Four Years of Atrocious Torture Only Reinforced My Steadfast Belief in Falun Dafa
(Clearwisdom.net) The Chinese ruling Party has forced many
tribulations upon me because of my steadfast belief in the principles of
Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance. I lay on the verge of death several
times during their atrocious tortures. In 1999, the Chinese Party illegally
removed me from my government position and detained me multiple times. The
persecution has shattered my once happy family and forced me to become homeless
in order to escape further persecution. The following is an account of the
Chinese ruling Party's persecution against me over the past four years. I. Falun Dafa Cures My Illnesses; The Chinese Communist Party Persecutes Me
for Speaking the Truth about Falun Dafa from My Personal Experience Prior to practicing Falun Dafa, I suffered from many ailments that caused me
intense pain. In June 1998, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Zhuan Falun
as a present. The first time I opened the book, I couldn't stop reading until I
had finished it. I felt like a blind person who had suddenly regained her
vision. Zhuan Falun answered the questions that I often pondered
but could not find answers for. Thus I decided to practice Falun Gong. Then a
miracle happened: Several months after I started to practice, all of my ailments
disappeared without a trace. I made a decision: I will become the best among the
best people, by cultivating myself according to the principles of Truthfulness,
Compassion and Tolerance. Jiang Zemin started to persecute Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. I tried to
approach the National Council's Appeal Office in Beijing on September 20, 1999,
to speak the truth about Falun Dafa from my personal experience. However, I had
to postpone my appeal, seeing that the National Council's Appeal Office was
surrounded by police officers who detained everyone who tried to approach. I
returned home but came back to Beijing on October 25, 1999. As soon as I arrived
at Tiananmen Square, several police officers approached me and demanded that I
curse the founder of Falun Gong. I told them that I wouldn't curse or use
violence even when I disciplined my son. The police officers said, "This
woman must be a Falun Gong practitioner!" Before I could even say anything,
they pushed me into a police car and threw me into Fengtai Stadium. When I
arrived, Fengtai Stadium was filled with Falun Gong practitioners that the
police had abducted in Beijing. There I witnessed police officers savagely
beating Dafa practitioners. We were detained in Fengtai Stadium for one day and
one night. During that period of time, we were denied food and the use of the
toilet. Afterwards, we were transferred to Miyun Prison. First, the police officers in Miyun Prison savagely beat and cursed Falun
Gong practitioners. Next, they stripped off our clothes and body searched us.
Then we were forced to squat with our feet together for an extended time.
Throughout the ordeal, many practitioners lost their strength and balance, and
collapsed on the ground. Feeling I had reached my physical limit, I sat down on
the ground and started to practice Falun Gong's sitting meditation. Several male
police officers ran to me, restrained me against the floor, and shackled both my
hands and feet. Those iron shackles were handmade by the police officers in
Miyun Prison. They weighed a total of 33 to 44 lbs. and were thickly coated with
reddish rust. I was handcuffed behind my back with this type of iron shackle
while the police officers removed my shoes. They then dragged me to the
courtyard covered with sharp gravel, and forced me to walk in circles with only
my socks on. I once slowed my pace, and a tall and stout policeman kicked me in
the back. I fell on my knee from the impact, and had to struggle for a long time
to get up with my hands weighted down behind me with 44 lb shackles. Several
hours later, I was completely worn out, but the police officers still would not
let up. They immediately held me up by my arm and dragged me, forcing me to jog
in this fashion. The police kept dragging me with my feet grinding against the
rough ground until they were too exhausted to continue. My socks were completely
torn through at the toes and could not protect my feet. My feet were severely
injured from the abrasion, and both my wrists and ankles had swelled so much
that the rusted shackles bound them tightly, resulting in even more injuries and
bleeding. The severe abrasions disfigured my wrists, ankles and feet so severely
that the injured areas resembled bloody, festering masses. Nevertheless, the
police officers at Miyun Prison would not remove the shackles. In fact, they
kept me in these shackles for six days and six nights. Because of the heavy
shackles, I had no choice but to sleep upright against the bed board every night
instead on lying down on it. I could not use my hands to feed myself or to use
the toilet. To add to the humiliation, I was menstruating at the time. I could
not use my hands, and I was denied access to any toilet paper or sanitary
napkins, leaving me no option but to soil myself. The pain and psychological
humiliation was beyond description. By the time I was transferred to Jilin City
Detention Center, my ankles were festering from the abrasion that my anklebones
were visible, sending me into spasms of agony, literally to the bone. For half a
year after the rusty shackles were finally removed, I had difficulty walking on
my own. Even today, large and highly visible scars remain on my ankles, silently
telling the story of the brutal torture I endured. The police illegally detained me three times because I appealed for Falun
Dafa, even thought my appeal is a right warranted by the Chinese Constitution.
Each time, I was subjected to tortures of different severity. In addition to the
physical and mental tortures, the police extorted 4,000 yuan from me [500
yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China]. On February 15, 2000, the police abducted me while I was exchanging
cultivation experiences with a fellow practitioner. I asked a police officer
what right they had to arrest me for talking to my fellow practitioners. He
said, according to orders from the top, it took only two Falun Gong
practitioners appearing in the same location to constitute an illegal assembly
and justification for an arrest. The police then detained me in the Qingdao
Police Station in Jilin City where I was forced to spend the night. The police
also stole my wallet and took the 300 yuan I had. The next day, I was
transferred to the First Detention Center in Jilin City. The disciplinary guards
at the detention center ordered the inmates to watch us and prevent us from
talking to each other or practicing Falun Gong exercises. Twice I was punished
for practicing the exercises by having to squat for a long time. One time, they
forced me to squat for over 10 hours. My legs were so swollen afterwards that I
lost the ability to stand. I started a hunger strike to protest the illegal
detention and tortures. On the sixth day of the hunger strike, the disciplinary
guards tortured me with by force-feeding me a mixture containing two handfuls of
cornmeal mixed with half a pound of salt. [Note: Overdose of salt in the diet
will result in stomach cramps, diarrhea, kidney damage and poisoning. This is
evidence that forced-feeding is used to torture Falun Gong practitioners, not to
resuscitate them or prevent them from dying of hunger while on hunger strike.]
During the force-feeding, I already started to develop a lower stomach cramp and
stomachache. As soon as the torture finally ended, I struggled to sit up despite
my frail condition, because I knew I was ready to vomit. No sooner than I sat up
that I started to vomit everything out. As a result of the forced-feeding, my
lips and mouth were injured, and my stomach pain were so intense that I stood
bent over and holding my stomach. For a very long time, I could not eat
normally. II. The Dark Forced Labor Camp On March 8, 2000, I was sentenced to one year at the Heizuizi Forced Labor
Camp in Changchun. Seven other Dafa practitioners were locked in the same cell
with me. One of them was Ms. Wang Rui, who had just turned 18 at the time. We
were all detained in an isolated hut. To introduce us to the labor camp life,
Ms. Hou Zhihong, a disciplinary guard in the 4th Squadron who administered new
inmates, gave us a warning: "Whoever practices Falun Gong will be punished
with painful torture." Then she pulled over a Dafa practitioner, Ms. Gao
Liang who had done absolutely nothing, and shocked her with an electric baton
for a long time. "Better not let this happen to you!" she warned us. Every day we were forced to sit still and remain in a stiff position on the
bed board. Under the watch of prison inmates, we were not allowed to talk or
move. Every day we were forced to sit still for over 10 hours. On other days
they made us perform forced labor for 17-18 hours a day. On worse days we were
forced to work for even longer hours and slept no more than 2-3 hours a night.
If at anytime we slowed down the pace, we were subjected to beatings and curses.
The long hours of forced labor and the denial of a minimal amount of sleep often
caused the elderly Dafa practitioners to collapse. I wrote many petition letters
to appeal, and petitions for lawsuits against the staff of Heizuizi Forced Labor
Camp and Jiang Zemin, but never had I received any response. When I asked the
disciplinary guards what had happened to my petitions, they said, "What is
the use of writing those letters? Do you think we are going to send these
letters? Do you realize that we already have several sacks of similar letters
from Falun Gong practitioners?" Once when I mentioned the petition letter
again, the Captain of the 4th Squadron, Ms. Guan Wei, started slapping my face
violently. To avoid hurting her hand, she grabbed a clothes hanger and kept
hitting me with it until she had broken the clothes hanger into pieces. Later on during our incarceration, over ten of us began a hunger strike,
demanding our unconditional release, but the staff of Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp
responded to our protest with abusive forced-feedings. They restrained me to the
bed and forced a thick rubber tube that was not designed for medical use into my
throat. They tried for a very long time to put thin corn porridge (or clear corn
soup) into the non-professional hard rubber tube without any success. It caused
me to choke and made me think I was going to die. For some reason my will to
survive helped me to push away the disciplinary guards and I sat up. I pulled
out the tube right away, knowing that I had experienced a close encounter with
death. I felt extremely weak and I could not stop coughing, but the disciplinary
guards pretended to hear nothing. They pulled the next Dafa practitioner over,
and inserted the hard rubber tube, which was fresh from my throat and thickly
coated with my mucus and phlegm, into her throat. Regardless of the number of
Dafa practitioners they force-fed, they used the same hard rubber tube
throughout the torture without cleaning the tube at all. As a result of this
abusive forced-feeding torture, I suffered from constant coughing and often
coughed out blood. On May 13, 2000, Dafa practitioners in the 4th Squadron began another group
hunger strike, protesting the illegal detention and persecution. This time the
Chair of the Administration Department at Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp, Ms. Yue
Jun, with the assistance of her staff, tied us up on frames with steel mesh [a
natural conductor of electricity]. While torturing us with the abusive
forced-feeding, they shocked us with electric batons on the mouth, neck and the
rest of the body. The steel mesh sprang up with each electric shock, accompanied
with sparks all over the place. During the abusive forced-feeding and electric
shock, the hallway outside the "health center" at Heizuizi Forced
Labor Camp was filled with a frightening mix of noises from the electric batons,
crying, wailing, and retching. Ms. Yue Jun walked toward me and said,
"Since you are the only Dafa practitioner I know here, I will make you an
example to the others!" She attacked me with the electric shock baton for a
very long time. During the shock torture, large blisters started to appear on my
entire body, including my neck. When my sweater was burned and torn from the
high voltage of electricity, she removed my sweater, tied me to the steel mesh,
and resumed the shock torture for such a long time that it seemed like the
electric shock would never end. In the end, everything turned dark before my
eyes. I was in agony. In July 2000, in order to attain the goal of making each and every Dafa
practitioner renounce Falun Gong, the Captain of Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp, Ms.
Zhang Guimei, carried a hard rubber club and a wooden baton with her at all
times, torturing Dafa practitioners at will. During that period of time, the
determined Dafa practitioners constantly suffered from all kinds of atrocious
tortures. The entire forced labor camp was enveloped with terror. One day, a
disciplinary guard tried to make me read a book that slandered Falun Dafa. I
refused to comply, so I was forced to stand while holding the book over my head
for three consecutive days. Each time I was forced to do so for at least two
hours. It was such a painful muscle strain that I started to suffer from a
painful involuntary spasmodic contraction of my arms. Nevertheless, I refused to
read the book. On the 4th day, Caption Zhang Guimei summoned me into the forced
brainwashing room where she shocked me with two electric batons at the same
time. She used one electric baton to shock my face, and the other to shock my
body. Meanwhile, she tried to scare me: "Open up your eyes and look at the
fire sparks!" I could not have opened my eyes even if I wanted to, due of
the impact from the electric shock on my face. In fact, I started to drool
involuntarily. She tortured me in this fashion for the entire morning, but I did
not give in. Instead, she was at her wits' end, in the presence of my righteous
spirit. By the time she stopped the torture, the large blisters on my body had
been broken open by the electric shocks. My clothes were damp with body fluids
and mucus. When I exited the room, my face was burned black, deformed, and
swollen. In fact, my eyes were so swollen that I could only see through tiny
slits. Some fellow practitioners were terrified at the sight of me and burst
into tears. That night, I was unable to sleep due to the excruciating pain. I
felt as if I had been grilled over a fire. In August of 2000, Captain Zhang Guimei decided to resort to a new approach,
which she called "negative reinforcement." She locked several of us
who maintained our steadfast belief in Dafa into a small warehouse, and made us
sit absolutely still in the double lotus with our arms behind our back for eight
hours every day. A disciplinary guard, Ms. Zhang Xiaohua said, "I will
shock whoever dares to move with an electric baton!" We were also denied
the use of toilet. All of us ended up having blisters on our legs which filled
with blood. Some of us kept retching and experienced excruciating pain. A fellow
practitioner, Ms. Wang Xiufen, twitched her body a little bit, and several
guards dragged her to the front where they punched and kicked her. Then Ms. Wang
Xiufen was forced to continue with the double lotus position immediately
afterwards. They tried this "negative reinforcement" approach for
three consecutive days, but none of us gave in. III. The Evil Police Hospital Before I was sent to the police hospital, the staff from the detention center
asked for two thousand yuan from my younger brother, saying the money was needed
for my medical treatment. On December 9, detention center staff, guards, and a
doctor from the local medical station all got in a car, to put me in custody at
the police hospital. They kept threatening me, saying that they had many ways to
deal with me in the police hospital. Ms. Wang Kefei was persecuted to death
there in 2001. Once inside the police hospital it was like being inside a closed cage. I
continued my hunger strike. The guard locked my hands and feet to the bed so
that I couldn't move. Then he tried to insert a thick rubber tube into my
stomach. The tube was too thick and couldn't be inserted after several attempts,
and this caused me to cough and lose my breath. The guard didn't care at all and
kept inserting the tube into my nose. After a long time the tube was finally
inserted. By then I was sweating profusely and had no strength left. They said
that "more was coming," and started inserting a catheter tube into my
urethra. It was tremendously painful and I trembled all over. I couldn't breathe
and was in extreme pain, and I felt like I was drifting between life and death.
They threw me on a bed and put me on intravenous drip. The guard shouted,
"Nobody is allowed to care for her." The urethra tube slipped out and
they didn't put it back, leaving me lying in my own urine on the wet blanket. There were two other prisoners in the same room, one a Dafa practitioner.
Seeing the urine-soaked blanket, she put a spittoon under my lower back to help
collect the urine. After one night, my lower back was severely injured causing
intolerable pain. That night I had phlegm in my throat all the time and I
couldn't move because I was chained to the bed. I almost suffocated to death.
The other practitioner was very compassionate and she helped me remove the
phlegm. The next day she left this place so the guard said, "she is gone,
see who else will look after you!" For four days I had the tube in my
stomach and was fed only once with the milk powder and orange juice my brother
bought for me. They didn't remove the tube because they wanted to leave it in,
to cause me pain. After the tube was left in for long time, my throat began to
swell and I coughed continuously. No one looked after me while I was restrained
tightly on the bed. I could only move my head a little when I needed to cough
the phlegm out, so it was all over my face and body. The urethra tube slipped
out and my urine dripped onto the floor. The other criminal prisoner used my
cotton trousers to wipe the floor clean, and cursed me for me soiling the
environment. During the day the regular criminals accused me of being dirty and
went to stay in other rooms. Before they left they opened the window purposely
to let in the cold air. That was in December in Northern China (the average
temperature is between minus 20 and minus 30 degree Celsius) and I was wearing
only underwear. In addition, the bed was wet and I was only covered to my chest.
I couldn't move, and I endured pain, cold, blame and humiliation every day. My prison roommate said that she had stayed here for over one year and had
seen too many people tortured in this way. For example, Ms. Yu Lixin, an
employee of the city government, had to endure the same torture, and then she
was tossed out into the hallway. Ms. Yu Lixin went on hunger strike for four
months, and nobody took care of her. Later she was force-fed, the urethra tube
slipped, she was soaked in urine and had bedsores all over her body. She was
persecuted by the police in the hospital until she died from the constant abuse
on May 4, 2002. They forced intravenous injections in me and always left the needle in me. I
had to beg a roommate to pull the needle out. When she was not in good mood she
would swear. Sometimes the needle moved, and nobody cared about it. The needle
moved in my muscles and legs. My feet were very badly swollen and I was
trembling due to the pain. On the second day a doctor examined me and called the
forced labor camp. On the third day after the intravenous injection was over, no one came to
remove the needle. I didn't beg them this time. I looked at the empty bottle and
slowly closed my eyes [note: It is common medical training and procedure to
never leave an empty IV bottle connected to a patient. If the air from the
bottle enters into the vein of the patient through the IV needle it can cause an
embolism and kill them.] I had been tortured beyond tolerance, and thought
it was all right to die. If I died, I died because of the persecution. Not
knowing how long had passed, I opened my eyes and I saw the empty bottle still
up there C and I was still alive. A warm feeling came to my heart. My
compassionate Teacher! I must do well not to let down your benevolent salvation! At that time the guard came in accidentally and saw the empty bottle. She
blamed my roommates for not watching me. On the fourth day, fearing
responsibility should I die, the forced labor camp let my brother take me home.
I had finally escaped this evil place. IV. Life Outside the Prison The police had arrested me six times since 1999, and caused my family a great
deal of pain. Before the police threw me into the forced labor camp, they forced
my husband to divorce me against our will. Hence, I had no home to return to
after I was released from the forced labor camp and I became homeless. Later I
moved into my mother's home and stayed with her and my young brother for a short
period of time, but the police frequently came and harassed us. Sometimes the
police would even break into my mother's home in the middle of the night,
causing my mother and brother to live in fear and terror. In addition, the
police fired me from work in 1999, because I appealed for Falun Dafa, and thus
cut off my income. Later, my former employer granted me 150 yuan every month
which was only enough to pay for the most minimal living expenses in the urban
area of Jilin City. However, I could not pick up the paychecks in person because
I was in jail, nor could I authorize anyone else to pick them up on my behalf.
After I was released from the prison, I went to the bank to pick up the
paychecks, but the bank teller refused to give them to me because I was a Falun
Gong practitioner. Thus I was robbed of my most minimal and only monthly income
of 150 yuan. On June 30, 2003, the police force in Gangyao Town, Longtan District was told
by an informer of my truth-clarification activities, and abducted me. On the
same day, the police ransacked my mother's home and confiscated all of my Falun
Dafa books. My 74-year-old mother was so terrified during the raid that she
nearly fainted several times. That night, I was thrown into Jilin City First
Detention Center. The cell only had one large bed but was packed with over 20
people, so I had to sleep on the floor. At the detention center we were
forbidden to practice the Falun Gong exercises. I started a hunger strike as soon as I arrived at Jilin City First Detention
Center. I told the head and the disciplinary guards that they shouldn't
persecute Falun Gong practitioners simply because we believed in the principles
of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance. They replied, "We are merely
following the order from the top. Now that you are here, you must comply with our
laws." On the third day of my hunger strike they started to torture me with
abusive forced-feedings twice a day. They made seven to eight inmates who had no
medical training perform the savage torture. Together, they restrained me and
pinched my nose while pressing down my tongue with a spoon to pour in the liquid
food. Sometimes, they poured the liquid into my nose, adding to the insufferable
pain. On the fifth day of my hunger strike, the head of Jilin City First Detention
Center threatened to punish all of the inmates in the cell with sitting in a
fixed position for an extended time together with me, as well as denying them
any break in the courtyard if I continued with the hunger strike. (Because Jilin
City First Detention Center does not allow any visits, the inmates can only see
their families standing on a distant hill during the break in the courtyard,
which is given only once in several days.) The head had meant to incite the
inmates' resentment toward me with the threat. He also made me sit on the floor
all day long. On the sixth day, they ordered the inmates in my cell to make me
stand still for one day and one night. The inmates kept punching me until I
almost collapsed every time I twitched or dozed during the standing torture. My
cheek, nose and lips were injured from the inmates' frequent and hard pinching.
In fact, my check became prominently swollen. Later they inserted a stomach tube
in me and left it in for several days. They also denied me sleep. Once, I
collapsed to the floor, and the inmates pulled me up and woke me up immediately
telling me to stop "acting." They watched me day and night to prevent
me from pulling the stomach tube out. I pulled the stomach tube out many times,
but each time I was subjected to a brutal beating. I endured the most insufferable pain inflicted upon me and struggled to
clarify the truth about Falun Dafa to the inmates in my cell. They agreed with
my reasoning, and said, "It's true that you Falun Gong practitioners do not
fight back when you are beaten or sworn at." On the eleventh day of my
hunger strike, the staff from Gangyao Town Police Station came to pick me up.
One of the inmates in my cell held my arms and begged me not to leave. She said,
"I want to learn Falun Dafa from you." When I finally left the cell I
saw her collapse on the floor, and I felt an intense sadness. A disciplinary
guard saw what happened and approached me saying, "Falun Dafa is indeed all
about the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance. Today I truly
witnessed the compassion in Falun Gong practitioners. In fact, I believe you
have done the right thing to clarify the truth about Falun Dafa." I was originally sentenced to two years in the forced labor camp, but the
labor camp had to release me because my health had dropped below their minimum
standard as a result of their atrocious tortures. Thus I survived and escaped
the torture at the forced labor camp once more. However, the local police
forcefully warned me, "If you refuse to repent and give up Falun Dafa, we
will arrest you again." Despite the release, I was forced to leave home and
go into hiding in order to protect my family from the police's terror again. This concludes some of the typical cases of the persecution I have suffered
so far. After all, we can never finish presenting the infinite number of crimes
that Jiang has committed against Dafa practitioners. Finally, I wish to say that
no tribulation of any kind will stop the righteous and kind people from
believing in and longing for Falun Dafa and its principles of Truthfulness,
Compassion, and Tolerance!
Chinese version available at
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/11/17/60737.html
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