Police in Zhoukou City, Henan Province Have Persecuted Me Since 1999

I went to the Henan Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to appeal for justice for Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. Hundreds of police officers armed with guns and batons surrounded me and threatened me with their weapons. The officers took me to a school building, which they surrounded. I resisted their attempt to take me back to my hometown of Zhoukou City. In the evening, six armed policemen from the Zhoukou City Police Department took me to the Political and Security Department of Zhoukou City. Officer Zhou Feng and others tortured me, ransacked my home, and confiscated my Falun Dafa books.

On the evening of July 22nd, Zhou Feng and policewoman Li Fengli informed the deputy minister of the Department of Culture of Zhoukou City that I would be held in a hotel in Zhoukou and kept under surveillance. A person surnamed Ji from the Zhoukou City Discipline Inspection Committee was involved in the surveillance. He extorted 1,000 yuan¹ from me.

In March 2000, I tried to go to Beijing to appeal and was arrested by police officer Gao Feng and others. I was taken to Shangshui County Detention Centre, where I was detained for over two months and fined more than 8,000 yuan. Li Yuzheng and several others handcuffed me and took me to the Shangshui County Police Department. They pointed a gun at me and threatened and cursed at me. On the same day, staff from the Department of Culture brought my daughter in and tortured me more cruelly. Yang Zishan, deputy minister of the Department of Culture, dragged me around the room by my hair. He made my daughter watch this cruel treatment and asked me, "Do you still want to go to Beijing?" I replied, "Yes. I will seek justice for Falun Gong." Yang Zishan then dragged and pushed me while cursing at me.

On October 3rd, 2000, I went to Beijing to appeal. At the Beijing train station, I was arrested and taken to the police department. I was later transferred to the Zhoukou Beijing Office. Gao Feng and other officers, as well as Deputy Minister of the Zhoukou Department of Culture Gao Zhenhuan, Curator of the Cultural Centre Zhao Guangzun, and Liu Xinping tortured me. Gao Feng grabbed me by my collar and shouted, "I will beat you to death. Even if I beat you to death, I still will not feel that I have vented my anger." As he shouted, he hit my head against the wall and attempted to force me to remain kneeling for five hours. I firmly refused to kneel down. In addition, 9,000 yuan was extorted from me.

On October 6th, I was taken back to Zhoukou City. For more than 10 days, I lived under the surveillance the Cultural Centre staff. After that, Mu Fang from the Security Department of my work unit took me to a detention centre. I was held there for more than two months before Deng Weiqiang of the Political and Security Department took me to Shibalihe Women's Forced Labour Camp in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, without following any legal procedure. I was imprisoned in the labour camp for three years and five months.

I suffered severe persecution at the labour camp and lost my personal freedom. Policewomen Hu Xiuxia, Jia Meili, Wang Nan ,and others confiscated my Dafa books. They forbade me to study the Fa or practice the exercises. Because I insisted on studying the Falun Dafa teachings and practising the exercises, my term was repeatedly extended. The officers forced us to perform 13 to 14 hours of heavy labour daily. We were forced to work every weekend and to continue working until dawn.

One day, I refused to do the calisthenics. The officers ordered drug addict inmates to drag me around and kick me until my hands were bleeding. Even now, there are large scars on my hands from that beating. On another occasion, others were allowed to go to bed after work, but the guards singled me out and attempted to force me to sit on the floor. I resisted. As a result, policewoman Hu Xiuxia ordered two "personal cangues"² to kick and beat me for nearly half an hour. I was blue and purple all over and I could not raise my shoulders and hands as a result of the torture. I was forbidden to take a break and was forced to perform physical labour all day.

We once joined together to resist the persecution. We refused to go to work, sing songs, participate in military drills, or do their so-called "homework." The guards removed our trousers and socks, leaving only our underwear, and attempted to force us to kneel on the snow-covered ground. We resisted and instead sat cross-legged. The guards verbally abused and videotaped us to embarrass us. Because I refused to do the "homework," guard Wang Nan and others deprived me of sleep and forced me to stand on the balcony in the cold winter. On top of the physical punishment, I had to perform labour during the day. The officers often conducted body searches and checked our clothes. When policewomen Wang Nan and Ma Lan searched me, they even checked my underwear and used scissors to cut my clothes and quilt.

When we refused to be "transformed³," the officers handcuffed and tortured us. Because I didn't give in, they ordered five drug addict inmates to beat me. One of them sat on me, two of them held my hands, and two held my legs. I was in pain for several days.

My daughter mailed me a watch but Wang Nan confiscated it. She even said to me, "It's for your safety. I will keep it for you so that the drug addicts cannot steal it from you. I'll return it to you when you are released." However, she did not return the watch to me when I returned home in March 2003.

Because I persisted in cultivation, the police refused to let my family to visit me. When my son came to visit, the officers said to me, "Do you want to see your son? There is one condition to be met. Be 'transformed.'" I replied, "I really do wish to see my son. It is my right. But you will never succeed in 'transforming' me. You are too vicious."

In the summer of 2002, in order to "transform" Dafa practitioners, the police used all kinds of torture methods, including the tiger bench⁴, hanging us up by our hands cuffed behind our backs, taping our eyelids, sleep deprivation, stuffing towels into our mouths to muffle any sounds, and forcing us to listen to vicious slander against Dafa. They also beat us with batons, leather shoes, whips, and broom handles and subjected us to electric shocks. At that time, almost every single practitioner suffered such torture. I resisted and didn't suffer the torture. However, I was given two injections and my term was extended by five months.

One morning, all detainees were ordered to gather inside a big room. Guards armed with guns and batons surrounded us. The police head, Jia Meili, said, "I'll give you half an hour to think it over. If you agree to be 'transformed,' step out and you won't suffer any torture. If you don't step out, you will be tortured immediately and you will wish you could die. Now you have to choose--be 'transformed' or be tortured!"

We all remained silent, forming an indestructible body.

Half an hour passed. Not a single practitioner stepped out. Head guard Jia Meili and deputy head Hu Xiuxia turned from screaming to fidgeting and then were dumbfounded. In the end, they ordered, "Give each of them a desk, a piece of paper and a pen, and order them to write! Let the personal cangues get them to write [the guarantee statement to renounce Falun Dafa]!"

No practitioner followed their orders. A few of us wrote: "Falun Dafa is great!" on the paper. The guards had no choice but to say, "Go back and think it over again."

I remember a drug addict inmate once said to me, "We got special treatment again today. The head of the guards asked us to pretend to be Falun Gong practitioners when a group of people came to visit the labour camp. The head instructed us on how to answer the questions, such as saying we stopped practising Falun Gong, and told us to say good things about the labour camp."

The guards used all kinds of deceptive tactics. A fellow practitioner, my cell mate Su Shimei, was taken away by three drug addicts. They were going to hang her up. One week later, the drug addicts told us, "Su Shimei's mouth was stuffed with a towel and she was hung up. She suffocated. Her family came to get her body." The police released two of the three drug addicts before they had served their terms. In addition, four other fellow practitioners including Ms. Xu Bishan from Zhengzhou City were tortured to death.

Whenever practitioners' family members came to visit, they were asked to write an anti-Dafa statement at the entrance; otherwise, they would not be allowed to visit us. Many practitioners were not allowed to meet with their family members for very long. The guards confiscated the food that the families brought and searched their clothes, even tearing their clothes into pieces when they conducted their so-called "security check."

In November 2005 after I was released, two police officers from Beiyongxing Police Station broke into my house and took me to the police station. The reason they gave was that I was one of the criminals at large for whom the national public security network had issued a search warrant. Even some of the police officers and their family members thought it was unfair to arrest me and felt indignant about such persecution. It was not until later, when I was transferred to Shabei Police Station, that I found out that Li Yuzheng and other officers from Shabei Police Station had made a false statement so that they could arrest me. They asked me during the interrogation whether I would continue to practise Falun Gong. I said, "Yes, I will." However, they recorded, "I will not practise anymore" on the interrogation form. It has become habitual for police to falsify statements. They also extorted 2,000 "yuan" from my family.

In early April 2006, Gao Feng ordered two policemen and two policewomen from the Political and Security Department to break into my residence and ransack my home. They confiscated two exercise music tapes and took me to the Political and Security Department. In their office, they slandered Dafa and Master and read to my son the so-called "transformation statement" written by others. Liu Min, Gao Feng, and another woman then pushed me into a van and took me into custody for 15 days.

Note

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

2. "Personal cangues" -- A "cangue" was an instrument of torture, but the term is now used to indicate the person or persons designated to supervise a Falun Gong practitioner's behaviour.

3. "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")

4. "Tiger Bench": Prisoners are forced to sit on a small iron bench that is approximately 20 cm (6 inches) tall with their knees tied together. With their hands tied behind their backs or sometimes placed on their knees, they are forced to sit straight up and look straight ahead without movement for long periods of time.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/9/5/137162.html