By Yu Ming from Mainland China

Continued...

(Clearwisdom.net) Force-feeding may appear to be a way to sustain the life of a practitioner on hunger strike, but my experience tells differently. Every day when they wanted to force-feed me, several criminal inmates dragged me through cellblock hallways as if dragging a dead dog. The inmates in other cells all looked at me like they were looking at an animal. All the prison doctors who force-fed me were untrained. When they force-fed me they used very thick rubber tubes which I never saw them sterilize.

They pushed me down on the ground and tied up my head, my body, my hands and feet to prevent me from struggling. This brutal behavior made me feel that I was an animal about to be slaughtered. I was treated without any human dignity. The prison doctors with their savage eyes wide open screamed at me "We'll stab you to death! We'll stab you to death!" while they violently forced the rubber tube into my nose. The tube was forced all the way into my stomach. Some of the time the tube was inserted into my lung or my windpipe. It was extremely painful. After they pushed the tube in, they would wriggle the tube and try to force it in further again; my tears and nose kept running from the pain, and my head throbbed. I had to open my mouth trying to catch my breath as hard as I could to avoid suffocating.

They then forced a bowl of corn meal gruel into my stomach. After the force-feeding, they pulled the tube out rapidly, making a loud popping sound as it came out. They had absolutely no concern for how I felt, physically or mentally.

Some times the tube would puncture my nasal cavity or my esophagus. The blood would run into my stomach and made me feel nauseated, but I had no way to throw up.

I had to endure this kind of agonizing feeling and unimaginable physical pain during daily force-feedings. When I was force-fed the first time, I saw that a female Falun Gong practitioner was also being force-fed. Her body was covered with dirt and the edges of her clothes were torn. It was obvious that she had struggled. Her neck, chest and abdomen areas were tightly bound to the bed with three belts. Her legs were spread apart, and her arms were fixed to the two sides of the bed with belts, at a 90-degree angle. Areas around her nose and mouth were covered with remnants of sticky food, with blood stains and secretions. A thick and long rubber tube, which extended out from one of her nostrils, was connected to a large injection syringe that was used for the force-feeding. The syringe was filled with a sticky and muddy mixture. The guard who wore rubber gloves and held the syringe appeared very ferocious and impatient. A couple of inmates stood on the side lines with a dull look in their eyes. When the inmates started to beat Dafa practitioners, however, they were frenzied and showed no conscience at all. The force-feeding tube looked extremely dirty and it was not known if this very tube had been cleaned and sanitized after it was used on others.

By the time I saw her, she obviously had no more energy to struggle, but even so, a very strong man in a police uniform still firmly grabbed her hair and held her down. While suffering the agonizing pain, she could not even move her head. The detention center doctor could thus easily finish the force-feeding.

The guards, through performing force-feeding, on the one hand could temporarily keep the person alive and prevent her from dying abruptly. On the other hand, though, the forcefeeding never demonstrated that the police in the Jiang government cared about the life of the person on a hunger strike. From their perspective they cared nothing about the tremendous mental stress and the extreme physical pain caused by the brutal way of inserting the force-feeding tube, the police basically did not care about the life of the person who was on a hunger strike. The police did it this way purely because they did not want the person to die [and did not want to lose their job] and thus avoided dealing with the trouble caused by a death. Furthermore, the police used the opportunity of force-feeding to inflict extreme pain and mental stress to the person who was on a hunger strike, to terrorize the person, making her afraid of the extreme pain and thus stop the hunger strike. This was done in order to reduce the pressure and troubles the authorities faced. It also made the person on the hunger strike lose their spirit and have no energy to appeal, file lawsuits, and seek other legal redress.

(B) Unlawfully sentenced to forced labor

During the agonizing eight days of my hunger strike, except for the force-feeding, there was not even one government official investigating my case. On Chinese New Year's Eve (that is, the day just before the traditional Chinese Spring Festival), the detention center head whose last name was Bai came to the cell to see me. By that time I had already been transferred to cell No. 9 in block No. 3. Bai told me that I would be released if I started eating, because they did not want to have trouble in the time of the New Year holiday. I believed him and thought that since he was a government official wearing police clothes that he would not lie right in front of me. So I started to eat. Unexpectedly, the next day, two policemen arrived and declared that I was sentenced to one and a half years of forced labor for "interfering with social order."

I knew that Bai had deceived me. Perhaps he had already colluded with the forced labor committee to deceive me. In fact, the Chinese Constitution says it protects every citizen's freedom of belief, freedom of speech, right to appeal, right to impeach, right to protect personal reputation, and right to protect one's life and health. However, Falun Gong practitioners who only want to keep fit and be good persons, have been ruthlessly deprived of all these basic human rights -- the ruling Party and government under Jiang's single-handed manipulation have trampled these constitutional rights.

Our clarifying the truth of the illegal persecution of Falun Gong causes the listeners no harm; instead, it encourages listeners' to have compassion and correct thoughts. Clarifying the truth also violates no law and has nothing to do with taking away political power. What is wrong with doing it this way? Whose social order has been disturbed?

What is more absurd and shocking to people is that the regulations concerning the education through forced labor have all come from the administrative orders of China's State Department and the Department of Public Security, and they are not laws stipulated anywhere by the People's Congress or its Standing Committee. Forced labor severely infringes upon people's freedom and is the most severe administrative penalty. There should be laws to decide whether a person can be sentenced to forced labor. However, China currently does not have any forced labor laws, and the basis for sentencing a person to forced labor all comes from the orders of the State Department. Therefore, the forced labor policy totally violates the Legislative Laws of the Peoples' Republic of China, at least since October 1996 or after July 1, 2000! At present, people are still being illegally detained in labor camps, and the detainees are enduring persecution in all these various labor camps around the country that are even more severe than in prisons.

Isn't this the most severe crime, committed by a certain group of people in the government on a large scale, against its citizens? If this is not persecution, what is it?

(To be continued)

Part 1:
http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/23/45389.html

Posting date: 2/24/2004
Original article date: 2/23/2004
Category: Eye Witness Accounts
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/2/7/66125.html

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