Forced Labor Camp Tortures Me to Disability But Fails To Move My Firm Heart for Practicing Falun Gong (Part I)

(Clearwisdom.net) I am a female Falun Dafa practitioner, and, like countless other practitioners, I have been inhumanly persecuted because of my firm belief in "Truth-Compassion-Tolerance" and my desire to be a virtuous person. I was sent to a labor camp, where I became disabled after being brutally tortured and shocked with electric batons for a long period of time.

I started to practice Falun Gong in the beginning of 1999. My spirit was rejuvenated, and my colleagues all said that I was a changed person. Then, more than a dozen people in my workplace started to learn Falun Gong.

On July 20, 1999, the Jiang regime started persecuting all practitioners. The authorities in my work unit had received orders from above and suspended some practitioners from work and stopped their salaries. They held a work unit meeting every day and forced everyone to participate. They used the political methods implemented during the Cultural Revolution, including forcing everyone to study the articles in the People's Daily [the official newspaper of the party] and instructed our colleagues to monitor our behavior. Under these unfair conditions, I kindly clarified the truth to a senior official from my work unit; however, he tried to force me to write a statement promising to quit practicing Falun Gong.

At the end of October 1999, I went to Beijing to appeal with other practitioners. When we came to the Appeal Office of the Ministry of State Affairs, the police were waiting for us. They sent me back and illegally detained me for 15 days. As citizens, we were cruelly deprived of our rights. My work unit laid me off after I was released from the detention center. They wanted to destroy me financially, since they knew that I have two children.

One evening at the end of 1999, a practitioner's husband passed away and I went to her home to comfort her. I met another practitioner and her husband. Soon after I came home, two police officers came and arrested me. They accused me of illegal association and they tried to force me to write a statement to quit practicing Falun Gong. I refused and was illegally detained for one month. The other two practitioners were also illegally detained. Our legal rights were violated.

In February 2002, I and another practitioner went to the managers at our workplace and requested to work. The work unit refused our request, using the excuse of "orders from above require you to write guarantee letters in order to have your jobs back." In this way, they deprived us of our right to work.

Under pressure from the authorities, another practitioner and I wrote the statements against our wishes in order to make a living. This pained my heart and I burst into tears. Dafa teaches me to be a good person, yet I lied against my conscience. I deeply felt that I had let down Teacher's benevolence. Now I solemnly announce that those guarantee statements are invalid.

After I returned to work, the authorities at my work unit continued to persecute me. They asked another practitioner to do cleaning and asked me to sell bus tickets on the street. I had to stand outside for seven hours, regardless of the weather. My legs became weak. Besides this, I also had to sell tickets on the bus for half of the month. However, I strictly controlled my Xinxing [mind and heart nature] and remembered Teacher's words, "We ask you to be considerate of others when you do something and to do your job well in any working environment. You should be a good person in the minds of others." "How could you be a good person without doing your job well?" (Lecture at the Fa-Conference in Canada, Toronto, May 23, 1999) I felt no hatred and sold the tickets exceeding the requirements. However, I did not realize that I should have resisted the evil's persecution.

A month after I returned to work, the Vice Director came and stopped the bus that I was working on. He called me to the office and the director told me, "How should I put it. You have been doing a good job. However, my superiors just wanted to send you to a study session. I have no other choice. You can talk to my superiors if you need to." They forced me to go home, pick up a few belongings and sent me to a brainwashing center in the suburbs. They forced me to pay 1600 Yuan for the one-month session and to do the drill everyday. [Yuan, Chinese currency, the monthly salary for an average Chinese urban worker is about 500 Yuan.] It was obviously a private prison that persecuted innocent citizens.

The persecution kept escalating and I decided to go to Beijing again. In Beijing, I had no place to appeal and had to go to Tiananmen Square. I saw the police kicking and punching the practitioners. After we unfurled the "Falun Dafa is good" banners, the police just violently grabbed them. I protected the banner and the police twisted my arms and pushed me into the police car. At the police station, I refused to identify myself. Yet the director of my local police station followed me to Beijing and took me back to my city. They illegally detained me for 8 days before sending me to a forced labor camp in July 2000.

I endured the cruelest torture every day and night in the forced labor camp. They forced us to do dangerous work without taking safety measures. The hot wax burned my hands and left permanent scars. The police tied me up outside in the dead of winter in a field for a half day.

The labor camp used the criminal inmates to torture us and tempted them with promises of sentence-reductions. These criminals often cursed and hit us. The camp sent some police to Masanjia Forced Labor Camp in Shenyang, Liaoning Province to gain "experience." When they came back, they started torturing people. Every tree in the camp was used to tie and hang Falun Gong practitioners on.

One morning at the beginning of 2001, I saw a practitioner hanging from a tree. I spoke in defense of the practitioner and more than twenty male guards twisted my arms, pressed my head, and tied me to an iron pole. The Director of the Supply Department shouted, "Get the electric batons. She is speaking for other people and I want to see who will say anything for her." He cruelly shocked me for a long time with the batons on my face and mouth. The smell of the burning flesh spread on the wind. While swearing, the police pulled the handcuffs off my hands and started to shock my fingers one by one. After torturing me like this for a while, they dragged me into a meeting room and forced me down on my knees. Several male guards completely lost their human nature and shocked my entire head and neck for a long time. They tortured me for a long time and dragged me out until another practitioner was dragged in. They forced me to stand against the wall. That morning, several other practitioners were also shocked and tortured. The police used three batons simultaneously to shock a practitioner into rolling all over the floor. They tortured us from 6 to 8 a.m.

After this inhuman torture, I suffered unbearable pain. My head, eyes and mouth were severely swollen. I could not open my mouth to eat. My head, neck, and face were full of blisters. I could not lie down to sleep at night since the blisters on my face would break open. Even more painful, my toes started to hurt constantly like they were being stabbed by needles. I could not sleep. When I was really tired, I had to numb my feet with ice water and take a moment to nap. Soon, the pain would wake me up again. After being cruelly tortured, I had much difficulty and pain urinating. I had to depend on the fellow practitioners in my cell to take care of my daily needs.

The guards knew very well about my physical condition. They had a record about how I could not sleep because of the pain every night. However, they chose to ignore this. I requested to be taken to the hospital, yet police officer Zhou, who was in charge of persecuting Falun Gong, found all kinds of excuses to not send me. The pain became more severe and developed from my feet to my legs. I could not walk.

In this evil environment, my fellow practitioners encouraged and took care of me. With a strong mind, I was resisting the evil persecution. I could only go to the bathroom in the morning and the evening and had to depend on other practitioners' help.

The labor camp does not allow our families to visit us and monitors all of our mail. My family came to visit me several times and was refused. I repeatedly requested to write letters to my family. Because I mentioned my health condition in one of the sentences, the police forced me to cross it out. After I refused, they did not send the letter.

(To be continued)

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