Strength in the Face of Adversity: Horrifying Experiences of a Female Practitioner in Forced Labour Camps

By a Dafa practitioner in China

In July 1999, Jiang's regime began persecuting Falun Dafa openly. I wanted to appeal by telling the real-life story of my experiences with practising Falun Gong, but my work unit tried every means to stop me. Later, they even illegally deprived me of my personal freedoms and tried to isolate me in every way possible.

I felt that I should clarify the truth about Falun Dafa, even if I would only be able to say just one righteous word. So I decided to go to Beijing to appeal.

In November 1999, despite their every attempt to stop me, I arrived in Beijing. In front of Tiananmen Square, I held a loudspeaker and shouted from the bottom of my heart, "Falun Dafa is innocent! Teacher Li Hongzhi is innocent! Dafa practitioners are innocent!"

The policemen who were on duty at Tiananmen Square rushed up from behind me. At the same time, the tourists also crowded around. Policemen forced me into the police vehicle by pushing and dragging. I could hear them using walkie-talkies to communicate with their superiors and find out what to do with me.

At the beginning of 2000, I was sent to the Jinan Women's Labour Camp in Shangdong Province.

In the labour camp, the guards adopted vicious methods to deceive and torture Falun Gong practitioners. They used high-pressure methods to conduct the so-called "political transformation" and made use of those who turned against "Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance" [the fundamental principles of Falun Dafa] from earlier brainwashing sessions to attack and criticise Falun Gong. They used the media to publish slanderous propaganda against Dafa and Teacher Li. For those practitioners who remained steadfast and refused to give in, the police threatened them, saying that they would transfer them to jail or torture them. Regarding my personal experience, I suffered from all kinds of inhuman torture, just because I insisted on practising Falun Gong and refused to write pledges denouncing Falun Gong. In order to expose the true face of the evil authorities, I am now revealing the persecution I had personally experienced.

On a winter night in 2000, because I practised Falun Gong exercises, the police ordered the criminals to use an instrument of torture called the "constraining belt", designed by the labour camp, to tie my hands and feet, with arms and legs widely stretched apart onto the two corner poles of a bunk bed (the victim is situated vertically against the side of a bunk bed, not laying down). Since the floor was very slippery and they had intentionally pulled apart my two legs, I could not hold my weight and my legs were pulled further apart. In order to hold my weight, I had to draw my legs together with all my strength; otherwise all my weight would bear down on my upper limbs, which would cause my arms to be pulled tighter and tighter by the "constraining belt". After a very brief moment, I became so tired and the pain was beyond words. They then tied another "constraining belt" around my waist. When my legs split away from each other and slid down, they would suddenly lift up the middle belt and make my body bend unnaturally, with two ends of my body bending to the back. It was extremely painful. In order to prevent me from crying out or making any sound, they used another "constraining belt" to tie up my mouth. A strong criminal used her fists to hit me on my head and chest. The police ordered the inmates not to make any noise, not to watch and not to tell anyone anything ... During the torture, the police avoided the scene and pretended to not be aware of it.

After torturing me all night, they ordered me to go to work on time the second day. But they prohibited me from having rice soup. I was only given buns and salted pickled vegetables. The next night, I was hung up again and prohibited from going to the bathroom. They tried to force me to write the pledges to give up practising Falun Gong. While I was tortured, they were also torturing other practitioners in other rooms. Some practitioners were old enough to be those criminals' mothers but they were still inhumanly hung up. Some practitioners lost consciousness on the spot. Those vicious people often searched practitioners' belongings for Dafa materials in order to keep people from studying the Fa [principles of Falun Dafa]. Some vicious people even said, "If you all became good people? What should we do then?" However, Dafa practitioners still tried to clarify the facts to them out of practitioners' benevolence and concern for their future.

During the summer of 2000, practitioners had been enduring the endless evil torture and desecration for a long time, and they refused to go to work and requested that their legal rights be respected. The labour camp began to frantically persecute them. This time, they put me in a "confinement cell" and sealed all the doors and windows to make the room completely dark. They also ordered two criminals to take turns watching me inside the cell. They prohibited me from sleeping or even taking a rest. They forced me to stand still and prohibited me from brushing my teeth, bathing, or going to the bathroom. On hot summer days, it was so stifling inside the "confinement cell" that I could hardly breathe. I was forced to stand still in the cell for over 20 consecutive days. Since I was not allowed to sleep, I felt so tired physically and mentally. My legs and feet were swollen and I was not able to put on my shoes or walk. The pain was like being cut by knives. During that period, the police also beat me with electric batons twice to try to force me to write those pledges to denounce Falun Gong. I refused and they just kept torturing me. Once, I became incredibly tired and lost consciousness. When autumn came, the "confinement cell" was not as hot and humid as in the summer. The police saw I still did not give in, so they had no other option but to let me out of the "confinement cell." They prolonged my term for another two months and asked other inmates to criticize me. From their series of vicious actions, I became even more clearheaded and was able to calmly look at everything.

Right after National Day [October 1st], a large number of Falun Gong practitioners were arrested. Jiang's dictatorship put more severe labels on us, such as "reactionary organisation", "counterrevolutionary", etc. People detained in the labour camp suddenly increased from over 200 to over 700 and the number is still rising with 95% of the people detained being Falun Gong practitioners. However, the labour camp lied to the family members who went there for visitation, saying that not many Falun Gong practitioners were there.

The evil greatly fears the power of righteousness. They use criminal inmates to monitor, isolate, and persecute us. After National Day in 2000, a large number of male and female prison guards persecuted and brainwashed practitioners.

In order to cover up their criminal activities, the guards play loud music to drown out the noise they make when they beat, curse, and abuse practitioners with electric batons and to mask the screams of the practitioners who are being "worked on." Right after the Spring Festival of 2001, agents deceived me into going to the office in the name of "exchanging ideas." In this way they started another round of forced non-stop, day and night brainwashing. At one point, more than a dozen agents were trying to transform me at the same time. I was not allowed to sleep, wash or even use the restroom. After I protested determinedly, I was handcuffed and a washcloth was stuffed in my mouth to prevent me from talking. They forced me to write the "Three Letters" (a Letter of Regret, a Letter of Guilt and a Letter of Guarantee). When I refused, they beat me with their boots and benches, which left my forehead so swollen that my eyesight was affected for more than 3 days and nights. My back was so severely injured that I could not conduct my life normally. In the end they had to let me lie down on a bed. However, while I was bed-ridden, they forged the "Three Letters" as if they had been written by me and forced me to press my fingerprint on them while I was still handcuffed in bed. I could not bear such injustice and cried out loudly, "As an agent of the law, you are blatantly breaking the law yourself! Those letters you forged are not valid. You must tear them up right in front of me, otherwise you are accountable for all the consequences." Under my continuous protests, they were afraid that word might get out that they were forging things, so they complied with my demand and tore up the forged letters in front of me. At that moment, we could hear roaring noises, curses, and the sounds of cruel beatings by evil agents. We could also hear the painful sobbing of those who were regretting they had written the evil "Three Letters" under coercion against their own free will.

After they realised that they were not going to get what they wanted from me, they transferred me to the more severe Wangcun Labour Camp. On May 1st, they escorted me to the office. I was dragged against the front of a window and made to lean with my back against the windowsill. My arms were stretched out horizontally, and I was handcuffed to the metal bars of the window. A group of practitioners-turned-collaborators was then sent to brainwash me, allowing me no sleep or rest. They were trying again to destroy my mental strength by exhausting me, forcing me to compromise. During the daytime, they would hold "criticism rallies," and at night they would go about brainwashing Dafa practitioners using high-pressure tactics. It was said that agents would get a bonus of thousands of Yuan if they could "transform" a practitioner.

After one month of cruel torture, they had still failed to move me. They had to send me back to Jinan Labour Camp. Even though my legs were now severely swollen, the prison guards still forced me to do hard labour. On July 1st, 2001, the labour camp stepped up the persecution under the guise of holding ceremonies for raising the national flag. (This national flag-raising ritual had never been done before.) They forced those who had written a "Letter of Regret" and a "Letter of Guarantee" to lead the reciting of the oath under the national flag and the chanting of political slogans. They proclaimed, "Whoever does not take the oath does not love his country." As a righteous cultivator, I refused to take part in any of these political activities. They found out that I was not co-operating, so they shut me away again. This time, however, I was locked in a newly built, "airtight" cell. Except for a narrow door allowing only one person in or out at a time, there were only walls around me. It was pitch dark inside, without any light. Because it was summer time, it was very stuffy and hot in the narrow prison cell, with insects and bugs biting all the time. In one of the walls they had mounted a U-shaped metal fastener right over my head. After the guards tied my hands together, I was hung from the mounted metal stick in the wall. Later on they sent a criminal inmate to monitor me full-time. Because the guard would not loosen my bonds, I could not squat, making it hard to use the toilet. The only way was to let that person help me. But I tried not to, and, finally, I stopped taking food.

At night, the weather in Jinan City was extremely humid and hot. The labour camp was afraid of getting into trouble and being held accountable for its criminal acts, so they had to release me.

On July 4th, a prison guard sent two agents who had specialised for a long time in brainwashing practitioners to live with me so that they could brainwash me day and night. I decided to go on a long-term hunger strike to protest the illegal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. At the beginning of the hunger strike, they force-fed me three times a day. They inserted the tube and pulled it out and inserted again and pulled it out, causing me to suffer extreme pain in my nasal cavity. Sometimes, they even inserted the tube into my windpipe by mistake. Finally, when they saw that my throat was swollen and that I was not even able even to talk, they had to stop. The labour camp stipulates that staunch Falun Gong practitioners are "not allowed to meet with their relatives" and then they turn around and tell the public, "Falun Gong practitioners renounce their family relationships." But this time, they opened the door for me to visit with my aged parents so they could persuade me to take food. Guards would also illegally open practitioners' private letters and hold them arbitrarily, even taking away practitioners' pen and paper, depriving them of the means to write.

During my long-term hunger strike, I was sent to a specially controlled labour camp hospital in Jinan to take forced infusion. Each time they would send two people to monitor me, not allowing me to do the Falun Gong exercises. They even controlled my sitting posture so that I would not sit cross-legged in a Falun Gong meditation pose. They jotted down notes about my words and actions. Whether in the labour camp or in the hospital, Falun Gong practitioners are all tightly monitored in a very controlled environment. For example, when practitioners were sleeping, a labour camp inmate would be sent to watch the door of your room. If a practitioner wanted to use the washroom, one monitor would stop you at the door while the other would check to see if there were any fellow practitioners in the corridor or washroom. If they found a fellow practitioner in there, they would not allow another practitioner to enter for fear that the practitioners would meet. This is really pathetic.

During my stay in the hospital, I was practising Falun Gong exercises one time in the corridor when two police agents said to be the administrative section chiefs, one male and one female, approached me. The man, with a cigarette in one hand and a thumb-thick steel pipe in the other, started to beat my head heavily with his pipe. Later I was handcuffed for the whole night.

In the hospital, no matter how hard they tortured me, as long as I was not inconveniencing others, I still kept practising Falun Gong. I was also very determined in keeping up my hunger strike. After 9 months, my weight dropped from 60kg to less than 30kg. I was very weak, and unable to go about my normal life, but I was still very determined in practising Dafa. When the evil people finally realised that they could not reach their vicious political goal and saw the terrible condition of my health, they started to worry that if I died in their hands, they would be held accountable. So they had my family come take me home. Nevertheless, the harassment is still ongoing: they still listen in on my telephone calls; they ask my family to report to them about the condition of my health; they regularly send officials from my work unit to my home to check on and harass me; they threaten my family members to keep me from having contact with the outside world, not even allowing my neighbours to know about this, etc. But eventually, they will fail. The light of the dawn is coming.

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/10/27/28079.html