Enduring Torture With Unshakable Determination:

Determined in Dafa, Practitioner Survives Torture

A Practitioner in China

On the morning of December 1, 2000, another practitioner and I unfurled a banner near the flagpole facing the Main Gate of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. We called out from the bottom of our hearts, "Falun Dafa is good." The people who were there to see the raising of the national flag all turned to look at us. Plainclothes police from the surrounding Square ran toward us and yanked down the banner. They shoved us into a police car waiting in the Square and took us to the iron cages [specially constructed by the police for temporarily holding practitioners detained from Tiananmen Square] hidden in the basement of Tiananmen Police Station. When we arrived, there were many Falun Dafa practitioners there who were arrested for validating the goodness of Falun Dafa. Among them was an elderly person over eighty and an eleven year-old child.

In the detention centre, the police requested us to fill out a form with our names and addresses. We felt that we did not do anything wrong because we appealed according to the Constitution. We clarified the truth to the public by letting them know that Falun Dafa is good. We should not be persecuted. Therefore, we refused to tell them our names. We recited Teacher Li's articles together, held up our banners and shared experiences. There were practitioners there from all around the country. The police did not know what to do with us. They illegally detained us until the evening. When it became dark outside, armed police moved us onto big buses to take us to detention centres in various districts. There were over 500 practitioners involved that day.

I was sent to the Haidian Detention Centre. It was already after 8 p.m. by the time I got there. The police forced me to be fingerprinted and have my picture taken. Vicious policewomen and other inmates forced us to strip nude so that they could search for Teacher Li's articles and for money. The police forced me to strip, tearing my clothes in the process. I was menstruating and blood dripped on the floor. The female policewoman slapped me so hard that it made me dizzy. She cruelly shouted, "Use your sweater to clean the floor!"

To stop them from persecuting me further, I refused to tell them my name. They assigned me a number and then send me to Interrogation Room 204. There were several police preparing to interrogate another practitioner and me. One policeman in his early twenties told the other practitioner, a woman in her forties, to squat in front of his feet during the interrogation. She did not tell them her name and she tried to explain about Falun Dafa to them. They didn't listen. They beat and cursed her, then sent her to a holding cell.

They used all their means to persecute me. The police tried to trick me into telling them my name by sweet-talking me, so that they could send me back to my hometown for further persecution. I was not deceived by their tricks. I firmly remembered and acted according to Teacher Li's words, "Just by having your heart unaffected, you will be able to handle all situations." I tried to promote Dafa to the police. I told them that Falun Dafa is good and about how I benefited in body and spirit. They didn't want to hear it. All of a sudden, one of the cruel police picked up an electric baton and shocked my head and face with great force. I told them that regardless of how they treated me, I wouldn't hate them. Regardless what they did or how they tortured me, I won't change my determination in Falun Dafa cultivation. I was not afraid at all. I faced them with smiles. The policeman faltered and put down the electric baton. Another policeman stood up and ordered him to get out of the room.

The main interrogator said, "Why don't you just tell us your name? Otherwise, you will have much to suffer if we send you to the cell. It will be hard for you to bear." I told them what they were doing was illegal. It's against the law. They laughed and said, "We don't need to follow any procedures or law when it comes to Falun Gong practitioners. We can send you to a forced labour camp just because you don't have an identification card." Police had confiscated my identification card three times when I had gone to Beijing to validate Dafa. The police saw that I was not moved by them, so they cursed Jiang for not being able to take any days off and having to work the night shift all the time. Afterward, they asked a policewoman to take me to the cell.

When I entered the cell, the policewoman whispered to the criminal inmates, "This Falun Gong refused to tell us her name. Fix her." Upon hearing this, the criminals started to torture me. Afterward, I learned the criminals were able to reduce their sentence by helping the detention centre to persecute us. The female criminal forced me to stand barefoot on the cement floor in the cold December weather. They tried to force me to tell them my name and give up my beliefs. Instead, I introduced them to Falun Dafa. They just didn't want to hear it. They punched and kicked me. Five or six female criminals ganged up to beat me. They aimed at the vital areas of my body like the chest and the temple. After they were tired of beating me, they took a break while continuing the torture by demanding me to be in positions like "airplane" and "gecko climbing the wall." I refused to comply and they cursed Teacher. They forced me to kneel down before them. I told them, "You are committing a sin." After they heard this, they rushed over and beat me unconscious. While I was half conscious, one of the female criminals pulled me up by my hair. She hit me hard in the face, head, and hands with her plastic slippers. I bled from her beating. My hair fell all over the floor. She asked me if I would still practice. I told her I would. She grabbed me by my hair and slammed me against the wall. The sound could be clearly heard in the dark, cold cell. My head was covered with bumps. The other criminals in the cell covered their eyes because they were too scared to look. Some kind-hearted criminals asked them to stop hitting before they killed me. The criminals said they had to report to the head guard tomorrow so they could not stop. Some of the others started to cry.

After they knocked me unconscious, they took a break before kicking me to wake me up. Then, they woke up a heavyset deaf prisoner to beat me up. The female criminals asked my name and if I would continue to practice. I said, "In order to save them, I will not tell my name. If I were sent back to my hometown to be further persecuted, then they would have committed a sin." The female prisoner said coldly, "If you don't tell us, we'll suffer tomorrow. The head guard will torture us. In that case, why don't we torture you first?" They took three buckets of cold water, stripped me nude, and dragged me into the shower. They ordered the deaf-mute inmate to use a towel to blow air on me. Then, they used a vat to dump water on my chest and my head. I was shivering from the cold. Naked, my menstrual fluid dripped all over the toilet. They didn't want to dirty themselves so they ordered the deaf-mute inmate to hit me. She punched my temple. Her punch knocked me down into a puddle. Loud noises seemed to echo in my head. I could not see clearly and fell unconscious. I didn't know how much time had passed before they woke me up for more torture. I found black and blue marks all over my body. That evening, regardless of how the female prisoners beat me, regardless what tricks they used, I did not give up my beliefs.

I went on a hunger strike the next day. The vicious people started to panic once they found out about it. They ganged up on me. They stripped off my jacket and dragged me to a cold and windy place. They pushed me to the ground, punched and kicked me; and used a toilet brush to force open my mouth to force-feed me. I was not afraid of any torture and refused to eat. The female prisoners pinched my nose, choked me, and pressed my stomach in order to force open my mouth all at once. I was suffocated to the point where I could hardly breathe. I almost lost consciousness.

After quite a while, they still could not force anything down my throat. They were tired and breathing hard. They carried me back to the cell in anger. The criminals had no choice but to report their failure to the head guard. The female police started to force-feed us. Each one of us was tied to an iron bed. They used newspapers to cover our eyes and stuck a very long rubber tube from our noses down to our stomachs. The force-feeding caused our mouths and bodies to smell like medicine. We were cursed and punched if anything squirted on the police. One of the male police used his hand to crush my knee with great pressure. It felt as if the bones would break into pieces. The pain brought tears and sweat. I was tortured and humiliated beyond words during the nine rounds of force-feeding.

In the same cell, there was another female practitioner who had refused to acknowledge the persecution since the beginning. She refused to have her fingerprints taken, refused to have her picture taken and refused to tell them her name and address. The cruel female head guard tortured her to the point that her features were severely distorted. Then they covered her face with a thick cotton hat, leaving only her eyes exposed. They bound her hands to her feet. The handcuffs cut deeply into her skin, causing her to bleed constantly. She could not move her arms and her legs. Her limbs could have been permanently disabled because the blood circulation was cut off. Even under such conditions, the cruel female criminals still hit her. They forbade her to use the bathroom. They even ordered a large criminal to stand on her stomach. We could hear her cries of pain throughout the cell. The female police ran over immediately. Once she saw that it was a Falun Gong practitioner that was being tortured, she walked away without saying a word. This practitioner could barely walk to the bathroom. Every small step was unbearably painful. She had to sleep on the cement floor every night. Yet she still persisted to carry on the hunger strike and refused to take both food and water. She is steadfast in the cultivation of Dafa regardless of how she is persecuted. After 24 days, both of us were released from Haidian Detention Centre because of our unshakable belief and determination to practice Falun Dafa.

In China, many Dafa practitioners are being tortured and abused by the cruel police and prisoners on a daily basis. But the true cultivators inside are steadfast and firm, like pine trees enduring snow and frost. What I have revealed is only the tip of the iceberg in Jiang's persecution of Dafa practitioners. I am exposing their atrocities so that kind-hearted people around the world can become aware of it.

Source: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/4/9/20789.html
http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/4/3/27770.html