My Trip to China

Submitted to the 2002 Eastern U.S. Falun Dafa Conference

By An Australia Practitioner

In July this year, after I attended the peaceful appeal in Hong Kong, I went back to Mainland China to see my mother and at the same time, tell the truth about Falun Gong to my relatives and friends. On July 19, one of the Australian practitioners called me and asked me if I had planned to go to Tiananmen Square since the next day was July 20th (Jiang began his campaign of persecution on July 20th 1999). I told her yes and she became worried and said: "Please do not go there. Now the evil is extremely vicious. Recently a Japanese practitioner was arrested when she went back China to clarify the truth. She was beaten with injuries all over her body and was force-fed. She was tortured very badly and sentenced to a prison term." I said to her, "Don't worry. I know what I need to do".

The next day was July 20th. I got up in the morning and was feeling very well. After washing and dressing up, I headed towards Tiananmen Square. When I arrived, there were lots of people around the Golden Water Bridge and there were police everywhere. At that moment, my righteous thoughts were very strong and I had no fear. In my eyes, it was as if they didn't exist. I selected a central spot, stood there and started doing one set of Falun Gong exercises. When I was about to leave after finishing the exercise, I heard a policeman yelling, "Stop. Don't go. Stop her over there. Don't let her go." Several policemen quickly surrounded me. I stood there and asked them in an upright manner: "What is the matter? What can I do for you?"

The policeman asked: "Follow us. We need to talk to you."

I replied: "Should I follow you simply because you asked me to? Why should I follow you? If you have something to say, you can say it right here."

The policeman pointed to the police van: "Let's go to talk in the van."

I said: "Should I get into the van because you asked me to? Why should I follow you into the van? Let me tell you, I am not a citizen of your country. If you have something to say, say it right here."

They were probably shocked by my righteousness and no one was able to move or say anything. After we spent about 30 seconds in silence, I turned around and walked away. Calmly, I walked over the Golden Water Bridge into Tiananmen. After passing through the Donghua Gate, I got in a taxi and went home. I truly felt what righteous thoughts and righteous actions were and the power of righteous thoughts. When you have no doubt left in your mind and have no fear of evil, the evil is afraid of you.

That night, I hung a 2.4m long, 60cm wide banner with the words, "Restore the reputation of Falun Dafa" behind Tiananmen. It was dark before the dawn. When the sun rose the next morning, people would be able to see it.

One day, I went sight seeing with my elder sister. When we were transferring buses at Tiananmen Square, I decided to have my picture taken on the square. I saw my sister's posture was not good and asked her to straighten her back and raise her head. She tried but her back was still bent. I told her to raise her arms and stretch them, and she did as I said. At that moment, a person suddenly showed up next to us and asked, "Are you Falun Gong practitioners?"

My sister replied, "I am not."

That person asked me again, "Are you?"

I didn't answer and tried to pull my sister away. He blocked us and wouldn't let us go and said, "You must answer this question," and at the same time spoke into his CB radio. Suddenly, over 20 people surrounded us. They claimed to be plain clothed police and insisted that I answer if I was a Falun Gong practitioner.

I said, "I am not obligated to answer your question. I am not citizen of your country." They asked to see my ID and I gave them my passport. They said that my sister is a Chinese citizen and wanted to take her away. I blocked them by standing in front of her and questioned them: "For what reason do you want to detain her? What did she do?" They said, "We suspect that she is a Falun Gong practitioner." I said, "How can you arbitrarily detain people just because you suspect something? Didn't she tell you that she does not practise Falun Gong?" At that moment, two police vans drove over and they forced my sister onto the ground and started dragging her to the police van. My sister's legs, feet and arms were full of bruises. They do not treat Chinese people as human beings at all. I tried to block them, grabbed my sister and wouldn't let her go. So we started to "tug" for my sister on Tiananmen Square. A policeman grabbed me and said, "You can't go either" and they pushed me onto a police van and abducted both of us to the Tiananmen Police station.

At the police station, they asked me to sit down and I refused. They interrogated me, demanding to know whether I practise Falun Gong. I refused to answer and requested to contact the Australian Embassy.

A policeman asked, "What do you want to contact the embassy for? Do you want to cause conflicts between the two countries?"

I replied, "I want to ask my embassy people whether you have the right to detain me and not allow me to go home simply because I didn't answer your question of whether I am a Falun Gong practitioner."

The policeman said, "We didn't arrest you. We invited you here."

I said, "None of us wanted to go with you on Tiananmen Square and you forcefully pushed us onto the police van. Is this how you invite people?"

The policeman said, "You must first answer our question. Then you can have your complaints. If we did something wrong, we will apologize. But you must answer this question."

I replied, "I am not going to answer your question. I don't have this obligation. You detain people arbitrarily and make the entire world know the darkness of China, where there are no human rights. I want to ask you instead: what have we done today? My sister only stretched her arms and legs, and you began to suspect her without any reason and detained us. Today I have truly experienced the human rights here."

The policeman said, "We can report your complaints to our superiors. But you must answer questions. Otherwise, you won't be able to leave here even though you have a foreign passport."

I turned my head towards the window and stopped talking to him. I thought in my mind, I won't let you put me into the jail, nor will I allow you to deport me back to Australia. So I decided to keep silent.

They separated me from my sister and started the interrogation. They also forced my sister to acknowledge what they had done was right, and then they let my sister go. When my sister was just about to leave, they called her back and said, "We just asked our superior and we cannot let you go because your sister does not answer questions. You have to stay to persuade her."

My sister said, "My sister does not practise Falun Gong. Please let her go."

A policeman said, "That does not count. She has to say it herself."

My sister then said to me, "Tell them that you do not practise Falun Gong and they will let us go home."

I asked her, "Did they let you go? Why do you come back?"

My sister replied, "They won't let me go because you don't say anything."

My sister is not a cultivator and she couldn't understand that we can't lie. Seeing that I kept silent, my sister said, "In China, there are no laws. They can send you to a labour camp for two years if they like. We don't have a place to find justice. It is not like foreign countries. Please think for me as well. They can send me to a labour camp. They are not going to be reasonable with me. What is the problem if you just say you are not practising Falun Gong?" The policeman listened to our conversation next to us without a word.

I said to the policeman: "Listen to this. These are the true feelings of your own citizens." My sister suddenly started to cry, "Please think for my situation. They really can send me to a labour camp. This is China. Not a foreign country. There are no human rights here. No one cares about our human rights." I didn't say anything and didn't know how to comfort her. The policeman said to me: "Don't even think about leaving here if you don't answer. We won't let you go. Let's see who can last to the end." I replied: "I am detained by you already. I want to see people from my embassy and you won't allow it. I am here anyway. It is up to you."

A few hours passed. They saw that I still kept silent and they took my sister away, only leaving one policeman, one policewoman and me in the room. Then the policeman started threatening me, "We have seen a lot of people like you before, and they had to answer even if they didn't want to. It seems that you have not been back to China for a while and don't know the current situation here. We need to give you a good brainwashing. There are thousands of people with the same name as yours; it is not a big deal if one person disappears. Who would find you? Who knows about you? If anyone asks us, we don't know either and nobody knows where you are. Many people like you have disappeared. Do you understand?"

I knew they were threatening me. In my mind, I saw the pictures of that Japanese practitioner being tortured; I saw evil Jiang's killing order towards Falun Gong practitioners -- "Death due to torture can be counted as suicide." "Incinerate the body without investigating the identity." I saw different kinds of torture devices. The policeman kept threatening me for over an hour. In the end, I said, "You are tired. Take a break." He said, "I am not tired if you can listen."

Some time later, the official in charge and several policemen came with still and video cameras and started taking pictures of me. I blocked my face with my hands and wouldn't let them take pictures. A policeman said, "If you are truly open and noble, why are you afraid of us taking pictures?" I replied, "I am not afraid. You treat me like a criminal here and won't let me go home. You also want to take pictures and videos. I am not a criminal. Of course I will not allow you to do that." The policeman said, "We are also ordered to do this, because you do not cooperate and therefore we don't have any choice. Since you don't like it, we will give up. Let's talk about something else." Later, when I was not paying attention, they still secretly took pictures of me. I said, "You are so mean." He said, "Who are you referring to?" I said to him, "Would you say what you are doing is open and noble?"

A few moments later, they produced a paper record and asked me to sign. I refused. The policeman said, "Take a look at the content." I replied, "I won't look at it." They called my sister in. My sister said, "I will sign for my sister. Please let her go." The policeman said, "That won't do. She has to sign herself. If not, she won't be able to get out." My sister took the paper to me and said, "Sign your name. There is nothing on there. It just says that it was a mistake on Tiananmen Square." I said to the policeman, "I won't sign anything. You detained me for no reason and then took pictures of me without my permission. Now you want me to sign something. I don't know what you want to do and what trick you are playing. I won't sign anything." In the end, they asked my sister to sign a guarantee and then let us go home.

As soon as we got home, people from the residential committee were waiting for us there already. They told us, "Now you are back. Later police from our police station will come and take information. Don't go out." Five minutes after we were back home, three police came and said that they came for routine business. They asked us to go to the branch office in Xicheng district to register. I asked for directions. They told me to wait for their notice. Then they sat down and started talking about China's policies. A half hour later, they left.

In the evening, my elder brother called. He said that police had gone to my sister-in-law's work unit. The head of her work unit had talked to her and asked her if she is a Falun Gong practitioner, etc. My brother felt worried and asked me, "What did you do today? Where did you go? What happed?"

The next day, after I came back from grocery shopping, my sister told me, "The head of the residential committee just called and asked both of us to come to the police station. They want to talk to us." Five minutes later, the phone rang again and it was the head of the residential committee. He told us, "You two stay at home. The police will come to your home to record evidence soon." I felt that I should no longer let my family have trouble because of me, so I left the home in a hurry and found a hotel to stay in.

On my way back to Australia, my mother said to me, "I will not see you off at the airport. Because you don't come back often, I don't want to criticize you. But I don't understand why you couldn't say that you are not practising Falun Gong at the police station. Because of this, our whole family is implicated. The police have come to my company. Before, my colleagues would say hello to me when they saw me in the distance. Now they all know that I have a daughter in a foreign country practising Falun Gong. They are afraid to talk to me and try to avoid me. This is what you have brought to us. If you think that this practice is good, do it in other countries. China is very dark and family members can be easily brought into trouble. It is not that you don't know these things." I said, "Because what I practise is 'Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance' I don't have to say what I don't want to, but what I have said must be true. There is nothing wrong with believing in 'Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.' It is wrong for them to be so high-handed, so ruthless and to persecute Falun Gong without a reason. Why are they so nervous about and persecute good people who practise 'Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance?' If they would use the energy and resources to punish bad people like thieves and gangsters, and restore justice, the country wouldn't be so corrupt right now and would have become strong and rich a long time ago."

I was on my way home with a heavy heart.

This was my trip to China. I am an Australian citizen and was detained by Chinese police for 7 hours simply because I didn't answer whether I was a Falun Gong practitioner. They also threatened me and my family can no longer have peace. This is the state terrorism carried out by Jiang's regime in China. I, as a citizen of a foreign country, was treated like this; it is not difficult to imagine how they would treat Chinese Falun Gong practitioners. I hope all kind-hearted people can pay close attention to the situation of Falun Gong practitioners in China. They have lived under this terrifying persecution campaign of state terrorism moment to moment for the entire three years.

After coming back to Australia, I met a friend from Shanghai. He told me a true and shocking story. Before he came to Australia, he went to Beijing from Shanghai for sight seeing. The tourist guide told him: "During the trip to Beijing, we will stop at Tiananmen Square. There will be police everywhere on the square. They may come to ask you if you practice Falun Gong and if you have any opinion about Falun Gong. If they ask you, what would you say?" My friend said, "I will say, first, I don't practise Falun Gong; Second, I don't know Falun Gong and thus have no opinion." The guide immediately said, "Don't say that you don't know Falun Gong. Otherwise, they will detain you and make you watch videos. A few days ago, one of the groups I guided lost one person. It was because he said he did not know and had no opinion about Falun Gong when police on Tiananmen Square questioned him. He was detained right away and forced to watch slandering Falun Gong videos. Afterwards they asked him, "Didn't you say you didn't know and had no opinion? Now you should know and tell us what you think." Not only that, they also forced him to write a paper with at least 1,000 words about what he thought after watching the video. He was not allowed to leave if he could not finish the paper. He really didn't know what to write so he called the guide. The guide knew what the police wanted and told him to write just what the video had said, and then the police would let him go."

This is what Jiang's regime claims to be the best era of human rights in China. In fact, there is only one reason for them to be so desperate and go to extremes to carry on such a vicious persecution -- it is because there are too many people practicing Falun Gong and this has caused Jiang's fear and jealousy and he is afraid that he would lose his power. We hope all kind-hearted people around the world will pay close attention to the situation of Falun Gong practitioners in China.