Falun Gong Practitioner Gao Dong Relates the Brutal Persecution He Has Experienced

In May 2008, prior to the Beijing Olympics, I lost my job, family, and home simply for practising Falun Gong. Detention and torture had rendered me disabled. I decided to go to Beijing to appeal and seek justice for Falun Gong and myself. Over the past ten years, since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, I have been incarcerated for close to eight of those years. While locked up, I was subjected to numerous torture methods. At least three times I almost lost my life.

I had no money for my trip to Beijing. Instead of taking a bus or train, I had to walk from Panjin to Beijing. I passed Jinzhou, Jingxi, Xingcheng, Suizhong, Qinhuangdao, Shanhaiguan, and Qianan, walking more than 500 km, which took me close to eleven days. I picked food from the garbage and slept by the roadside. Sometimes kind strangers gave me food.

When I passed through Qianan, I heard that the CCP was using the pretext of hosting the Olympics to capture local practitioners. Several friends and family decided to go to the local government to demand the practitioners' release. I went with them to the local police department, but they refused to meet with us. Later on they seized and took me to the Qianan City Detention Centre, where I was cruelly beaten. I went on a persecution protest hunger strike. Eventually the police transferred me to the Panjin Detention Centre, where I continued my hunger strike. A doctor from a mental hospital arrived, but he left after I clarified the truth to him. Ten days later, I was transported to the Benxi Forced Labour Camp, where I was tortured for eight months.

The worst of the torture methods was called the death bed. It is a double bed. They tie you up on it, with arms and legs stretched out and with an air cushion under your buttocks to make your arms and legs stretched even harder. At night in the summer, they let mosquitoes bite you. They blow cold air on you when it is already very cold in winter. They pour cold water and medicinal liquid on you. They use needles to prick your armpit and use a hard brush to brush the area between the nail and the fleshy part of the fingertips. They flick your eyeballs hard with their fingers. They roll wooden sticks on your ribs. They use an electric baton on your mouth, belly button, nipples, jaw, armpit, and sensitive parts on hands and feet. Sometimes two guards used electric batons on me simultaneously, until I lost consciousness. They tortured me like this for two months. I could no longer walk by the time they were done, and bruises covered my entire body.

At night they tied me up on a bed, and four guards monitored me around the clock. They refused me toilet access at night. If I wet the bed, they beat me. Later on they assigned three people to punch and kick me every day. I was severely injured and became very thin. The guards often threw my head against the wall and the floor. The three of them competed with each other in punching and kicking me. They kicked me with their leather shoes on, and they hammered nails into my fingers. The inmates get punished if they fight with other inmates, but get their terms reduced if they beat Falun Gong practitioners. My left arm was incapacitated, and lost consciousness several times.

In six months, my weight dropped from about 80 kg to 40 kg. Due to the long-term torture, I suffered the symptom of a stroke, and my entire body was swollen. They still did not want to release me. I was transferred to a mental hospital. The nurses there tied me up to a bed and injected me with unknown substances and force-fed me. I became incontinent and paralysed. Occasionally I suffered amnesia. I stayed there for over 20 days. They claimed that I had a mental disorder. Benxi Forced Labour Camp officials then sent me back to Haicheng. Without agreement from the local police station and my family, they carried me into my sister's store, dropped me off there and ran away.

As a result of the torture, I also suffered from throwing up gastric mucosa and blood, low blood pressure, being unable to sleep for several days, and others. Even when I escaped, I had to dig in the garbage to get food because I had no source of income and no home. Sometimes I slept by the roadside, in a forest, or in cemeteries.

The gross abuse and hardships I experienced during the past ten years is beyond imagination. I was a college graduate and used to be a manager at the Zhenxing Company in Liaohe Oil Field. I had a happy family and a lovely daughter, but after the CCP started the persecution, I lost everything.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/5/25/201598.html