By a Dafa practitioner

(Clearwisdom.net May 4) I am a Dafa practitioner in Henan Province. Due to resisting the authorities' forced brainwashing, I was illegally sentenced to forced labor for three years. In December 1999, I was sent to the Shibalihe Female Labor Camp in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province.

I was treated very inhumanely there. I had to work 14-17 hours or longer every day. On most weekends I had to work extra hours and seldom had a rest.

Each Dafa practitioner was surrounded by two to four criminals who monitored them around the clock. Some guards arbitrarily cursed or beat Dafa practitioners. They dragged the practitioners by the hair, flicked their mouths, kicked them, slapped their faces or pinched their inner thighs. They also instigated criminals to curse or beat Dafa practitioners, rewarding the criminals with reduced sentence terms.

Dafa practitioners Li Xia, Yan Hong, Liu Chunlan and others were brutally beaten several times. Practitioners were dragged down to the floor, hit and kicked, their bodies stepped on and beaten while rolling around on the floor. Dafa practitioner Li Xia was seriously hurt, and lost the control of her bladder and bowels. Her legs felt heavy, painful and weak and she had to rely on others to walk for more than a year. Her steps when she left the labor camp were faltering. Dafa practitioner Yan Xiangfan was dragged into the monitoring room by her mouth by a guard, just for uttering the phrase, "Falun Dafa is good."

Dafa practitioner Sun Jiangyi was beaten by some criminals in her cell. When she went to report the incident to a guard, the guard didn't care about the beating, and asked Sun whether Dafa is good or not. After Sun replied "Good," the guard slapped her hard on the face. The guard continued beating her face while demanding that she answer. Sun's nose started to bleed and her face became swollen. Early one morning, Dafa practitioner Zhang Haifeng prepared to do the exercises. Several criminals found out and rushed to her bed, dragging her to the floor. They took off all of her clothes, pushed her down to the floor, and beat and kicked her. After the beating, they did not allow her to put on her clothes and left her freezing in front of the entrance. With bruises all over her body, she stood at the entrance, shivering in the chilly wind. In another incident, four criminals, under the instigation of the police, dragged Cui Qiuju to the backyard and brutally beat her for no reason. Her body was covered with bruises.

Soon after, the labor camp received an instruction from their superiors, which escalated the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. The guards conducted brutal persecution against 200 Falun Gong practitioners using many kinds of torture instruments and methods, including ropes, electric baton, tiger bench* and exposure to the burning sun as a group. Early on the morning of December 27, 2001, police officers acted together with guards and took dozens of Falun Gong practitioners to a "law enforcement team." They forced us to write a "guarantee letter" to renounce Falun Gong, and used torture if we did not cooperate with them. Dozens of us were separated into one person per cell. The police officers and guards watched us in turn. We were not allowed to nap or sit down, and were forced to stand against the wall. Chilling cries could be heard when we were tortured.

Four guards asked me to kneel down, but I refused. They tried several times to press the back of my knee joints with their knees but failed to press me down. Then they kicked and stepped on the back of my knees for a while, and finally went away. Soon after, they came back with ropes and viciously said, "We have never had the chance to use these ropes since we bought them a few years ago. Now they can be used on Falun Gong." Then they forced me to take off my winter coat and tied me up with the ropes. They even said that because I was old, my suffering would be less compared to other Dafa practitioners.

Later I heard from fellow practitioners that some of them were burned with cigarettes, some were put on the tiger bench, and some were beaten by rubber or electric batons. As time passed day by day, they tied me up with more ropes. One rope tied up my ankles, and one tied up my arms from behind, making my two hands almost touch my neck. They connected another rope from my neck to my ankles that made me unable to either stand or squat. The guards also repeatedly squeezed my two shoulders. Having been on hunger strike for 23 days, we could not even walk steadily. Now we were tortured by being made to stand for four days and nights straight and were tied up with more and more ropes. The tearing pain and unbearable sleepiness mingled together. Although it was snowing heavily outside, we were soaked with sweat due to the torture. My right arm was badly hurt by the rope; it was sore, heavy and powerless. I could not sleep at night. Three months later, my right arm muscle had obviously atrophied. Dafa practitioner Yan Hong's arms were also badly hurt by the rope. She could not bend her wrists and the swelling hadn't gone down half a year later. Finally she was bailed out for treatment.

Falun Gong practitioners were separated into four teams after being kidnapped into the labor camp. Each team had practitioners who had become disabled. Here I have only listed a few cases that happened by my side. Eight months later, my arms recovered, but one of them is still noticeably smaller than the other.

*The tiger bench is an instrument of torture. One is forced to sit on a small iron bench with knees are tightly tied on the bench and hands tied on the back. Usually some hard objects are inserted underneath the lower legs to make it even harder to bear the pain.