|
Bearing Witness to History: Experiences of Validating Dafa in Beijing 11/16/2003 (Clearwisdom.net) In September1999, I went to Beijing to validate Dafa. I sat
on the cement stairs of Tiananmen Square and began reciting Hong Yin in a
very low voice. A person tapped me on the shoulder. When I looked up I saw a
public security officer. He said, "You must be a Falun Gong practitioner," and
then took me to the police station and detained me there. Lots of practitioners
were in the police station. One of the practitioners, around thirty years old,
was from Tianjin City. She styled her hair in two long braids and had a very
healthy rosy skin color. She wore plain clothes, was not very good at talking
and carried a baby boy less than a year old. The baby boy's body was strong and
he had beautiful round eyes. In September, the weather in Beijing gets cold, but
nonetheless this practitioner and her son wore very thin clothes. Through a
conversation with her I had found out the following. When the persecution
started, she knew practitioners needed to step out to validate Dafa, but her
family is very poor. She did not have money to buy a train ticket and her child
was very young, but her heart was very concerned for Dafa. Later on she received
several hints from Teacher indicating that she would be able to arrive in
Beijing within three days. Therefore, she was determined to bring her child with
her even without having any money. So on the way to Beijing they picked up and
ate discarded food in order to not starve. Sometimes they even had to try
finding food from garbage cans and when the baby ran out of clothes to wear, she
would look through garbage piles to find clothes for the baby. They slept
wherever they could, and by the third day, they arrived in Beijing. When she got
to this point of telling her story, everyone had tears in their eyes and
everyone was holding the child in turns, saying that this child is extremely
remarkable and magnificent. He was born in the Fa-rectification period to
validate Dafa, and at such a very young age, what he and his mother did together
was really brave and magnificent. In November 2000, eight other practitioners and I went to Beijing to validate
Dafa. At around 9 a.m. we arrived at Tiananmen Square. We saw uniformed and
plainclothes police stationed everywhere, line after line of them armed with
guns, even on Qianmen Street near the Square. When I arrived at the right front
corner of the Heroes Memorial Monument, I saw a group of foreign tourists; I
then stood at their side and unfurled a banner. The other practitioners standing
next to me also unfurled their banners. My banner's message was written
vertically and it read, "Greetings to Master" and "Dafa is good." It was a windy
day and two people were needed to hold the banner. My son was standing next to
me, and we both held this one banner. All at once the group of practitioners I
was with opened six banners in total. At the moment I opened the banner, I felt
like I was standing as tall as the heavens and the world was so calm, but very
quickly many police, plain clothes police and soldiers came over, arrested us,
and put us into a police vehicle. We were detained in the nearby police station,
where there were already a lot of practitioners detained. There was a young,
slim practitioner from Yunyang, Hubei province. His head was bleeding due to the
beatings by the police from Tiananmen Square. There was another young lady who
had come from the northern part of the country and had taken a train to Beijing.
As soon as she had arrived in Beijing, she went directly to the square. As she
walked to the center of the square, she very quickly took off her coat, exposing
her shirt made of white cloth. Messages such as "Falun Dafa is good," "Falun
Dafa is a righteous Fa," and "Justice needs to be served for Dafa and Teacher"
could be seen on the front, back, and both sleeves on her shirt. Not long after
she left, the police caught up with her, pushed her down to the ground and
attempted to tear her shirt apart, but she was tightly protecting her shirt.
Five to six policemen spent a considerable amount of time trying to tear her
shirt apart, but only could manage to tear apart one of her sleeves. Then they a
spent a lot more time and effort trying to tear apart the other sleeve. Finally,
they managed to tear her shirt into pieces. At last they took her to the police
station. Outside of the jail cell was a man around 40 years old, and I could
tell that he was not a practitioner because he was smoking cigarettes. Later on,
I asked him why he was arrested, and he told me it was because he had taken
pictures of us holding the banners. The police took his camera away and
interrogated him. They asked what his name was, and where he works and lives,
and then destroyed the negatives of his film before letting him go. The above are my personal experiences, as well as the things that I have
witnessed in Beijing. Posting date: 11/23/2003 |