Liu Guifu Shares His Experience of Being Persecuted

My name is Liu Guifu. I am a Falun Dafa practitioner from Jiqing Village, Yihantong Town, Fangzheng County in Heilongjiang Province. I am 56 years old, and I am suffering persecution at the No. 4 District of Daqing Prison.

I was fortunate enough to begin practising Falun Dafa in 1998. Because of my cultivation practice , I gained a healthy body, a pure mind and improved morals. More importantly, I came to realise the true meaning of life and the purpose of being a human. Therefore, I am determined to stay on the path of cultivation to the end. During the persecution I have been sentenced to six years' imprisonment by the Fangzheng County Court under a fabricated crime and thrown into prison where I have been forcefully subjected to brainwashing tactics and persecution in an attempt by the prison to "transform¹" me.

On October 16th, 2003, I was working in my home when the National Security Division Manager by the last name of Chou from Fangzheng County brought four people with him and came to ask me to go with them to the County offices. They said that they had something they needed to check with me. I knew that they were setting me up, so I said to them, "I didn't do anything against the law. Why should I go with you?" I ignored their threats and refused to go with them. Local villagers and people in charge came out one by one and blocked their vehicle. They all condemned the county officials for arresting me for no reason. They said, "Mr. Liu is a good person. You shouldn't treat him like that." Divisional Manager Chou then took out his handgun and pointed it at those villagers.

After they took me away, they asked me where my leaflets exposing the persecution had come from. I told them that I had found them somewhere. Then they began to beat me. At that time, Divisional Manager Chou, the son-in-law of President Bai and a thug by the last name of Chen were beating me. There were also four female police officers. They held me to the ground and beat me very hard with leather belts and plastic tubes as thick as fingers. After I fainted, they poured cold water on my body to wake me up. Then they beat me again. Seeing that I still didn't give in, they heated a needle with a lighter until it turned red and used it to prick my arm. They planned to hammer bamboo sticks into my fingers, but they couldn't find any, so I was exempted from this cruel punishment. During the time when I was being tortured, they kept threatening and terrifying me with words such as, "There are other places where people have been beaten to death. This kind of thing hasn't happened in our Fangzheng County yet, and now we are going to use you as an experiment."

The wife of one of the persecutors called, wanting him to rush home. The pitiful thing is that the husband said to his wife over the phone, "We are 'interrogating' a Falun Gong practitioner and he won't give in. If you don't believe it, listen." Then he turned his mobile phone in order for his wife to listen to my horrifying cries. They committed evil deeds and they wanted to have their family members involved. They treated the horrifying cries of Dafa practitioners as beautiful music. The more pitiful thing is that the female police officers, who didn't have any sympathy, said in a sarcastic way, "Everyone says that Falun Gong practitioners are not afraid of death. Today we have truly seen that. It is so true."

Eventually, these thugs became tired and hungry from beating me. When they were having their meals and taking their breaks, I told them not to commit evil deeds. They said to me, "We know that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is evil and Jiang Zemin is evil, but the CCP pays us, not you." They pointed at the table full of delicious food and said, "Look, we have delicious meals every day." The person who had talked to his wife on the phone earlier said that he knew that Chen and Divisional Manager Chou were listed on the "Evil People Board" and that today he had passed the "test" and was granted the same "special honour" as them. While beating me, he said, "Do you think I am qualified to be on the Top 10 list?"

The beating lasted from about 8:00 a.m.to 8:00 p.m.; however, they didn't get anything out of me. Then they sent me to Fangzheng County No. 2 Detention Centre. On the following day, they brought me back to interrogate me again. They tied me to an iron chair and handcuffed my arms behind my back. They lifted both my legs and then hit me on my feet and the insides of my legs with a "Little White Dragon." One of them even stood on the handcuffs and tried to press them down. It was extremely painful!

Later, police officers sent me to "Monster No. 5" a ward in Fangzheng County No. 1 Detention Centre. It is famous for having beaten up two people to the point of losing consciousness. The two were sent to the hospital, where they later died. The police officers involved lied to the families and said that the two had died of heart disease.

Under the instigation of police officers, the prisoners immediately began their long-term torture of me. They poured several barrels of hot water over my head, and I was choked. Sometimes, I couldn't squat any longer and ended up falling on the floor. At the detention centre, inmates Sun Defang, Zhao Xiaofei, Zhou Penglong and others had been humiliating me and tortured me in all kinds of ways for a long time. There were three times when I was beaten so badly that I could barely crawl onto my bed. I was deprived of sleep at night. They flicked my eyeballs with their fingers and my eyes became so swollen that I could hardly open them. Divisional Manager Liu, who was in charge of the administration in the prison, didn't intervene. Instead, he even connived with the prisoners and said, "Falun Gong (prisoners) deserve to be beaten."

Prisoners and police officers ganged up on newly-arrived practitioners. If the newcomers wanted to have a better environment, and in order to have less pressure and beatings, they had to get money and merchandise from their families for the police. Otherwise, they would be beaten and tortured for a long time. On January 29th, seeing that my family didn't send any money, Sun Defang began to beat me again. They purposefully beat my chest, abdomen and ribs, and said; "If I beat your ribs, you will end up losing your voice. If I beat your belly, you can't eat. If I beat your chest until you die, we will say that you died of heart disease." He also forced me to sweep the floor and bed non-stop, 50 to 100 times. He tortured me non-stop.

As a matter of fact, all this torture is only part of what I have suffered. There were many other ways of torturing people that are hard to describe. There were practitioners from Gaoleng and Shaohezi who were suffering the same torture as me. One practitioner couldn't endure their torture. She jumped head first from the 3rd floor. Luckily, she landed on the patio of the second floor, and so her life was saved.

Six months after I was detained at Fangzheng County No. 1 Detention Centre, I was forcefully thrown into the newly-built Prison Concentration Team. Later, I was transferred to Harbin Prison, one of the most notorious places for persecuting Dafa practitioners. All practitioners suffered mental and physical torture to differing degrees. Their methods were very cruel and frightening. As to the details of the persecution, the Minghui/Clearwisdom website has full coverage.

In April 2004, practitioner Mr. Wang Dayuan was persecuted at the No. 2 Ward in Harbin Prison. Because he refused to write the so-called "Four Statements²" he was beaten to death by inmates under the instigation of police officers. In order to cover up the facts of the persecution, and out of fear of the practitioners who witnessed the crime, on July 1st, 2004, they transferred 108 practitioners who were detained in the prison to Mudanjiang, Tailai and Daqing Prisons.

I was transferred to the No. 4 Ward in Daqing Prison where practitioners were persecuted. This prison was also notorious for persecuting practitioners. Since the persecution of Falun Gong began, there were four practitioners persecuted to death. I also experienced brutal persecution when I was at Fangzheng County National Security Division and Detention Centre. In order to force me to sign the "Four Statements" which they had prepared before-hand, they forced me to sit on a piece of metal, deprived me of sleep, forced me to stand on cold bricks barefoot, and beat me with a club. When they hit my bottom, the blood soaked through my clothes, and blisters as big as egg yolks developed on my buttocks. When one of the cadres was checking the cells, he asked me what happened. I said that it was caused by an inmate. That inmate quickly replied, "He is Falun Gong." That cadre then said, "We don't care about Falun Gong."

In order to resist the persecution, some practitioners went on hunger strikes for a long time. Some swallowed scissors, knives, nails, needles or pieces of glass, some cut their wrists and some knocked their heads against the wall. Of course, those extreme behaviours are against Dafa's requirements. But, on the other hand, the fact that they were so desperate fully displays the cruelty of the perpetrators.

Note

1. "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")

2. "Four Statements": Practitioners are coerced under brainwashing and torture to write the "four statements" as proof that they have given up their belief. Created by the 610 Office, they consist of "a letter of repentance," "a guarantee" to never again practise Falun Gong, a "Dissociation Statement" to declare a dissociation with Falun Gong and promise not go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and a list of names and addresses of all family members, friends and acquaintances who are practitioners.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/12/23/145188.html