By a Falun Gong practitioner from Jiangsu Province

(Clearwisdom.net) My name is Mr. Lu Bagen, and I am 58 years-old. In April 2004, certain guards at this prison took me to a clinic for a physical exam. I do not know why I lost consciousness in the process, but when I awoke, I found blood and cotton pads on my leg. I don't know what they did to me. Since then, I can no longer walk or even stand. What follows are the details of my experiences.

My hometown is Zhenjiang in Jiangsu Province. My wife, Zhang Shuhua, and my son, Lu Haojun, began practicing Falun Gong in June 1998. After one year of cultivation we could feel our bodies and minds were purified and we experienced a kind of happiness and harmony we had never known. Falun Gong is wonderful. Our family feels fortunate to cultivate this universal law, and we don't know how to express our happiness. Falun Gong brings better health and inner peace to millions of people. However, since July 20, 1999, due to resentment and envy, Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist regime have waged a large-scale genocidal campaign toward kind cultivators.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used nationwide propaganda, oppression, and sometimes genocide to force practitioners to give up their belief in Falun Gong. My family, like many other practitioners, went to Beijing and petitioned the government. During these years we suffered from persecution so cruel that others may find it hard to imagine.

In August 2000, while I was incarcerated at the Fangqiang Forced Labor Camp in Jiangsu Province, I was frequently deprived of sleep and use of the restroom, and was even forbidden from speaking. Camp guards encited other criminals to torture us, by promising them benefits. Practitioners were often ordered to do even more hard labor, dig ditches, lift the mud, transplant seedlings, and carry the bags of chemical fertilizer. If regular people carried 200 lbs of fertilizers each time, the practitioners had to carry 400 lbs. After work we had to stand facing the wall for the entire night. If we refused to stand for the whole night, the guards beat us with electric batons until we were too miserable to bear it. Their goal was to "transform" practitioners (into giving up our belief in Falun Gong).

My term in that camp was extended by four months because I refused to "reform." When my time was up in November 2001 and I was released, no one was home, because my wife and my son had been taken to forced labor camps. The CCP never wanted us to have a peaceful life. They ordered people to watch and stalk me, and I was forbidden from going out to talk to others. To protest the persecution and clarify the truth to people, I wrote "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance is Good" and "Falun Dafa is Good" on a corridor window of my residential compound. Party members were angry at me and sent me to a detention center, where I was held for eight months. They sent me to Wuxi Prison on August 13, 2003.

The abuses at this place were even more vile. The guards there repeatedly wrapped my head in a quilt to prevent me from breathing. The whole process usually took an hour. New prisoners were ordered to have their photos taken. I did not cooperate, so they pushed me to the floor and lifted my head to try to photograph me. When I closed my eyes, they used a stick to poke my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. On August 25, 2003, they transferred me from the newly arrived prisoners' team to the First Group of Division One.

The guards trained a number of thugs who were also prisoners. Besides all the methods of torture listed above, they also restricted when practitioners were permitted to use the restrooms or to eat. In that case the practitioners must inform these thug prisoners. I defied them, so they took me to a dark room and left

The guards also invented another torture method. They ordered me to sit in a chair or on the floor, and two of them stood on either side of me. Then, one of them pushed my head toward the other guard, who then pushed my head back again. The guards changed the next day because they got bored. They did this for eight months, from early in the morning until evening.

As soon as I started the hunger strike to protest, they handcuffed me, restrained my neck and feet against a board, and took off my pants. I could only relieve myself on that board. The whole room was extremely smelly. They force-fed me through a tube in the nose, not to save my life, but as a way to torture me. My nose bled. They purposely slid the tube in and out and poked it into my stomach to cause me extreme pain. Would a hospital save a person's life like this? They openly put unknown substances into the force-feeding mixture, claiming they were "adding more nutrition." When they finished the force-feeding, they left the tube in my nose to add to the misery.

The guards often hit me among the bedsteads or pushed me down on the ground. They stuffed varied things into my ears and nostrils, and they scratched my eyes and face. They poked a toilet brush into my mouth, saying it was to help me to brush my teeth. Even though it made my mouth bleed, they didn't stop. Prior to each forced shaving of my head, they dragged me back and forth on the dirty ground, making me powerless to resist and then pushed me to shave. This type of gross abuse lasted for ten months.

On June 12, 2004, the guards transferred me from Group 1, Division 1 to the Special Ward for attacking determined practitioners. Wuxi Prison was then managed by officials from Suzhou Prison. Since they felt they weren't getting anywhere with steadfast practitioners, they chose two collaborators from Suzhou Prison as accomplices to assist with more horrifying abuses. They used their evil theories to try to poison our minds, confronting the practitioners. Many practitioners were professors, doctors, university students, and company managers. Prison officials used extremely evil methods to brainwash them.

In those 15 days that I was there, they locked me in a dark room around the clock and deprived me of sleep. Eight persons divided into two shifts dragged me on the ground. When they became tired, they had another two people do the same thing or had them lift me up and knock me down. My internal organs were shaken up. When I was half dead and had been unconscious for a long time, they wrote evil and dirty words on my head, face, hands, and feet, and they blew cigarette smoke into my face. This gross abuse and intense pressure made me unable to think clearly, and I was mentally confused. In this condition I wrote "reform" statements. I really felt I was better off dead than suffering like that. I reproached myself bitterly and deeply regretted not remaining sober-minded and with steady righteous thoughts. Eventually I wrote a public letter, entitled "Clarifying the truth--Returning to the pure land." I announced the repeal of all my so-called "reform" statements, which I had written while mentally impaired as a result of gross mistreatment, declaring that I would return to cultivation.

After that, the authorities persecuted me more in different ways. They put poison and psychotropics (mind altering drugs) in my food, took me to a hospital, and force-fed me liquids. As a result I could not control my bladder or bowels. Either I became severely constipated and had no bowel movements for days, or I had spasms of diarrhea, perhaps ten times a day. They also forced my mouth open and fed me with unknown substances.

In September 2006, the guards again tried to force me to "reform." They used the most evil and cruel prisoners and once again did not let me sleep or take a shower. This continued until I finished my sentence and returned home, more than a year and a half later. They verbally abused me, put drugs in my food, and put something that reeked close to me. In the winter they purposely removed my quilt to freeze my feet and sometimes threw my clothes and quilt on the floor. They poured water into my shoes and used my face towel to wipe their diseased private parts. They poured urine on my toothpaste and toothbrush, and they made me trip and fall repeatedly.

I was so sad for their miserable lives. Their ignorance ruined them. I sent righteous thoughts to clear the elements that controlled them in other dimensions. They nonetheless pushed me hard into a wall and hit me in the mouth, breaking three of my teeth. The rest of my teeth are no longer firmly in place, and my gums were damaged. It is difficult for me to eat or speak properly. Even my voice changed. I could only eat soft foods made with flour and always need more than an hour to finish eating. After destroying my body like this, the guards said, "Look at what Falun Gong practice has done to your body."

What I have described above are my true experiences at Wuxi Prison in Jiangsu Province.

My wife, Zhang Shuhua, was arrested seven times for appealing to the authorities in Beijing. She was detained for more than six months in total. Later, because she refused to be "reformed" in the brainwashing center, she was sentenced to two years of forced labor and was detained in Judong Women's Forced Labor Camp. Her term was extended by five months for refusing to give up her belief. Her term was again extended for another two months for refusing to hand over Master's articles. She suffered a great deal in the labor camp. My son, Lu Haojun, was deprived of his right to attend a university and was expelled from the university for practicing Falun Gong and clarifying the truth to people. He was sentenced to seven years in jail and detained in Suzhou Prison.

Posting date: 5/27/2008
Original article date: 5/27/2008
Category: Eyewitness Accounts
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/4/14/176446.html

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