By Ye Linghui, Clearwisdom reporter

(Clearwisdom.net) After enduring six years of persecution, Mr. Qiu Zhaojin was reunited with his wife in Toronto on March 3, 2006. When reporters interviewed him, he spoke of the hardships of three years in a labor camp. He suffered all sorts of torture and forced hard labor. His health was ruined and a doctor declared that he was beyond any treatment.

Mr. Qiu Zhaojin and his wife, Wang Yanyingm in their Toronto home

Mr. Qiu Zhaojin was an art editor for the Dazhong Daily, a province level government newspaper, in Shandong Province. He and his wife began practicing Falun Dafa in July 1995. In 1998 his wife visited their daughter in Singapore and Mr. Qiu joined them during the 1999 New Year. It was the last New Year the couple would spend together for seven years.

When Mr. Qiu returned from his visit, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began its campaign to vilify and persecute Falun Gong. At around 7:00 p.m. on July 22, several practitioners arrived at the entrance to Mr. Qiu's apartment house to study the Fa. The security guard at the front door called him on the phone and said, "There are several Falun Gong practitioners who want to come up. We have received orders that they are not allowed in." Mr. Qiu went to the front door to meet his fellow practitioners and took them to the side entrance. Returning to his apartment he found several policemen searching his house without any documentation. The police took him to the police station and placed him in solitary confinement for about twenty four hours.

On July 23, shortly after he returned home, several policemen from the local police station took him to the police station again. Guan Yijie, the deputy secretary of the Political Legal Committee from the Dazhong Daily Office, came to the station along with Zhang Huisheng, the director of the Police station, deputy director Guo Junping, instructor Wang Ligang, and policeman Yang Jiazhong to escort Mr. Qiu back to his home, which they raided. They turned everything upside down and took all the Dafa books, the TV, VCR and bankbooks. They took Mr. Qiu back to the police station for another twenty four hours.

Mr. Qiu clarified the truth of Falun Gong with his personal story, telling about his enormous improvements in body and mind after he started practicing. He went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and went to Tiananmen Square to tell people, "Falun Dafa is good."

Because he insisted on cultivation and clarifying the truth, the police raided his home six times. He was fined and they confiscated total of 10,000 yuan. When he went to Beijing to clarify the truth in October 2000, he was arrested. The police from Shandong Province took him back to Ji'nan Police Station. He was brutally tortured by being shocked with an electric baton for one and one-half hours.

He was transferred to the security department of the newspaper office and was watched by the guards. Ten days later he was notified that he was sentenced to three years of forced labor. There were no lawful procedures followed whatsoever. The only crime he committed was that he continued to practice Falun Gong and tell people that Falun Dafa is good.

Mr. Qiu Zhaojin was held in Wangcun Forced Labor Camp in Shandong Province. This labor camp was for Falun Dafa practitioners only. There were over 700 practitioners in the camp. He suffered all sorts of tortures and brainwashing for two straight months.

One torture method is forcing practitioners to sit on a small bench only several centimeters high from five in the morning until eleven at night. One day of sitting is enough to break the skin of their bottoms. One nineteen year-old practitioner had to use thick sanitary pads to cover his bottom before he went to bed every night and the paper was soaked with blood when he woke up the next day. Mr. Qiu was forced to sit for over one week. Some practitioners were forced to sit for over two months.

Mr. Qiu endured another torture called "facing the wall." The victim's toes and chin much touch the wall and he has to stand straight for several hours to several days. The other torture was being shocked with up to eight electronic batons at the same time.

Five times daily the practitioners were forced to sing songs eulogizing the CCP. They were forced to watch programs on TV that slandered Falun Dafa. They were deprived of sleep, and the guards often took away their after 11:00 p.m. permission to "talk."

The labor camp tried everything they could think of to "transform" practitioners and force them to write the three statements.

After two months those practitioners not "transformed" were sent back to local labor camps. Mr. Qiu was sent to Liuchangshan Forced Labor Camp in Ji'nan to begin his long-term forced hard labor.

There were three hard labors that he can never forget. One was working in a machine factory across from the labor camp, polishing the rusted machinery. They were forced to work over twelve hours per day in a filthy environment without any protection. The second was packing disposable chopsticks. Each person had to pack 1,000 pairs of chopsticks each day. If the person could not finish the assignment he had to work extended hours or even have his sentence extended to make it up. The third job was making two hundred plastic flowers per day.

None of their hard labor was compensated. Food consisted of moldy black buns and cabbage boiled in water. No cooking oil or protein was used.

In January 2002, at the age of 59, Mr. Qiu's health was destroyed after long-term hard labor. He developed a daily high fever, asthma, fluid in his chest, congestive heart failure, pleurisy, hypertension, and diabetes.

In August 2002, Mr. Qiu's health was in critical condition. The labor camp asked Mr. Qiu for 20,000 yuan in order to send him to the hospital in the labor camp. He did not have any money, plus the hospital was also a place persecute practitioners.

The labor camp suddenly ordered Mr. Qiu to go to the Tuberculosis Hospital in Ji'nan for examination. The results indicated that his illness was beyond treatment. On September 18, 2002, Mr. Qiu was released to seek medical attention.

His wife, Wang Yanying, told the reporter that when her husband was in the labor camp, they were only allowed one phone call every one to two months. The phone was tapped and they could not say much.

"When I talked to the administrator from his workplace one time, he said that Mr. Qiu had lost a lot of weight, and I was alarmed."

Ms. Wang Yanying had already immigrated to Canada by this time. She found the Falun Dafa Association and started a campaign to rescue Mr. Qiu and several other practitioners in China. Falun Dafa practitioners went to the streets, collected signatures, held news conferences, clarified the truth to the members of the legislature and government officials, and asked for help from the Canadian Government. The rescue effort helped Mr. Qiu at a critical moment in his life.

When Mr. Qiu was released, his weight was only 35 kilograms (68 pounds) on his 1.7 meter (five-foot-two-inch) frame. The administrator, security guard, and clinic staff from his workplace came to visit him and brought him a bag of medicine. The authorities monitored his daily life and activities.

Mr. Qiu did not care about the "death sentence" from the hospital or the medicine prepared for him. He began studying the Fa and practicing the exercises right away. After ten days, most of his symptoms subsided, and by one month later he had regained his health.

The administrator from his workplace witnessed the change, and his unsympathetic attitude became polite. When Mr. Qiu applied for a passport, the personnel office would not sign the document. His administrator later asked someone else to sign the document.

Ms. Wang Yanying said, "My husband loves to do the exercises. When he was in the forced labor camp he was not allowed to do the exercises. I knew this and could not hold back my tears whenever I did the exercises."

3/13/06

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/3/14/122800.html