My name is Lu Jianhua and I'm 52 years old. I was an employee at the Tieling City Worker Convalescent Home in Liaoning Province. In 1992 I travelled to California to visit my family. I was very fortunate to learn about Falun Dafa in January 1996. Prior to the practice, I had illnesses such as dizziness, gastritis, enteritis, chest congestion, shortness of breath, lack of energy, and a pale complexion. I spent almost all my hard earned money on medication without any results. Soon after I learned Falun Gong, I experienced the miraculous effects of the practice and the happiness and the joy of living a life without any illness. This strengthened my determination to cultivate in Dafa.
On July 20th, 1999, when Jiang Zemin [former leader of China] and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began the insane suppression of Falun Gong, numerous practitioners were arrested and detained. At the time I could not fathom why they wanted to persecute such a good and noble practice, a practice that elevated society's morality and is beneficial to people's health. Was it because the government did not have an adequate understanding of Falun Gong? I felt it was my responsibility and duty to explain the truth of Falun Dafa with my own experience to the Chinese government. At the end of 1999, I kindly declined my boss's offer of a higher salary and friends and relatives' requests to stay. I gave up the opportunity to obtain a green card after waiting for it for eight years. I boarded a flight from California to China with a genuine and kind heart.
During the seven-year period from 1999 to 2006, I informed people in China about the persecution of Falun Gong and dispelled the state propaganda attacking the practice. As a result, I was sent to forced labour camps and sentenced to jail for five years by the public security department in the Yingzhou District, Tieling City. During the brutal persecution, I saw clearly the cruel nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
My Passport was confiscated and I was sent to a forced labour camp
After I returned to China, I learned from the television, radio, and newspapers about the rumours and propaganda that defamed Teacher [Teacher Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa]. The Chinese Communist Party confiscated and destroyed Dafa books, blocked Dafa websites, and deceived people so that they were against Dafa. What they did was extremely wicked. I began to write letters to various government agencies in Beijing, the provincial government in Liaoning, and county government agencies and various businesses in Tieling City. I wanted to tell them the real situation about Falun Gong and let people learn the truth.
Sun Lizhong and Liu Daiying from the political protection section of the public security bureau in Tieling City found out about me and ordered me to go to the district bureau several times to be questioned. They suspected that I was sent by someone in the United States. I earnestly told them that I had learned Falun Dafa of my own free will and that no one had ordered me to do anything. I sincerely told them: "My purpose for coming home is to let you know the truth about Falun Gong, and to tell you that 'Falun Dafa is good.'" In February 2002, Sun Lizhong, Liu Zhongren, and more than a dozen policemen from the district and Tieling municipal public security bureaus took me to the district public security bureau and interrogated me for more than two hours. During the interrogation, I told them that those who practise Falun Gong are good people, are not against the government, and are not being political. I added that I wished that they would not be against Dafa and not persecute practitioners, because doing so could cause them harm. But they did not believe me. Sun Lizhong pretended to be inspecting my passport, then he confiscated it and refused to return it to me.
In order to avoid being harassed, I took my daughter and left home, renting a place somewhere else. Other practitioners helped me break through the Internet blockade using my web address from the United States. We downloaded leaflets exposing the persecution from the Clearwisdom/Minghui website and distributed them with my daughter so that people would learn the truth about Falun Gong. Someone found out that I was printing leaflets and reported me to the police. On October 16th, 2000, police from Faku County and Tieling City broke into the family housing unit of the Faku County Teacher's Academy in Shenyang City and arrested me. They also stole my laptop computer, MP3 player, CD player, tape, 1,500 yuan1 in my suitcase, and two Falun Gong books. They took them without writing any receipt. They tore apart my family. At the time, my daughter was attending middle school. Being so young, it was extremely painful for her to lose her mother.
Sun Lizhong from the political protection section and Liu Zhongren from the municipality sent me to the Tieling municipal detention centre. After I was tortured for 50 days, they falsely claimed that I was "disrupting social order" and demanded that I sign a guarantee statement to give practising. I refused, so they sent me to Masanjia Forced Labour Camp in Liaoning Province.
Masanjia has a notorious reputation. Its wicked leader, Su Jing, and the guards use persuasion and threats and deceitful, underhanded methods to brutally torture practitioners in order to "transform2" them.
As soon as I arrived, seven or eight people who had already been "transformed" surrounded me. They searched my bag and my body and formed a circle around me. They began to inundate me with their twisted logic. I told them I did not want to listen and asked them to stop misquoting from Teacher and Dafa. They laughed strangely and began to bombard me, said sarcastic things and hurled insults at me. They did not let me sleep. Su Jing also brought two collaborators from Beijing, Niu Hong and Yue Huiling, to bombard me with a bunch of nonsense and words that slandered Teacher and Dafa. They also spoke to me about an assistant coordinator from Dalian who "awoke" from being misled after he went home. I refused to accept their twisted words, so they tormented me every day.
All day long, they monitored and restricted my activities. The guards also forced practitioners to watch videos that defamed Teacher and Dafa. They attempted to control our minds and exerted pressure on our physical bodies. We were forced to perform laborious tasks and make handicrafts for export. We were not allowed to sleep until we finished our tasks. Regardless of freezing winters, intense hot summers, or under the baking sun, we were required to load the carts and work in the rice fields, or pull weeds in the dry farmland.
With the help and demands from overseas practitioners, I was released a year later. The mental and physical torture that I suffered in the camp irreparably damaged my body and mind.
Destitute and homeless, Tibet was not a safe place
After I returned home, Tieling City policemen continued to monitor and harass me constantly. When I moved to my brother's place in Tieling City, the police came to look for me. When I moved to my sister's place in Faku County, Tieling City, public security bureau officials informed the Faku County police and told them to send an officer to harass me. They said I could not live in Faku, and it was not safe for them if I lived there. They demanded I pay them for every day that I lived in Faku, and I had to let them know my whereabouts, otherwise they would cause trouble for me. I asked them why were they being so unreasonable and what crime I had committed by living at my sister's place.
Since I had no place to stay, I became homeless and destitute. With the help of other practitioners I began to print and distribute leaflets exposing the persecution. At the same time, officers from Tieling City Public Security Bureau and Lingdong Police Station in my hometown began to search for me.
One time I secretly went to my sister's place in Faku to take care of some business. I ran into my sister outside the building. That must have scared her, because she kept staring at me speechless. Suddenly she dragged me into the house and talked to me in a strange tone of voice. She said that Sun Lizhong and several policemen from Tieling City Public Security Bureau had just been there looking for me. I comforted her and left very quickly, I did not want her to worry about me.
Around the same time, a practitioner at our material site was arrested but got the word out to urge us to move out of our place. That evening, we quickly moved to another practitioner's home and stayed there for two days. We noticed an increase in police vehicles patrolling the area and their loud shrieking sirens. We heard the police beating and verbally abusing people while making their arrests. It sounded like the arrival of the "Red Terror." According to news from internal sources, the local public security bureau conducted a meeting and decided to "fight Falun Gong until the end." They also began to search each residential unit, looking for practitioners.
In April 2002, more than ten homeless practitioners and I left our hometown and went to Tibet. The Chinese Communist Party also patrols Tibet. In order to prevent Tibetans from resisting and protesting, the CCP installed surveillance cameras on the streets, and placed police and national protection agents everywhere. For safety reasons, we constantly moved around, sometimes from the city to the countryside. This made our lives very difficult.
In the evening on August 27th, 2002, we were in Rigeze City, Tibet, distributing leaflets about Falun Gong. The police arrested one of us, searched him, and found the addresses of the hotels in Rigeze and Lhasa where practitioners were staying. As a result, 12 practitioners were arrested, including a nine-year-old and a 13-year-old. That evening I was taken to the Rigeze police station to be interrogated. Because I did not cooperate with their unreasonable demands, three or four policemen beat me, grabbed me by the hair, and slammed me against a wall several times. It made me so dizzy that I almost passed out. Later the police took me to a detention centre and locked me in a dark room, where I was shackled and forced to sit on a wet cement floor. I asked the officer why was he treating me this way since I had not committed any crime. He said his superior ordered him to do it.
It was raining outside, and I was exposed to the wind and the rain. Since I was only wearing a thin layer of clothing, I was trembling from the freezing cold. A few hours later, they took me to a room where another police officer was on duty, and handcuffed me to a stool for two nights and a day. I was hungry and cold, but I persisted in informing the police about the true nature of Falun Gong. One of them said, "Outsiders like you want to bully us and want us to accept your beliefs." I explained to him, "Things are not like you think. We are cultivators and good people. We do not commit bad deeds and only want to tell you the truth. We hope that you understand what Falun Gong is and ask you to not be against it. We want to save people from the lies so that they do not suffer retribution for persecuting Dafa." I also explained to them the causal effects of good deeds being met with rewards and bad deeds being met with retribution. Eventually, their attitude toward me softened. On day three, they took Wang Huiyan and me to the public security department in Lhasa City.
At the 610 Office3 of the public security department in Lhasa, several policemen took turns interrogating me. When they could not get the answers they wanted, one of them raised his fist and threatened me. Even though I always treated them with kindness, I did not comply with their requests. One of the officers from the public security department glanced at me and said, "Since you don't want to say anything, can you sing?" I said yes and he asked, "Then why don't you sing a song from Falun Gong?" I agreed to sing even though I do not have a good voice and do not really know how to sing. I sang "Falun Dafa is Good." He smiled as soon as I finished singing, then he mimicked the tune and sang the phrase "Falun Dafa is good" twice and added Teacher's name and the word "good" at the end of the song. He sang very well. Whether he was sincere or not, the words came out of his mouth. Thus, an element of goodness existed in his heart. I truly hope that he finds his conscience.
The police took me to Lhasa's detention centre later in the evening. The second day I found out that all the practitioners in Lhasa had been arrested. Wang Huiling jumped from a building at the public security department and disappeared. The two children were missing as well. We were each locked in separate rooms, and we all went on a hunger strike for more than ten days to protest the detention. When the police from their respective public security bureaus in Liaoning Province took us to the airport, I saw Wang Huiling and the two children. Wang Huiling was on a stretcher because she had jumped from the building and had fractured her pelvis, but the two children were fine.
When I was arrested in Rigeze, the police stole the 1,000 yuan I had in my pocket and my belongings in the suitcase at the hotel in Lhasa. In my suitcase I had $3,700 US dollars; 14,000 yuan; a camera worth $224 US dollars; a mobile phone worth 1,500 yuan; a watch; a necklace; and clothing worth 2,500 yuan. They stole all the above items and did not give me a receipt. They did not even let me take any extra clothing with me. Yang Dongsheng, the police officer from the public security bureau in the Tieling district, lied to us and said that the public security department in Lhasa mailed our belongings home. So far I have not received anything in the mail.
"Lu Jianhua, we are going to shoot you to death today"
On September 20th, 2002, the police sent us to our respective local detention centres in Liaoning Province. At the detention centre in Tieling City, I went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution and asked to be released with a not-guilty verdict. Several inmates held my head still while Doctor Qian Dapeng repeatedly force-fed me by sticking a tube through my nose. I almost suffocated. My throat and the tissue inside my nose was injured and bleeding. The pain was unbearable. Both sides of my face were pinched so hard by the inmates that it was extremely tender and the pain lasted almost two months.
During my hunger strike I was taken to the district's public security bureau and interrogated. As soon as Sun Lizhong saw me, he said, "Lu Jianhua, I'm going to shoot you to death today." I ignored him. In the interrogation room, Sun Lizhong disregarded the fact that I was very weak from being on a hunger strike for days. He handcuffed me to the wall and interrogated me for more than an hour. Finally, I could not sustain myself any longer. I lost consciousness. They poured water on me and pressed on a few acupuncture points. When I came to, I found myself sitting up on a stool, soaking wet, and my hands were shaking uncontrollably. The policemen had to take me back to the detention centre.
Late one evening after October 1st, 2002, the noise of an iron door opening woke me up. A female practitioner named Cai Shaojie was pushed in. There were two other practitioners, Wang Jie and Li Weiji, who were also arrested. They had videotaped persecuted practitioners and were planning to expose the persecution, but they were arrested by the police who eavesdropped on their conversation on their cellphones. During the interrogation of Cai Shaojie, the police hung her up and used high voltage electric batons to shock her. As a result, her left hand lost all feeling, and she was not able to care for herself for several months. Wang Jie was tortured until she almost died. She was later sent to the hospital for emergency treatment. Li Weiji was taken out of the detention centre several times to be interrogated. She was brutally beaten by the police who were attempting to obtain confidential information.
I met Li Weiji while we were both being interrogated. She was sentenced to eight years, and Wang Jie and Cai Shaojie were sentenced to seven years. Liu Yumei, a practitioner who was with me in the same cell, was brutally beaten by the police. After they brought her back, she had a big lump on her back, and her spine was misshapen. After she went on a hunger strike, the police shackled her to the ground, with her arms and legs spread apart. Other inmates opened the window to freeze her in the cold weather and did not clean up her urine. Qian Dapeng, the prison doctor, mixed his cigarette ashes into the corn flour gruel that was used to force feed her. She was not afraid of the wicked police, and did not waver. She broke out of jail two months later.
At the time, about 20 practitioners were detained.
They hung me up and brutally beat me for 17 hours
Around mid October, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, Tieling City Public Security Bureau took me out of the detention centre for interrogation. Yu Honghai led six policemen to take turns torturing me. They took me to the torture room on the fifth floor and hung me up on the wall. They used brutal force to try to coerce me to confess. They threatened and insulted me, and they jerked my mouth and wouldn't let me use the toilet. Later, two policemen dragged me to the toilet and told me to urinate on the floor, and they would not leave. I could not urinate, and they dragged me back and hung me up on the wall again. A policeman used a tube-like hard object to beat me incessantly, from head to toe. And then he pulled my legs apart and ordered me to urinate. My legs were off the ground, and the weight of my entire body was on my wrists. The handcuffs cut into my wrists. It hurt so much that I almost fainted and it caused my hands to swell.
The officer that beat me bragged about himself and said, "I've beaten two practitioners to death, and I've beaten another one until he was paralysed. I'm not violating the law when I kill a Falun Gong practitioner, therefore nothing can happen to me." He tortured me until I became incoherent, then they released me from the cuffs. I had been hung in the air for more than 17 hours.
Because of this inhumane treatment, both of my thumbs and index fingers were numb and I could not raise my right arm. I was unable to take care of myself for six months. My right collarbone is still swollen and has not healed. Every time I use my right hand, it hurts and has no strength.
Wang Jie, another practitioner named Diao, and I were imprisoned in the same cell of the detention centre. We faithfully practised the exercises every day, and the guards yelled and reprimanded us. One time prison guard Jiang saw us practising. He screamed at us insanely and ordered another guard, Sun, to bring the neck shackle for death row prisoners. They put this shackle around practitioner Diao's neck and fastened the other end on the ground. The shackle was a foot long and weighed 10 kg (22 lbs.). The person wearing it could not lift her head and needed others to help her use the toilet. They used the same torture instrument on me. They fastened one end around my neck and the other around my ankles. Wang Jie was tortured so severely that they had to take her to the hospital. Although later she was discharged from the hospital, they were afraid that she would die, so they did not use the neck shackle on her. The shackle was short and heavy, and I could not lift my head. My neck became very sore, and it was hard to endure. To go to the toilet, I had to bend my waist and move forward inch by inch. It was more painful in the evening, because there were so many people, there was no room to lie down, so I could only sleep sideways. Since the shackle was only a foot long, the distance between my neck and legs was no more than a foot. Thus I could not bear sleeping in one position for too long and I could not turn over without getting up first. After I got up with much effort, someone else would take my spot.
Wang, the women's prison guard, said to me, "If you write the guarantee statement and declare you will no longer practise Falun Gong, I will take off the neck shackle." I replied. "I won't write anything. I've done nothing wrong and I'm not guilty of anything." She then said, "You'll keep wearing the neck shackle until you write the statement." The 610 Office sent someone to interrogate me. When they noticed that I could barely walk wearing the neck shackle, they took it off. The guards did not put it back on after I returned to the cell. Practitioner Diao had symptoms of illness and a blood pressure of more than 200. Her relatives filled out some documents and took her home. Although the guards treated us horribly, Dafa practitioners always treated them with kindness and mercy. When we were released, prison guard Jiang said that we were good people.
On March 5th, 2002, Yingzhou District court in Tieling City sentenced me to four years of forced labour for "using a forbidden practice to disrupt the law." I appealed and was rejected. In a country where there are no human rights, a defence lawyer's speech must be approved by the court. Such a practice is extremely ludicrous.
Four years of devastation in the prison
On June 12th, 2002, Wang Jie, Cai Shaojie, and I were taken from Tieling Detention Centre to Dabei Women's Prison in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. I was detained in the 8th brigade of the #8 supervision area, Wang Jie was detained in the 9th brigade, and Cai Shaojie was detained in the 1st brigade. I saw both of them when we went to get our physical examinations. Wang Jie was as thin as a stick, and Cai Shaojie's face and legs were severely swollen. My legs and feet were also very swollen, and it lasted about three months.
I was in the 3rd squad of the 8th brigade. The guard was Liu Yili. I went on a hunger strike to protest the imprisonment and the prohibition against practising Falun Gong. The guards insulted me every day, forcing me to perform hard labour. With the help of a criminal inmate, Ting Shuli, they strictly monitored and controlled me and continuously berated and shouted at me. Five days later, in order to avoid more torture, I ended my hunger strike. Liu Yili said that since I did not want to recite the prison rules and was not productive in my labour tasks, she would use an electric baton to shock me for more than half-an-hour. The entire time I was in prison, I never complied and did not recite a word of the prison rules.
Zuo Xiaoyan, the 8th brigade area supervisor, is known to be a cruel and wicked person in the women's prison system. She is especially brutal in torturing practitioners and often boasts about it in the meetings. She claims, "I've been on this job for more than 20 years and have straightened out and beaten more than 2,000 people, but no one dares to retaliate. I've beaten them and berated them, so what! They can sue me if they want to." She is extremely aggressive.
In March 2003, the prison issued a new guideline regarding the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Zuo Xiaoyan eagerly complied with it and increased the pressure to persecute practitioners. In order to keep her income unaffected, she forced practitioners to work during the day, and ordered prison inmates to torture practitioners in the evening. She stated that the reason for torturing practitioners was because we were disturbing other inmates' sleep. The guards distorted the facts to incite other inmates' hatred of practitioners. Under Zuo Xiaoyan's provocation, the inmates dared to do anything. The following criminals participated in torturing me: Zhao Shichao (pimp or head of prostitutes), Wang Shuhua (drug dealer) strictly monitored and confined me; Li Jing (murdered someone with poison), Jin Min (murderer), Gong Li (robber), and Guo Xiaoyan (murderer) executed the torture. After I returned to the prison after a day of labour, they ripped my clothes off and forced me to put my legs together. Then they put both of my hands on my feet in a position called "folding the body." ("Body-folding" refers to standing with both legs straight and close and bending the head down as far as it will go toward the feet, in front of the knees. The fingers point to the ground, the head is upside down, making the body form a 90-degree angle). If I refused, they kicked and punched me until 6:30 a.m. the next morning, and I had to go back to work. The next evening after work, the inmates ripped my clothes off again and continued to torture me. Everyone took turns kicking me. After they kicked me to the ground, they forced me to "fold my body," then they kicked me again, hitting my head on the wall until it bounced back.
The most vicious of the inmates was Li Jing. In order to please the guards and to reduce her sentence, she wrote words slandering Dafa all over my body. When they got tired of beating me, they took a break and then changed their torture strategies. They dragged me, exhausted and wounded, into the wash house. They poured buckets of icy water on me, then dragged my freezing and trembling body back into the cell and tied me onto the bed rail. In order to prevent me from falling asleep, Zhao Shichao forced me to stand up and tied my arms behind me, with one arm upwards and the other downwards, which is known as "carrying a sword." She forced me to "fold my body," and if I did not do it the way she wanted, they brutally beat me. They tortured me till three or four in the morning. I ached so much that I could not stop trembling, and the pain from the old injury to my right arm pierced through my heart. The humiliation, the verbal abuse, and the physical devastation were indescribable. I could hardly walk the next day when I performed the labour tasks. My legs were very weak. Even with the help of others, I walked like a cripple, one step at a time. It was even more difficult to walk upstairs, and my whole body ached. Some good-hearted inmates quietly shed tears when they saw me being beaten up like that.
I'm usually strict with myself but lenient toward others, thus many inmates were very nice to me. I told the inmates about the goodness of Dafa whenever I had the opportunity. I clearly understood the inmates who beat me were mostly taking orders from the guards, and if they did not obey the orders their sentences would not be reduced. After I was separated from the inmates that beat me, some of them came upstairs to visit and to greet me during the Chinese New Year.
Around mid 2004, I was transferred to the 2nd squad. Although the guard Jiao Lingling is only in her 20s, she is more vicious than other guards. She became restless if she did not slap or use the electric baton on anyone for a day. And when she scolded someone, it was nonstop, and her voice carried throughout the entire prison. She shocked me with the electric baton numerous times. Each month, I was required to sign on the inspection chart to "acknowledge my crime and to obey the law." Since I did not commit any crime I refused to sign the chart and did not receive any credit for it. When Jiao Lingling found out about it, she was extremely upset and denigrated me hysterically. She shocked me with an electric baton in the office for one week. As a result, the back of my neck was bruised, with black and purple marks, and my back was covered with blisters. She kicked me in the head with her high-heel shoes and did not allow family visitation for three months. I did not give in to her and refused to sign the chart.
One morning, after I performed the labour tasks, I was extremely exhausted and had no energy. Once the guards arrived at nine o'clock in the morning, they called some inmates to the office to be shocked with the electric baton. After I was shocked, I struggled to stand up and began to walk very slowly. Jiao Lingling ordered me to quickly run back to the machinery to do more work. I did not run and did not reply. She began to yell at me and ordered me to run quickly. I turned my head and told her I was too tired to run. She then stared at me maliciously and did not say a thing. Each day, inmates mostly run to be fed, to use the toilet, and to the office. They do this in order to squeeze more time for work, reducing the chances of being shocked with the electric baton.
In order to make more money, Zuo Xiaoyan increased the daily production quota of the 8th brigade. No matter how quick we were, it was very hard to reach the quota. Once we reached the quota, she increased the production quota even more the next day, and we could never finish our tasks. As a result, the guards threatened us with electric batons, pushing us to increase our production. Sometimes the entire squad of 40-50 people was called into the office to be shocked. One guard, Gu Yaxing (who is being transferred), ordered Jiao Lingling to shock us one after another. One could see the blue sparks and hear the "pa-pa" sound from the electric baton, mixed with the cries and screams of the inmates. The room was filled with the smell of burnt flesh. The scene was indescribable. Every morning there is a long line of people in front of the office waiting to be tortured. Zuo Xiaoyan often said that we were animals and slaves, so we should be whipped.
In order to increase production, Zuo Xiaoyan not only used the electric baton to threaten us but also increased the amount of time we were to work. The prison regulation stipulates that the inmates work from 6:30 a.m. till 9:00 p.m. In the 8th brigade, however, the majority of the time, we didn't finish working until midnight, and sometimes we worked till two or three in the morning. There were even times we had to work all night long and then all the next day. Even if we were allowed to leave the workroom at 9:00 p.m., we had to take our job back to the cell and work till midnight. Most of the textile products that we sewed were multi-pocket trousers for export to South Korea.
Because of my age and other reasons, I was slower at the job than the younger inmates. Zuo Xiaoyan slapped my mouth and scolded me, saying that I did not do a good job and that I was lazy. One time, an inmate ordered me to go to the office. I saw seven to eight people being shocked, and one of them was Zhao Lijun, a practitioner. The guards handcuffed everyone's hands behind their legs, and Zuo Xiaoyan used the electric baton, scolding and shocking them. Those who were shocked fell to the floor from the intense pain. When she came close to me, Zuo Xiaoyan grabbed me by my collar and yelled at me. I sent righteous thoughts to stop her. One time Zuo Xiaoyan told me and another inmate to go to the office and ordered us to "fold our bodies." I stood motionless and Zuo Xiaoyan was so angry that she started to beat me and pushed me to the ground. She ordered Liu Yili, the guard, to tie me up and then kicked me to the floor. She ordered me to squat and hung two weights around my neck. Two hours later, an on duty inmate came and told me quietly, "Auntie Lu, why don't you 'fold your body?' That way the brigade chief will untie you. You seem so uncomfortable now." I replied, "I've done nothing wrong and I've finished a lot of work. Why should I 'fold my body?' Ten minutes later they untied me and told me to leave.
One time, I wrote on the biannual evaluation report, "Falun Dafa practitioners are not guilty. Please release the innocent practitioners immediately." Zuo Xiaoyan angrily said at a meeting with the sewing unit, "I'm so angry that I'm about to explode. Lu Jianhua went to the United States and then Tibet and dares to ask to be released with a not-guilty verdict. I will straighten her out when I get a chance." Because I worked constantly, I did not recite the prison rules (we were often tested on the prison rules). Thus, I was often forced to go to the office to be shocked or fined and was not allowed to eat the fine white flour and rice. I was often not allowed to eat at all and had to work on an empty stomach. Orders were given not to decrease my workload.
The guards in the 8th brigade not only tortured practitioners during the "transformation" process and work period, but they also harassed practitioners on a daily basis. They often conducted surprise searches and tore open our clothes and bedding. They made such a mess that it was hard to reorganise and clean up everything. When I finished working around midnight and was completely exhausted, I still had to tidy up my clothes and bedding. Several times I was so weak that I was barely conscious and unable to move.
It was even more humiliating when they questioned us. They made us take off all our clothes, including our underwear. The guards continuously did bad deeds but were afraid of being exposed. When they found Falun Dafa lectures, they tied up the practitioners and shocked them with an electric baton for several hours, confiscated their food, wouldn't let them eat the fine rice and flour, stopped family visits, and ordered other inmates to imprison the practitioners for 24 hours and torture them for days.
Some inmates who had a conscience knew that we were being unjustly persecuted and were supportive of us and tried to help us. When I had the opportunity, I told them about Dafa and the principle of good deeds being rewarded and bad deeds being met with retribution. One inmate told others that she believed what Auntie Lu said. There was another inmate that liked to sing licentious songs, and I kindly asked her to stop. She stopped singing them after she understood the reason. When someone else asked her to sing those licentious songs, she replied, "I've already promised Auntie Lu that I won't sing that kind of song." Two inmates said to me before I left, "Auntie Lu, please rest assured that I won't curse at others anymore. I will remember your words."
Before I was released, Liu Yili summoned me to the office and said, "Lu Jianhua, now that you are going to be released, don't say anything you wish when the prison head speaks to you. If you say something wrong it may affect your release." I replied, "I won't say anything. But if they ask me if I will continue to practise Falun Gong, I won't deny it." Liu Yili said to me, "It is better that you say you won't practise it anymore. Who would know that you practise behind closed doors once you go home?" I replied, "If I really wanted to, I could have said that I didn't practise Falun Gong when I was detained, so that I did not have to suffer all these years. I have benefited so much from practising in Dafa, I clearly understand that, and I can't lie to myself about that. Now that Dafa is being defamed and treated unjustly, if I cannot speak righteously about it, then I am not a good person." Liu Yili said to me, "But what about the ancient saying said, 'The arm cannot defeat the leg?'" I replied, "This is the darkness before the dawn." Then Liu Yili said, "Is it not still dark?" I replied, "The morning light will soon arrive." Liu Yili did not say anything else. It seemed that Liu Yili was concerned about me, but in reality, she was afraid that my words might affect her negatively. I was finally released on September 19th, 2006.
Ever since I returned to my homeland in 1999, my family has been very worried about me, especially the two times I was detained. My father, brother, sister, sister-in-law, and daughter suffered tremendously. They were threatened by the public security bureau and told that if they knew of my whereabouts but did not report it, they would be held responsible. After I was detained, officers from the Faku public security bureau even went to my sister's house and searched for my belongings. They gave my sister and her family a lot of pressure. My over 80-year-old father was so worried for my life that and he could hardly eat or sleep. When I saw him after my release, he seemed to have aged quite a bit, and that really pained my heart. I know that I have not committed any wrong deeds. It is the Chinese Communist Party that is suppressing good people that are cultivating according to the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance."
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")
3. "The 610 office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/7/5/158222.html
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