Despite Torture, Ms. Yang Jun from Ganxu Province Remains Firm in Her Belief

Name: Yang Jun
Gender: Female
Age: Unknown
Address: Gaotai County, Anju District, Gansu Province
Occupation: Factory worker
Date of Most Recent Arrest: December 8th, 2000
Most recent place of detention: Pingantai District No.1 Forced Labour Camp, Gansu Province
City: Lanzhou
Province: Gansu
Persecution Suffered: Detention, interrogation, beatings, verbal insult, torture, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, forced to stand still for a long period of time, forced labour, solitary confinement, hung up

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Yang Jun used to work at the Gaotai Shoe Manufacturing Plant. Over the past eleven years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong, she has been detained in forced labour camps, where she suffered cruel torture and humiliation, both mental and physical. The Chinese authorities also harassed her family members frequently. Ms. Yang has now been forced to leave home and move from place to place to avoid arrest.

Ms. Yang recounts her experiences below.

I Benefited Mentally and Physically through Practising Falun Gong

I was very weak since childhood, and I wasn't open-minded at all. Whenever I ran into a conflict, I couldn't be tolerant others, and as a result I often had arguments with my family and colleagues. In May 1996 I read Zhuan Falun and other Falun Gong books. Through study, I began to find answers to all the questions I had been asking but could never find the answers to. I came to realise that I should stop harming other people for my own selfish benefit. Because I began living by the principles of Truth-Compassion-Forbearance, all my illnesses were healed. For the first time in my life, I experienced a healthy body and mind free of illness. I became light hearted, and, as a result my family environment was also harmonious. In the factory where I worked, I took it upon myself to do the dirtiest and hardest work. I didn't fight or scheme against others for personal gain. When my colleagues and neighbours saw how much I transformed after practising, they had a high regard for Falun Gong.

Cruelly Tortured and Humiliated

On July 20th 1999, the CCP began its persecution of Falun Gong. One year later in August 2000 at 1 a.m., five people--Qin Yu from Gaotai County Police Bureau, with Pei Yanbin and the political instructor from Chengguan Police Station and two police officers--shouted outside our house. Without producing any arrest warrant or any legal documents, they arrested us and took us to the police station for interrogation. The officers who interrogated us were: Gao Hui, female, from Gaotai Domestic Security Brigade; a male police officer by the last name of Wang; Li Lanfang; a female police officer; and a secretary by the last name of Bai.

When Li Lanfang and a male officer were interrogating me, they cruelly tortured me and tried to force me to give up Falun Gong. They were unsuccessful. They also cursed and beat me, which caused enormous harm to me both mentally and physically. A male officer and Li Lanfang made me stand in the middle of the interrogation room. The male officer punched me in my forehead so hard I fell over, hit the heating unit, and bounced back. He then pulled my hair, ripping some of it out. I was only wearing a short sleeve blouse at that time, and when he pulled me up, the buttons on my shirt popped off. Three times he positioned his electric baton to shock me, and not until I strongly resisted did he stop. The secretary spat out the acrid cigarette smoke from his mouth into my face.

Next day the interrogation and torture continued. While one male officer was swearing at me, another four or five males arrived to help him. One of them was Zhou Jishan, the assistant to the secretary of the Political and Judicial Committee. As soon as they walked into the room, they began to swear at Teacher Li [the founder of Falun Gong] and me. I shouted, "Don't swear at my Teacher!" Upon hearing that, Zhou slapped my face 20 times. Seeing this, the rest of them began to beat me. They pulled my hair, handcuffed me from behind, and yanked my arms up. The skin and flesh on my left wrist was torn off, and you could see the bone.

By the third evening, I had had no sleep nor had I eaten anything. My feet were swollen from standing, and my shoelaces cut into my flesh. I was in terrible pain, when suddenly it turned dark in front of me, a sign I was about to faint. Seeing that, Li Lanfang started yelling at me. She locked me in a room with a small couch. Yang Xingguo, the assistant to the secretary of the CCP Committee, began interrogating me by yelling and hitting the desk very hard, all the time swearing at me with very foul words.

Zhang Ping, secretary of the Gaotai Township CCP Committee, began to verbally attack me. He slandered me in front of my family members, relatives, and the community, in an attempt to incite hatred against me. He had never seen me before, but slandered me viciously because I refused to give up practising Falun Gong. All the officers who participated in persecuting me also persecuted people from my husband's company, my family members, my sister-in-law, our children, and my mother-in-law. Under such pressure from the CCP, even some people in the companies' management team participated in the persecution to varying degrees. These tactics were used during the Cultural Revolution in the 60s, when, to save their own lives and families, communities and workplaces were all pitted against each other.

Three days later I was taken to the county detention centre, where I was held against my will for 38 days before being released. After I was released, policemen came to my home to harass me. Ma Junqi, the secretary of the Water Conservation Bureau, ordered me many times to write the Guarantee Statement to renounce practising Falun Gong, but I would not do it. People from the police, Procuratorate, and judicial department often forced my mother-in-law to report on me. They were very rude and harassing towards her at home. As a result of this intimidation, she was on the brink of committing suicide. By and large, my relatives and children have been living in a state of terror created and maintained by the CCP.

Detained in a Forced Labour Camp for One Year, Brutally Tortured

Two months after I was released from the detention centre, at 10 a.m. on December 8th, 2000, five or six plainclothes officers came to my home. They claimed that they were from the police bureau. One of them, Kan Zhonghao, demanded that I go with them. None of the officers produced any identification, but I was forced to go with them and was taken to a detention centre, where I was locked in a cold and dirty room. The next day I was taken to the No. 7 Team of Pingantai No.1 Forced Labour Camp in Gansu Province, where I was detained for one year.

I was taken to No.2 Team's duty room where they searched me. They appointed two drug offenders to watch me. They watched my every move, including when I went to the bathroom. At night, I had to share the same blanket with them. The next morning, I was taken to do hard labour. Without any gloves, I had to roll charcoal paste into balls. After a while my hands were swollen and red because of the extreme cold. I refused to be "transformed" [forcibly renounce Falun Gong], so I was taken to the Strict Monitoring Group. I refused to recite the prison regulations, which slandered Falun Gong, so Hu Ruimei, the Team Leader of the No. 7 Team, and a guard by the last name of Shen bribed the drug offenders to try to force me to betray Falun Gong. Every night after I finished doing hard labour, when the inmates went to bed, Hu Ruimei and Shen ordered the drug offenders to take me to the courtyard and make me stand for a very long time. Hu also ordered them to beat me. Sometimes I was forced to stand until 3 a.m. before I could go to bed. This continued until I was released from the labour camp.

After six months, if any Falun Gong practitioners had not been successfully "transformed," the prison terms of the people assigned to monitor them would be extended in order to incite hatred towards us. The detention centre also used my "wages" to pay the drug offenders for pressuring me. When I was released from the camp, I still had 50 yuan¹ in my account, but Hu Ruimei refused give it to me. My shoes had fallen apart, and I asked for a new pair using the money on my account. Hu sneered at me "You are not 'transformed,' so we are not getting anything for you!" So I had to wear a pair of broken shoes, while doing hard labour in the field. As a result, my right big toe and two small toes became injured and infected, and festered until the nails fell off.

A female team leader by the last name of Zhang had me carry huge stacks of grass curtains, and then I had to lift and store them up very high . Because I was exhausted, I fell down quite often and the stacks of grass curtains hit my feet. Seeing this, Zhang would swear at me, saying, "Your feet hurt? You can't stop working because you refuse to be 'transformed!' I won't let you stop working so that you'll have to be 'transformed' in the end!"

In 2001, they were building the entrance of the No.7 Team using construction workers who did not know that this was a torture facility. In order to cover up their heinous crimes, they moved the facility for torturing Falun Gong practitioners to a vegetable reservation. The guards who have been cruelly torturing practitioners are: Team leader Dai Wenqin, political instructor Jing Xuefeng, No.2 Team leader Hu Ruimei, No.1 Team leader by the last name of Li, a drug offender by the nickname of Dunhuang, and collaborator² Zhang Hui. They tortured practitioners by handcuffing them from behind and hoisting them up in the air and by stuffing practitioners' mouths with dirty socks that were worn by drug offenders and then proceeding to beat and curse them, hitting their heads against the wall. Ms. Liu Juhua was subject to this kind of torture, and when Ms. Feng Jinlian came out of there, she had been tortured so badly that she had difficulty walking, and both her head and face were swollen and bruised.

In the summer of 2001, when I was no longer in the detention centre I soon regained a young and healthy body through practising Falun Gong, and my weight increased to about 140 lbs. While I was being beaten and tortured, sworn at, humiliated, mentally tortured, and forced to do hard labour, my weight went down to about 120 lbs. My hair turned grey, and I appeared to have aged so much so that even my relatives couldn't recognise me. In addition, I also had a relapse of my former heart disease.

One day, because I was doing the Falun Gong exercises, I was taken away by drug offenders who were ordered by Hu Ruimei, Dai Wenqin, and Jing Xuefeng. When Hu kicked me in the back, fellow practitioner Ms. Wu Yuying shouted, "Stop beating her!" Hu told her not to shout anymore. My back hurt so much that I couldn't walk. Even so, Hu still forced me to do hard labour. Seeing that I couldn't do it, she started swearing at me. When the day was over, and I couldn't walk back to my cell, Hu kicked me so hard that I flew right through the air from the edge of the field right into the field. In the evening, when I was asked to write the reasons why I could no longer work, I wrote that my injury was the result of Hu beating me. Not only did she not provide any medical treatment but she also forced me to do hard labour. Knowing that, the Team leader on duty whose last name was Shen said, "We would not have sent it [to the higher authorities] even though you wrote it."

The next day, a Team leader by the last name of Li and drug offender Yang Dong took me to Pingantai Forced Labour Camp Hospital, where a doctor gave me some medication for the trauma injury. At noon the following day, Team leader Dai Weiqin said in front of everyone from the No.2 Team: "Your back hurt because of the relapse of your kidney problem." I challenged him, saying, "If I have a kidney problem, why was the medication the doctor gave me for a traumatic injury?" Because I caught them in a lie, they persecuted me even worse.

As soon as my back healed, I was taken to a room outside the entrance. Inside, all the windows were sealed, and it looked terrifying. It was where Falun Gong practitioners were brutally tortured. Drug offenders were ordered to torture us. After I was taken inside, Dai Wenqin swore at me first, and then three others including Jing Xuefeng and Hu Ruimei held me to the ground and cruelly beat me. They pulled my hair, slapped my face, punched me in repeatedly in the face, kicked me in the ribs and legs, and ripped my shirt open. About an hour later, there was blood and white foam flowing from my mouth.

Drug offenders Shan Guilian and one of the collaborators, Guo Xiatong, came over to help the others handcuff my arms behind my back while hoisting me up in the air with only the tips of my feet touching the ground. Hu then kicked my lower legs out from under me, putting enormous strain and pain on both of my wrists where the skin had broken. My whole body and heart were in extreme pain, my hair and my clothes were completely soaked in sweat, and my mouth was filling up with blood. When they saw that I had difficulty breathing, Shan Guilian asked me, "Want to 'repent?'" At that time, I had no strength to speak at all, and I couldn't stand the pain anymore. After I was let down, my body cramped, and there was bruises and wounds all over me.

My Family Members Were Harassed so Many Times, I Was Forced to Leave Home and Live Elsewhere

In November 2001, I was released at the end of my term. After I came home, officers from the Gaotai Police Station, the Domestic Security Brigade and the

610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) of the Chengguan Police Station still kept on harassing me. Police officers in two vehicles went to my husband's company. They told him to make me go and see them as I was not "transformed." My husband begged them not to persecute me anymore, saying that after I was released from the previous labour camp, my health had deteriorated, and I couldn't stand any more stress. So they agreed to come find me later. During that time period, officers from Gaotai Domestic Security Brigade often harassed my children, husband, and other family members, and they had no peace in their lives at all. Another time when people from the Domestic Security Brigade came to look for me, in order to not to have my family members suffer, I had to leave home and move from place to place.

It was the officials from the Gaotai 610 Office and the Domestic Security Brigade who continued their evil tactics to break my family apart. Our family had become peaceful and harmonious after I began to practise Falun Gong. The officials were always trying to blame me for my family's woes by saying that I did not care about my family or my children.

The above is only a small part of the persecution I endured. During those days and nights, the harm they did to my body and soul is beyond description.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

2. "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://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2010/9/27/230200.html