The Persecution Suffered by Sichuan Falun Gong Practitioner Mr. Liu Yingxu

Mr. Liu Yingxu started practising Falun Gong in November 1994. Following his graduation from Chongqing University of Technology, he was employed by the Mianzhu Dongfang Turbine Factory. He also became an assistant at the Mianzhu Falun Gong practice site.

After the Chinese Communist regime began to suppress Falun Gong in 1999, Mr. Liu was persecuted many times. He was sent to a labour camp twice and imprisoned for three years in total. He was once detained in a brainwashing centre for seven and a half months.

The following, in Mr. Liu Yingxu's own words, is part of what he was subjected to because of the persecution.

1. The Persecution I Went Through During July 20th, 1999

The Chinese Communist regime's blatant persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20th, 1999. That night, Mianzhu City Police Department No.1 section head Zhen Weiguo, and Zhang Xueli, head of the Dongfang Turbine Factory Security Section, dispatched several people to seize me from the factory's dormitory where I was then living. I was not there at the time, but they took all the Falun Gong teaching literature I left in the dormitory.

Around July 23rd, officers from the 610 Office [an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong] in Deyang City came to see me. They wanted me to give up the practice of Falun Gong. Zhen Weiguo and others brought me to the police department and threatened me. I was afraid to express my determination to continue the practice.

Propaganda department officials from the Dongfang Turbine Factory, the Party Committee, the 610 Office, and other departments, subsequently took turns trying to persuade me to give up the practice. They pressured me to write a guarantee statement to renounce practising Falun Gong. I succumbed to the pressure and wrote an ambiguous statement in August 1999. Consequently, for many days after that, I felt that I had betrayed my conscience, and it felt like life was not worth living.

Around October 19th, 1999, I went to Beijing to appeal with another practitioner. I stayed at the liaison office of the Dongfang Turbine Factory in Beijing. The office received a fax from the factory's security office, instructing them to intercept us. Officials used our own money to buy return train tickets to Sichuan Province. We were escorted to the Beijing train station and handed over to a staff person who was instructed not to let us get off the train halfway through the journey. We bought new tickets at the Zhengzhou train station and returned to Beijing. We met a practitioner on the train. We left our belongings in a hotel in Beijing and went to look around at Tiananmen Square. When we returned to our accommodation, we discovered that someone had gone through our belongings. A group of police officers arrested us early the next morning at around 2:00 a.m. After interrogating us for the entire night, they held all three of us in the Chongwen District Detention Centre in Beijing.

A week or so later, the other two practitioners were sent back to their hometown. I heard that practice site assistants could not be sent back to their hometowns, and had to be tried in Beijing.

After I was held in the detention centre for nearly 40 days, around February 3rd, police officers from the Dongfang Turbine Factory's Security Office took me back to Mianzhu City. Later on, this group of police officers forced me to bear all the expenses they incurred on the trip, including their airfares, food, accommodation, train tickets, and so on.

As I refused to cooperate with them, I was imprisoned in the Mianzhu City Detention Centre where convicts abused me. They forced to kneel, slapped my face, and had me perform slave labour.

The Mianzhu City Police Department head, and others, tried to persuade me to renounce my faith in Falun Gong, but I refused. They even harassed my girlfriend at that time as well as her family. In the end, she was forced to break up with me. The regime officials also coerced my family into trying to get me to accede to their demands. Some members of my family hit me when I refused to listen to them.

My parents and relatives visited the head of the Deyang City 610 Office, the secretary of the Political and Judicial Committee, and others, in attempts to bail me out. My family was told that if I had killed someone or committed arson, they [the officials] could release me, but because I practised Falun Gong, it was impossible.

2. My First Forced Labour Camp Term

Another practitioner and I were sentenced to one year in a forced labour camp on December 30th, 1999.

The next day we were both taken to the Xinhua Forced Labour Camp in Mianyang City.

We were forbidden from doing the Falun Gong exercises, or studying the teachings and we were monitored. For a period of time, five of us had to squeeze onto a single, tiny metal bed, to sleep right on the metal railings. It was very painful. We could not sleep at all. We were given only a very short time to wash ourselves and could not take a bath. Several of us developed groin sores, and some of us had sores on our feet, too.

We were forced to carry human waste with a carrying pole and bury it. During the Lunar New Year's Eve period I was forced to hold my head against the sharp corner of a wall and a metal bed. Consequently there were very deep indentations on my head. I was also beaten and otherwise abused. I had to recite the prison regulations as well as listen to and watch information defaming Falun Gong.

About three months into my labour camp ordeal, I was assigned to make bricks. I often had to work until late at night, and with the lights on for quite some time. Initially, I was assigned to push the dump trucks and shovel debris. However, it was too strenuous for me, and I nearly fainted several times from exhaustion. My whole body ached after finishing work for the day. My hands were blistered, and I could not straighten my arms.

A kind guard transferred me to a relatively easier task, laying bricks out in the sun to dry. In reality, however this was not an easy task. There were eight of us, and each person had to handle an average of 10,000 bricks. Every brick weighed more than 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs), so everyone had to dry an average of 38 tons of bricks daily. They transferred me on July 20th, 2000. I let myself be deceived at that time and wrote the three statements to renounce practising Falun Gong. I also helped to "reform" [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] and brainwash other practitioners. I started to have terrifying thoughts. I thought it was all right for practitioners to drink, gamble, and seek prostitutes. This is a severe form of persecution - one that "reforms" a person on the spiritual level. It leads to the degeneration of one's moral values.

The labour camp also frequently gathered "reformed" practitioners together to exchange thoughts and to reinforce their evil doctrines in order to speed up their "reformation." For over a month after I was released from the labour camp, I appeared to have developed a split personality. While reading Falun Gong books, my brain would try to explain the contents in accordance with distorted doctrines they had instilled into me at the labour camp.

I was released from the labour camp in mid-September 2000. As I had renounced my faith in Falun Gong, the Dongfang Turbine Factory re-employed me. They put me back in my original work unit and signed me to a one-year probationary contract. Later on, my superior intentionally gave me more work so that I would not have time to participate in Falun Gong activities.

3. My Second Detention

In early 2001, Mr. Huang, the head of the criminal police team from my workplace's security office, brought a group of people to conduct a search in my dormitory and took away my Falun Gong books. They also videotaped me.

Two police officers from my workplace arrested me on June 4th, 2001. They subsequently ransacked my office and dormitory. Those involved in the raid included the head of the State Security Section, Zhang Xueli; the head of the Mianzhu City Police Department, Zeng Weiguo; and officers from the Zhujiang Street Police Station in Deyang City.

I was then held in the Mianzhu City Detention Centre. On May 1st, 2001, a public holiday, a huge message dealing with the facts about Falun Gong appeared in the dormitory area of the Deyang Erchong Factory. By coincidence, I was staying with a practitioner living in the area for two days. Officials therefore suspected that the other practitioner and I had posted the message. In the end, they charged us with "suspected involvement," and sentenced me to two years in a labour camp. While in detention, other inmates beat and abused me and forced me to perform slave labour, among other forms of gross abuse and mistreatment.

In July 2001, another practitioner and I were arrested and held in the Xinhua Forced Labour Camp in Mianyang City. The labour camp had by then established a unit for detaining practitioners. We were forced to listen to and watch informational materials defaming Falun Gong. We had to sit on small stools with our backs straight and not move. This lasted for several hours every day. We had sores from sitting like that for long periods of time. Before the sores healed, new sores developed on top of the old ones. Sometimes our trousers stuck to our flesh, and it was extremely painful to remove clothing when using the toilet. Practitioners who refused to cooperate were forced to stand in military postures from early morning into the night.

Practitioners had to stand in the hot sun, run, do parade drills for several hours, do squats, and do push ups. I saw with my own eyes practitioners dragged around in circles by other prisoners after they became too exhausted from running many circles. I myself was pulled along in circles by drug offenders while on hunger strike.

Because I immediately went on a hunger strike in the labour camp, I was separated from other practitioners. During my hunger strike, police officers ordered drug offenders to force feed me. The labour camp officials also had several collaborators¹ mentally torment me. However, my past experience let me see through their tactics, and I was not deceived.

In June 2003, my family and police officers from Mianzhu City brought me home. Dongfang Turbine Factory officials refused to reinstate me in my former job. Unable to find a suitable job locally, I had no choice but to get a job in Chengdu City.

4. Arrested and Taken to Xinjin Brainwashing Centre

A city State Security Bureau deputy head and several others arrested and detained me on the evening of November 14th, 2007. They took away my laptop and all other personal belongings, except my clothes. They put a bag on my head, handcuffed me, and took me to the State Security Bureau's interrogation site at Wenjiang.

The officials took turns interrogating me off and on for 48 hours. I did not say anything, other than to explain the true situation of Falun Gong to them. I sat on a chair during that time and barely slept. I was also on a hunger strike to protest the arrest. I was taken to the Xinjin Brainwashing Centre on the afternoon of November 17th, 2007. At 10:30 p.m. that night, eight Security Section and Education Section agents pushed me onto a chair and force-fed me. I continued the hunger strike, so they force-fed me each night. A group of police agents later interrogated me, and seven of them insulted me. They tried to make me eat and get me to reveal things they wanted to know, but I refused to cooperate with them.

Section chief Yin Shunrao, deputy section chief Bao Xiaomu, Wang Hongqiang, Xu Dan, Huang Zhongzhi, and Wang Xiuqin took turns speaking with me.

Detained practitioners were told not to practice the exercises, not to shout, "Falun Gong is good," and to write guarantee statements. They attempted to coerce practitioners to curse Falun Gong. They also pressured us to betray other practitioners and made many arrangements to reach their goals.

Newly-arriving practitioners to the brainwashing centre usually held hunger strikes. The personnel did not try to "reform" practitioners during the initial incarceration period. Instead, they tried to make these practitioners eat again, or force-fed them. Someone came to me almost daily until late 2007, trying to coerce me into writing the statements. In order to "reform" me, Wang Hongqiang spoke with me every day, sometimes three times a day. I still refused to give up my belief.

Yin Shurao and Bao Xiaomu were unsuccessful. I did not write the statements on February 12th, 2008. They sent two female "accompanying educators" to tell me to write it. I refused. The "educators" then forced my hand to write a statement and handed it over to the officials. Wang Hongqiang knew I had not written it and again barraged me with numerous conversations. Because I refused to write the statement myself, Wang Hongqiang called my parents to the centre again in March. They arranged for my parents to stay there and eat there for free so they could work with them to "reform" me. Wang Hongqiang and my parents pressured me intensely during the following days. I didn't want to endure the mental pressure. In addition, the situations of released practitioners who wrote the statements tempted me. I was unwilling to accept the possible result of being killed as a result of the persecution, so I wrote the guarantee statement. Section chiefs Yang and Zhang took notes and intentionally attempted to lead me to write something about another practitioner. I certainly could not do that. I then realized that I needed to change the situation and resist their attempt to "reform" me.

In late March I started a hunger strike to retract the statement I wrote under pressure and requested unconditional release. The "accompanying educators" (including Da Yang, Xiao Qi, a mother and daughter with the last name of Zhong, Liu Changming, and Zhang Chaobin) held me on a bench. Da Yang and Xiao Qi used a metal spoon and mouth opener to pry open my mouth for force-feeding, which injured my mouth and made it bleed. Blood and food ended up all over my clothes and the floor. Some of the "accompanying educators" who participated in the force-feeding even cried when they saw what went on. I told them they would receive retribution if they chose to help the evildoers.

My hunger strike lasted for over a month. The officials made my parents come to the brainwashing centre again, attempting to make me eat. They made my parents force-feed me. I ate the food my parents brought me, but I refused to eat the food at the brainwashing centre. My parents asked to go home after several days. Bao Xiaomu and Xu Dan called them and me to the conference room. Bao Xiaomu said that she represented the brainwashing centre and announced that if I refused to eat the food made at the brainwashing centre, they would not let my parents go home and would not let my parents meet with me until I started eating again. I protested. They said it was the centre's final decision. Because my father's medicines were running out, my mother was becoming anxious. She knelt down to beg me to eat. I pulled her up and asked my captors to let them go. They sent me back to my cell. I have not seen my parents since, and I don't know when my parents left.

Not too long after, the May 12th, 2008 earthquake damaged buildings at the brainwashing centre, and they needed repair. Officials were afraid we would escape from the centre, and they transferred us to the Jinniu Brainwashing Centre on May 31st, 2008.

I was able to escape from the centre on June 30th, 2008.

I was arrested in late October 2008 while posting stickers to rescue a practitioner. Because I refused to tell my personal information, police station agents beat me severely at their station. They put me in handcuffs and shackles. I went on a hunger strike and did not cooperate with them. The guards attempted to instigate other inmates to beat me. Because I explained the facts about Falun Gong to the inmates ahead of time, they have avoided committing crimes against Falun Gong.

Six days into my hunger strike, several inmates and guards tied me to a bed and put me on an IV drip. After 21 days of being on a hunger strike, they had no choice but to release me.

Note

1. "Collaborators": [former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.]

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/8/11/228190.html