Dafa practitioner Zhang Chunmei

[Clearwisdom Net]

June 28, 2001

My name is Zhang Chunmei, and I am a Falun Dafa practitioner from Guangzhou City. In the evening of May 15, 2001, police from Shipai Police Station in the Tianhe District and some people from Shipai Integrated Management Office forcefully took me to the police station and detained me for one night. They took me away even though they saw that I had a 70-year-old mother-in-law and a 3-year-old son that required my care. At the police station, I was told that I would be sent to a brainwashing class. The next morning, they sent me to a drug rehabilitation center in Huangpu District. This was where many practitioners from Tianhe who refused to be brainwashed were sent. Each practitioner in the class was forced to pay 6,000 Yuan per month. (Yuan, Chinese dollar. The average monthly income of an urban worker is 500 Yuan.) In the end, the Shipai Integrated Management Office paid the fee for me because I could not afford it.

Immediately after I entered the brainwashing class, I heard that the percentage of Falun Gong practitioners in the class who were "successfully reformed" was very high. I said to myself, "No matter what happens, I will not give up my cultivation or give in to the evil." The staff was filled with the most notorious police officers and security guards, including several female guards from the rural areas who were around 20-years-old. The staff was individually selected and transferred here from other regions, and all of them were brainwashed themselves first. When practitioners clarified the truth to them, they responded with vile curses. The policemen goaded these young guards from the countryside, telling them that when Dafa practitioners did not cooperate, it was because they looked down on them and belittled their lack of education.

More than twenty Dafa practitioners were detained in the brainwashing class. Each practitioner was put into a small cell, and every cell was equipped with a video camera. The practitioners were not allowed to practice the exercises. In fact, we were not even allowed to loosely cross our legs. At the beginning, when they tried to brainwash me, I told them that they were violating the law, and that cultivation was not wrong. They told me, "What I say is the law here. If you refuse to be brainwashed, we will torture you to death and tell everyone that you committed suicide. If you become insane as a result of the torture, we will send you to a mental hospital and tell everyone that your insanity was the result of your cultivation." The guards forced us to watch programs that slandered Dafa. Afterwards, they tried to force us to write essays about our "understandings" of the programs and forbade us from talking to each other. For several days, I refused to write anything. Seeing this, they forced me to stand for a long time and refused to let me sleep. Male practitioners were beaten if they did not write these essays, and one night I heard one of them calling for help. Because each of us was locked up in a separate cell, we had no way of knowing what was happening to each other.

In the beginning, I thought that I should not cooperate with them, and I sat down when they wanted me to stand. The guards then kicked me repeatedly, forcing me to stand. Later I said to myself, "I am a Dafa practitioner, so I should protect the image of Dafa. Standing is no big deal." So I stood for two days and two nights, but after that I was not able to face the tribulation with righteous thoughts. Instead, I thought tiredly, "A human being's endurance is limited." Once that thought appeared, I could no longer endure the suffering. At the time, it was raining and thundering very loudly. My heart was crying out, "Let the thunder destroy either the evil or me, otherwise I would give in to my ordinary human attachments." Finally I picked up the pen and committed an unforgivable sin toward Dafa. After I wrote the "understanding" (of the programs that slandered Dafa), I slept and had a dream. In my dream, the evil beings came to me and said, "Let us tell you a secret. Actually, you people are right, and we are wrong."

During the fifteen days of the brainwashing class, I lived in constant, unrelenting agony. The pain and regret that I felt in my heart was beyond words. It was as if I was living in hell, and I did not want to continue living. Because my original true self did not die, I knew that what I did was wrong. I knew I was not worthy of Teacher and Dafa. The reason for my sin was because I was not able to treat myself as a cultivator at a critical moment. My xinxing (mind nature) dropped to the level of an everyday person, and how could an ordinary person pass this extraordinary tribulation? Before, I always thought that I was doing very well in my cultivation, and I would always be determined in facing tribulations. Finally, I was able to see myself clearly, realizing that I had a very long way to go. I paid dearly for my ordinary human attachments, and these very attachments almost destroyed me completely.

After I came out of the brainwashing class, I had barely any confidence left in myself. I didn't think that I could still catch up. Although I was still reading and studying Dafa, the knot in my heart was not resolved. One day I had another dream, in which I saw a bright future approaching. To my surprise, I saw myself in it. With joy and shame at the same time, I said, "I can still be a part of it!" After waking up, I knew that Teacher was encouraging me. If I can truly realize my mistakes and cultivate with a determined heart, then my future will be bright. From the dream, I can clearly feel the great, benevolent compassion of our Teacher.

I hereby declare solemnly -- everything that I wrote against Dafa is null and void. I do not acknowledge any of those things that I wrote while being tortured; they are not a reflection of my true self. I deeply and painfully repent what I wrote due to my inability to endure the torture, and as a result, bringing negative effects to Dafa. I want to restart my cultivation by exposing the evil with my own experience and endeavoring to make up for the negative effects that I brought to Dafa.

Posting date: 7/14/2001
Original article date: 6/28/2001
Category: Solemn Declarations
Translated on 7/6/2001
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2001/7/4/12813.html

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