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Recalling the Group Practice of 73 Dafa Disciples on the Great Wall at Badaling in 1999 Written by Dafa disciple in China
(Clearwisdom.net) At noon on December 17, 1999, seventy-three Dafa disciples
from fifteen provinces in China started to practice Falun Gong in an orderly formation on the two
peaks of the famous Great Wall at Badaling on the outskirts of Beijing. Four Falun Dafa banners were
hung on the two peaks. The largest banner was five-meters-long and three-meters-wide. These banners
were sacred and marvelous. The exercise music and the practice formulas were so clear and
reverberated in the air. All of the practitioners looked benevolent and composed, and this
magnificent feat moved the heavens. The weather became extremely pleasant afterwards; there were
only a few white clouds moving in the clear blue sky. It made the Great Wall after a snowfall appear
even more magnificent. A lot of tourists stopped to watch their practice and nobody went to report
them. The practice lasted for almost two hours. All 73 of these practitioners volunteered to go to the Great Wall to practice
after their appeal in Beijing around mid-December was turned down. Because of their appeal, they
were badly treated, arrested and even beaten. After the appeal, they decided to practice the
exercises together on the Great Wall. They hoped to tell the people via the group practice that
Falun Dafa is beneficial to the people and the country, and that their Teacher is pure and righteous
and Dafa practitioners are innocent. Their daring feat shocked the evil. Around 2 p.m. on December 17, 1999, dozens of
police officers came up the peaks by cable cars. When they arrived, they found practitioners simply
reciting Teacher's articles calmly. They remained unruffled even though some of the policemen began
to beat their faces and kick their legs. The vicious police photographed the practicing Dafa
disciples and illegally searched the tourists who witnessed this brutal treatment of Dafa Disciples,
taking away their cameras and personal identification. At 3 p.m. the police sent the practitioners
down the peaks row by row. Two practitioners were escorted by one police person in a cable car, and
the two female practitioners in the first row were handcuffed together. The police took two busloads
full of practitioners to the detention center of Yanqing County, where they were ordered to stand in
the yard to wait for each one to be illegally interrogated. While there, the police officers even
denied them the use of the restroom. They were forced to remain standing in the yard until after
they were body searched at 1'clock the next morning and put into cells. The cells were gloomy and cold. Beside the board used for sleeping there was an
empty water container and a latrine without water to flush. When the practitioners started to
practice in the cell, a 50-year-old policeman swore at them and threatened to use an electric baton
on them if they didn't stop. After 4 a.m., 12 practitioners--eight on the board and four on the
ground--practiced the first set of Falun Gong exercises. The policeman returned with a younger
officer. He shouted curses in the cell and put the high voltage electric baton on the head of a
practitioner (an elderly woman) who was standing near the door. The old lady continued to hold her
hands still and didn't budge an inch as she was being shocked. The policeman was puzzled and tried
the electric baton again. Blue electrical sparks shot out. The baton hissed on the temples of the
old lady, but she was still motionless while the high voltage baton was on her head. The officer
re-checked the electric baton and continued his test on the Dafa practitioner. He tried on one
temple after another and also tested the baton on her neck, but it didn't have any effect. He then
tried it on a young practitioner from Liaoning and the two others from Jiangsu and Guangdong
respectively. To his surprise, there was no effect on these four people. He stopped swearing and
looked at the baton in puzzlement. The young policeman following him was perplexed too. The
practitioners gathered around them to tell them the truth of Dafa and persuaded them not to abuse
the practitioners any more. In silence he turned away and left. When he passed by the neighboring
cell where the practitioners were also practicing, he just shouted, "Stop the practice!"
twice and walked away. From December 18 on, the officials from the Beijing Public Security Bureau kept
interrogating them, trying to find out the so-called organizers of the event. Day in and day out,
the practitioners were held in the interrogation rooms with handcuffs on their wrists. The male
practitioners were imprisoned together with criminals and were beaten by the criminals and
policemen. Nevertheless, none of them yielded. "We have no organizer and we did it out of our
own will," said the practitioners. They demonstrated unyielding determination in Dafa. Later,
all of them were sent to detention in their home cities or sent to labor camps, where they were
cruelly persecuted. Some of them have most likely been beaten or tortured to death. However, the
light of the truth they emanated in practicing Falun Gong exercises together on Badaling Great Wall
frightened the evil, and the mighty virtue they established will be recorded in the history of the
cosmos forever. Posting date: 9/20/2002 |