beneficiaries. Our consciences would not allow us to keep silent when Dafa and Teacher were being defamed. Thus, in 2000, six of us decided to ride bicycles to Beijing to appeal and show that Dafa is good by using our own experiences.

We were arrested the next morning and transferred back to our hometown the following morning. The gangsters led by Qin Jie were all prepared to beat us up. At noon, the hottest time of the day, when the temperature was close to 40 degrees Centigrade, we were forced to stand in the baking sun and eat salt. They did not provide us with water, nor did they let us go home. We were detained at the village Party Committee Office and watched by assigned villagers. Food was delivered to us by our families. They also tried to force us to say that Li Yukun was our leader in Beijing. We replied that we had no leader, but had simply come together.

We were extorted for 8000 yuan each. My family was too poor to afford it, so they gave 500 yuan to the gangsters. No receipts were issued. We were detained at the village for about 10 days, and then transferred to Zhucheng City Detention Centre. After our release, we were not left alone but harassed from time to time. We were conned into going to the village Party Committee Office during so-called "sensitive times" and were detained there. Our families had to bring food to us.

We have been threatened that such and such things will happen to us or our families if we go out to speak to people about the facts of Falun Dafa. Our family members were also forced to keep an eye on us and prevent us from doing anything related to Dafa.

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://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/8/22/136133.html