A Falun Gong Practitioner in China

More than 100 Falun Gong practitioners are being held at a detention center in Inner Mongolia. They are suffering from terrible torture and mistreatment.

The legal working limit for detained prisoners is six hours a day. However, the working hours here are arbitrarily long. After the regular work hours, there are often temporary assignments. After the excessive workload during the day, Falun Gong practitioners are often deprived of their sleep. Practitioners are punished for doing exercises and refusing to sign "reform statements." Even other prisoners (non-practitioners) are given handcuffs, so they can use them on practitioners at any time they feel necessary.

Facing such unfair treatment, the Falun Gong practitioners went on a hunger strike. However, even during the hunger strike, they were still forced to do hard labor. Some practitioners were forced to carry bags of fertilizer weighing more than 100 pounds after going on nine days of hunger strike. In addition, they suffered other forms of physical punishment, such as being forced to run around the jogging track more than 90 times. As long as one persists in practicing, the suffering will be non-stop both day and night. Food and water are often deprived for days. Some practitioners were forced to stand in the burning summer sun for several hours until they lost consciousness. A common criminal was put in charge of supervising practitioners. With a meter long bamboo stick in her hands, she would whip practitioners every now and then while shouting profanities. Because of her cruelty against Falun Gong practitioners, this criminal was promoted to be cell head, and her sentence was reduced by three months.

Some police officers are even worse. They would pour water onto practitioners, force practitioners to sit in puddles of water, shock practitioners with electric batons for a long time and beat practitioners with bamboo sticks. [water is a conductor of electricity and increases the pain and damage to the practitioner] Once the guards handcuffed a practitioner with both hands behind her back and she was left to squat outside a room, where she could hear the torture of other practitioners for the entire night. This traumatic experience caused her enormous suffering both mentally and physically. The bruises on her body were so painful that she could not bathe for a long time. The guards even blamed the practitioners for having made it impossible for them to sleep. But in reality, says a practitioner, it was the police and guards who were shouting and yelling that caused everybody to lose sleep. A tall inmate was told to sit on a practitioner while beating and pinching her. As a result of the beating, the practitioner almost lost her breath, and she had bruises all over her body. The next day, she could not even get onto the bus on the way to work.

On June 2, 2000, the Public Security Bureau and the detention center hired some young men in their twenties to beat the practitioners, paying them 200 Yuan (US$25) each. To protest, the Falun Gong practitioners started a hunger strike and refused to work. As a result, the authorities doubled their cruelty. Several doctors were sent to check practitioners' blood pressure and heart condition (to see if they could endure the torture). When the torture started, the abusers far outnumbered practitioners. Their torture included kicking, beating, shocking with electric batons, force-feeding, sleep deprivation at night, and being forced to walk and run until exhaustion. Some police slapped practitioners' face while wearing rings, causing multiple cuts on the practitioners' faces. Many other prisoners were shocked by such violence; some even shed tears out of sympathy.

During this "reform" process, in addition to the hard labor and torture, the police also brain washed practitioners with all kinds of tactics. They forced practitioners to watch videos and read papers slandering Dafa [(great law and universal principle]. They also made practitioners read "reform" materials and attend meetings. Each police officer was assigned a certain number of practitioners for "reform." The police, upon being given the assignment, would use all means, including asking family members and relatives to persuade practitioners, sending phony practitioners to spread lies such as "your cultivation is over, mission accomplished, no need to practice anymore, you have to let go of the attachment to Dafa and to Teacher." Their purpose was to mislead and confuse practitioners so they would give up practicing Dafa.

The detention center isolated practitioners from the outside world. No phone calls were allowed. All personal letters were inspected. All items from their family were checked. Family visits were often denied. During the inspection by higher authorities or other organizations, they forced practitioners to hide in bathrooms or other secret places, especially injured practitioners. The police misled practitioners with lies like "you don't know the situation outside, lots of practitioners were reformed and released in such and such detention center." The detention center also separated the newly detained practitioners from the veteran detainees. In this isolated situation, some practitioners were confused and misled by the lies, lost their clear mind and wrote "reform" statements.

These are the inside stories of how Falun Gong practitioners were "reformed" in this detention center.

Posting date: 6/4/2001
Original article date: 6/3/2001
Category: Eye Witness Accounts
Translated on 6/1/2001
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2001/5/29/11600.html

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