By a Falun Dafa practitioner in Jilin Province

(Clearwisdom.net)

I started practicing Falun Gong in October 1996, at a time when I was in the most difficult stage of my life. Just one week after my disabled husband became unemployed, he fractured his leg. Besides taking care of our 7-year-old son, I had to run a small eatery all by myself. When my husband was still not fully recovered, our neighbor's child accidentally injured my son's eyes. Just when I was on the verge of a collapse, a neighbor gave me the book Zhuan Falun.

The principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance" discussed in the book totally convinced me and made me understand the meaning of life, why people come to this world and why there is so much suffering in life. Because of my heavy workload and also because I did not study the Fa well enough, I was rather sluggish for over a year, and just practiced at home by myself. Then in 1998, I went to the practice site in Jiangbian and began diligently cultivating.

The principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance" comforted my mind and body and changed me fundamentally, raising me to a higher level. I no longer felt so unsure and without direction. Through cultivation, several serious health problems that I had disappeared without my taking any medicine or spending a penny on any kind of treatments. Not only this, my moral standard was also raised to a higher level, and I voluntarily gave up asking the neighbor whose son hurt my son's eyes to compensate me monetarily.

Just when my family's situation was gradually becoming better, on July 20, 1999, Jiang began to suppress and persecute Falun Gong. Falun Dafa had saved me and made me understand that the true meaning of life is to return to our original true self. I needed to appeal for the return of justice to Falun Dafa and to speak out for our great Teacher!

I talked with my husband about going to appeal in Beijing, but he did not agree with me, no matter what I said. This was because he knew all too well how cruel a politically motivated persecution could be; my father-in-law was beaten during the Great Cultural Revolution and imprisoned for seven years. He was sent to Jilin Province to do hard labor, and my husband, then just a small child, became handicapped from malnutrition. Even now, when he thinks back to that time, my husband still trembles with fear. He said, "My father's family was broken up during the Cultural Revolution, and you should never follow my father's path. This family all relies on you, and if something happens to you, how would I and our son live?" My family's situation made things difficult for me.

Later, the mass media used deceiving lies to slander Falun Dafa, and the situation against us was escalating. The authorities wantonly attacked our great Teacher and persecuted Falun Dafa practitioners. Some innocent and kindhearted people who did not know the truth were deceived and developed hatred towards Falun Dafa. When I looked at these developments, I was very worried, and I could no longer keep silent. I needed to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa. I left my husband and my son with tears in my eyes and stepped out on the road to Beijing.

It was the first time that I, a 38-year-old woman, had ever traveled this far away from home. On my way to Beijing, no checkpoints or any attempts to block me could prevent me from going to Beijing. When I arrived in Beijing, I took a taxi. When the driver learned that we wanted to go to Zhongnanhai, the driver became very scared and asked us to leave the taxi immediately, telling us that he did not know where Zhongnanhai was. We then asked an elderly man where the Bureau of Appeals was, and he also became frightened and slipped away. I talked with another practitioner, and we decided to go directly to Tiananmen Square. On Tiananmen Square, there were police vehicles, policemen and plain-clothes special agents patrolling everywhere.

When we were close to the center of the square, two plain-clothes agents came and asked us to curse Teacher. We refused, so they arrested us. They told us that our local police station had called them and that they had already been looking for us for half a day, using a description provided by the local police station. We were sent to the liaison office in Beijing and illegally detained for five days. There were more than twenty Falun Dafa practitioners handcuffed together and squeezed into a 1-meter wide and 5-meter long corridor, with the practitioners at each end handcuffed to the heating pipes. We were not allowed to sleep at night, and we could not move even a little bit, because doing so would cause pain to everyone else. We were given only leftovers to eat and we had to finish eating in five minutes. We could use the restroom only once per day and had to wear handcuffs even when using the restroom.

At night, a policeman sprayed a pesticide on my body. A female practitioner was forced to do the "horse stance" over the foul smelling toilet in the restroom because she refused to reveal her fellow practitioner's address. They also abused and kicked her, and did not allow her to eat. After five days, they sent us to the local police station and later sent us to forced labor camp, where we were illegally detained for 15 days under inhuman conditions. They also used people who had betrayed Falun Dafa to try to trick us into writing the so-called "pledge" to give up practicing Falun Dafa. They even threatened and forced my relatives to write the "pledge" for me and asked my family members to watch me closely. On every so-called sensitive day, such as holidays or anniversaries of major events, they would check up on me.

There are countless Falun Dafa practitioners like us who have lost their freedom. There are even Falun Dafa practitioners around me who were persecuted to death ¨C but the criminals still go unpunished. I hereby demand the release of all the illegally detained Falun Dafa practitioners. I would also remind Falun Dafa practitioners that we are a whole body, and that we cannot wait passively. We should be active and make great efforts to bring Jiang to justice in a court of law, as he is the primary culprit for persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners.

April 2, 2003

Posting date: 4/21/2003
Original article date: 4/20/2003
Category: Fa-Rectification Stories
Translated on 4/13/2003
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/4/3/47635.html

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