My name is Li Bin and I was born on April 10th, 1973, in Dongfeng County, Jilin Province. I began practising Falun Dafa in August 1996. I received a Master's degree from Dongbei University of Finance & Economics in August 1996, and I moved to Beijing to work later that same year.
I was arrested in November 1999 at a Dafa cultivation experience sharing conference in Guangzhou City, and the police sent me to Siping Mental Hospital in Jilin Province in January 2000 because I wouldn't give up my belief. I was cruelly tortured. I was sentenced to one year of forced labour in April 2000, and I was subsequently held at Dongcheng Detention Centre, Beijing Labour Reeducation Dispatch Division, and Xinan Women's Labour Camp in Beijing. I rubbed shoulders with death from constant abuse. I arrived in the US in July 2004.
I lost nearly all of my memory after one month of "treatment" at the mental hospital, and partial recovery took several years. Falun Dafa is the only source of strength that enables me to maintain a healthy spirit and outlook on life today. I want to expose the methods of torture used in China so people can see what evil crimes the Communist regime commits against people.
I Was Held at Two Different Dongshan Detention Centres
I was arrested in November 1999 at a Dafa conference held in Guangzhou City, and I was taken to Dongshan Detention Centre in Guangzhou City.
The police took me back to Jilin Province around December 26th, 1999. The trip took a day and a night, and I was handcuffed the whole time. People gave me strange looks. The police told me to give up Falun Gong. They promised to release me immediately so I could spend the holidays with my family if I agreed to their condition. It was close to the Chinese New Year.
I refused, and they detained me at Dongshan Detention Centre in Dongfeng County, Jilin Province. My parents and other relatives were extremely worried about me, because they had stopped hearing from me several months prior to this time. My mother suffered a near nervous breakdown, and her youthful look was replaced with an aged, weathered face. Her black hair gradually turned white.
My mother's mind was poisoned with the Communist Party's omnipresent and slanderous propaganda. When she visited me at the detention centre, she begged me to give up Dafa. Sometimes she even knelt before me, screaming and crying.
The Police Held Me in Siping Mental Hospital
The police said they wouldn't release me unless I wrote a guarantee statement to give up practising Falun Dafa. They made my parents take me to Siping Mental Hospital by threatening them, saying that I would be incarcerated and sentenced to forced labour. I was completely unaware of the arrangements.
It was an extraordinarily cold day, and I walked in the snow in a pair of dilapidated shoes. My parents took me out but they never told me where we were going. I started to feel strange when we arrived at the front gate of the mental hospital, but my mother lied to me and said she needed to get an IV infusion at the hospital.
I followed her inside and we went to the third floor. I saw big, red characters "Department of Psychiatry" on the wall at the end of the hallway. I saw a small rectangular plate above each door frame, and someone took us into one room. My mother was so weak she could hardly walk. She collapsed in one bed and looked as if she was losing her mind. I sat on the edge of the bed.
I woke up at dawn the next day and started doing the sitting meditation on a bed across from my mother. About 20 minutes later, a woman in her 50s came in. I later learned she was the wife of a hospital official. She woke my mother up and started attacking me, saying, "Your mother is so sick and yet you are still practising Falun Gong. What a terrible daughter! You probably have mental problems! The government has banned [Falun Gong], and you are so stubborn. You are so confused and lost." She tried to comfort my mother at the same time, saying "They [Falun Gong practitioners] all have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Don't worry, it'll take some time for her to get back to normal." I stopped the exercise and started to explain Falun Gong to her. She refused to listen and thought I was crazy.
A woman doctor called me out, saying she had some questions, and I thought it was a great opportunity to introduce Dafa to her. She took me to her office, sat across from me and asked me the exact same questions as the police, "When did you first begin practising Falun Gong? How did you feel? The government has officially banned Falun Gong, so why are you still practising it? Why do you insist that Falun Gong is absolutely right?" I gave her honest answers and hoped she would have a positive understanding of Dafa.
I was deceived into entering a psychiatric ward and injected with unknown drugs against my will.
I can't remember how many days my mother received IV infusions at the hospital. One morning, soon after the hospital opened, several doctors wearing white coats came to our room. Each doctor wore a nameplate. One male doctor in his 40s whose plate read "Head of the Department of Psychiatry" asked me some questions. Many of them were the same as the female doctor who had previously questioned me. He then lied to me and said, "Lots of doctors upstairs want to listen to you talk about Falun Gong. Just follow me." I didn't know it was a trap; I was happy that people wanted to hear the truth, so I followed him upstairs.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw a closed hallway and a large metal gate across from the stairwell. I thought, "It looks like a prison gate" when the doctor opened the gate and I followed him inside. Before I could do anything, the gate clanged shut behind me. I immediately turned around and pounded on the gate, screaming, "Let me out!" I was near desperation.
Several doctors forcibly carried me into a room at the end of the hallway. The hallway was very long, dark, and terrifying. It was even more frightening than prison. I instantly had a flashback to Dongshan Detention Centre in Guangzhou, where I was carried into a cell. What took place at the mental hospital, however, was much worse than at the detention centre.
Inside the room, they tied me to a bed with white ropes, and I couldn't free myself despite my most vigorous struggles. Several of them held down my arm and injected me, with what I never knew. I tried to fight them and stay awake, but within two minutes, my mind had ground to a halt and I lost consciousness.
It was dark when I opened my eyes and I had been unconscious for nearly a whole day. I was awakened by loud noises. I looked around and saw six beds. I was greeted with strange people with odd looks in their eyes. I realised I was among mental patients.
I told myself that I could not stay there. I must get out. I went on a hunger strike and they injected me with another drug. The doctor said, "We can't let you starve to death; we'll provide you with nutrition." I thought that I shouldn't be tortured in their hands. I didn't know what to do and I resumed eating.
I was forced to ingest large quantities of medications.
I found out the psychiatry department took up the entire floor. Toilets and about six patient wards were on both sides of the hallway. The largest room was at the end of the hall with about 20 beds. The other rooms each had about seven beds. All of about 70 patients had to report in the big room the first thing in the morning, and we were forced to sit in there all day long.
We sat on the edge of beds, very similar to sitting on small stools, [a torture method] at detention centres and prisons. The only difference was I didn't have to take unknown drugs at the detention centre.
After all the patients had sat upright, the head doctor led several doctors and they came in to inspect the group. They were followed by a nurse, who pushed a medication cart. When the doctors got in front of someone, the nurse would hand a bunch of pills and a glass of water to the patient. The doctors watched the patient swallow all the pills. Afterwards, the patient had to bow his head, stick out his tongue, and make some noise to show that the pills had indeed been downed. This daily routine was repeated without exception. I don't know how many pills I was forced to take, but I know there were sedatives and sleeping pills.
I also had to take another handful of pills before bed each day.
No one dared to refuse the drugs, because otherwise the doctors would tie him to a bed and administer electric shock therapy to his head. I had stopped taking pills ever since I started to practise Falun Gong in 1996. During the one month I was held at the hospital I felt I had taken more pills than I had ever had in my whole life.
Electric shock to the head
Electric shock therapy is one of the most common treatment methods used at the hospital. One day, I saw a patient tied to her bed while still asleep. A large piece of equipment was set up next to the bed. It was the same height as the bed and about two thirds of the width of the bed. It was plugged into a flat board about two palms' size. Several doctors held the board on top of the patient's head and started the machine. The deafening noise made by the equipment sent chills down my spine. The patient, however, was completely unaware of her plight. She did not wake up but her head shook violently and her mouth foamed. I said, "That's so sad." A patient said to me, "You were even more pitiful than she is. I saw you being shocked several times and you looked exactly like that."
"How come I didn't know about it?"
"How could they let you know? No one knows it when they are shocked. They always shock you when you are sleeping. You had it much worse than her. After you were shocked, you were delirious when you went to the toilet. You held yours pants (the patient uniform was too large and sometimes I had to hold up my pants) and could not walk straight."
That's horrific! I couldn't imagine how they were able to shock my head without my knowledge. I had no clue. I wouldn't have known the cause of my death if they had electrocuted me!
I don't know how many times the doctors shocked me. My mind was almost numb from forced drug abuse, and I didn't have the heart to figure out how much damage was done to my brain.
Daily Routine
The monotonous daily routine at the hospital consisted of waking up, eating breakfast, taking drugs, sitting on the edge of bed, eating lunch, taking a nap, electric shock, eating dinner, and taking drugs. Gradually, I developed reflexes like the other patients, and I mechanically followed the doctors' and nurses' orders.
I don't remember taking a shower at the hospital, but I know the time allotted to wash oneself was not longer at the hospital than at the Beijing Labour Reeducation Dispatch Division. We were allowed a set amount of toilet paper. My mind had deteriorated from excessive pills and electric shock, and everything went by in a blur. I felt as if I was living in another world, and when I talked, it was as if I was listening to someone else.
We ate group meals and we stood in line to wait for our food. Many times the patients had scuffles over food. A patient who had been in the hospital for a long time was responsible for distributing the food. She lived in the same room as me and she knew that I had been brought in because I practised Falun Gong. She was especially caring toward me and she always saved lots of food for me, more than I could eat.
She told me, "Ha Jingbo (a teacher at my mother's school who also practised Dafa) has just been released. She also suffered a great deal here. I know you are good people. Just stop practising since the government has banned it. Why are you asking for trouble? You can't fight the government." Even mental patients knew Falun Gong was good.
Some patients talked about things happening in their lives when we sat in bed. They were very kind toward me and they offered me rare and expensive food their families had brought them. I couldn't eat their food because they were suffering themselves.
I had to confront different situations late at night. Once when I was sleeping, I was awakened by some noise, and I saw a girl had pulled out all of my underwear and was putting them on her one by one. I was startled. The woman who shared the room with me was also awakened. She saw that I was scared. She grabbed the girl's hair and beat her. She stopped only after I shouted, "Stop the beating!" repeatedly. I later realised the girl was sleepwalking.
I'm not sure that I would have remained sane in that environment if it weren't for my unwavering faith in Dafa.
"Head doctor" Wang Kai
Wang Kai was the head doctor who dealt with me directly. I can't remember how often I received "caring visits" from him. It seemed like he came all the time. A group of doctors, including Wang Kai, always verbally insulted the patients and attacked them where it hurt the most. They never treated the patients as human beings but as defective freaks.
Wang Kai believed the Communist Party's propaganda but he could never achieve his goal of making me give up my belief despite how many times he talked to me. He claimed I had severe "obsessive-compulsive disorder," abbreviated OCD.
Surprise visit from my younger sister
The hospital usually doesn't allow family visits; they had rules more strict than labour camps. Occasionally, someone is permitted to meet with her family, and the other people are green with envy.
One day, a nurse shouted my name, "Li Bin, someone's here for you." I thought it was strange, but I followed the nurse from the big room to my bedroom. My sister and her boyfriend were waiting there. My sister said through her tears, "Why are you doing this? You can come home if you will just say that you quit!" Her boyfriend also asked me to be smart and protect myself. I told them how I had benefited physically and mentally from Dafa practice.
I asked my sister how she was able to get past the strict rules and visit me. She said she had sent gifts to head doctor Wang Kai and she also took him out to meals before he approved this visit.
Suffering continues after mental hospital
Several days after the visit from my sister, which was nearly a month after I had first arrived at the hospital, the doctors and my parents appeared in front of me. They said I was going home. I really wanted to get out of that dreadful place. I learned later that Dafa practitioner Ha Jingbo, my mother's colleague, was about to be brought in, and they didn't want us together because they feared we would give each other strength to uphold our faith.
After I went home, I didn't get the peace I had hoped for. I couldn't sleep the first night, because I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms after abruptly stopping large batches of drugs including sleeping pills. The insomnia continued night after night. My eye sockets sunk and I lost weight. I cannot describe my anguish at that time.
It lasted for a few days and I reached my limit. One day I picked up an English dictionary and saw many familiar words, yet I could not remember their meanings. I suddenly realised that I had lost my memory. I cried. I tried very hard to recall everything that had happened before the mental hospital, but I was shocked that I couldn't remember fellow practitioners' names and faces. I couldn't remember how I went to the hospital, and I completely forgot about the wonderful time during the Dafa conference in Guangzhou. I felt so helpless I almost lost my mind.
I couldn't find even one Dafa book, which severely obstructed my practice and caused me great pain. I also endured emotional damage at the hands of my boyfriend. I was under so much pressure it almost sent me over the edge. I could hardly breathe.
During that period, I constantly let out deep sighs despite myself, as it was the only way to relieve some pressure. I even started to count the strands of my hair and tug on my fingernails like a real mental patient. Maybe I did it in order to distract myself. Nothing could pull me back up, yet miraculously, the words "Falun Dafa," "Truth-Compassion-Forbearance," and my boyfriend's name and phone number appeared in my head. Before I went to the mental hospital, I could remember all of my contacts' phone numbers, but now only my boyfriend's phone number came to me.
The police and officials from the Politics and Law Committee came to my home every few days to "visit" me and show "concern" for me. They were in fact trying to find out my state of mind. My mother blocked them outside and wouldn't let them see me, because she knew they would definitely ask me about writing a guarantee statement. I couldn't stay home forever and I needed a job. My mother reluctantly let me go back to Beijing, and I escaped from the police.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/11/26/143286.html
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