(Clearwisdom.net)

I am a 57-year-old woman, retired from the Dalian Harbor Bureau, in Dalian City, Liaoning Province. Prior to my retirement, the condition of my health was very bad, with heart disease, arthritis and an atrophied left leg. I was unable to take care of myself. In 1996, I was fortunate enough to learn Falun Gong and, as a result, began to understand many issues about which I had always held a curiosity, but were clearly beyond my realm, such as the purpose for our existence as human beings. I resolved to follow the requirements of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance" and to persevere in my cultivation in Falun Dafa. Within a few months of practicing Falun Dafa, my illnesses disappeared and I experienced the feeling of being a disease-free person. My life then became happy and peaceful.

Since the Jiang regime first began the suppression of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, they have abused their power by mobilizing their propaganda machine to slander and defame Falun Dafa. They have utilized judicial systems, army troops and all other dictatorial resources to persecute Falun Gong. On that July 20, we went to the Appeals Office in Dalian City to make an appeal for Falun Dafa. On July 21, various police personnel, such as Dalian policemen (including officers from the Dalian Public Security Office, its branch offices and police stations), anti-riot police and military police, all began beating us. They used electric batons and wooden nightsticks to violently beat all practitioners, regardless of whether they were young, old, male or female. They grabbed practitioners by the hair and slammed them into trees and utility poles. They dragged practitioners to the ground and kicked them with their leather boots, totally oblivious to the gathering crowds of shocked public onlookers. In addition, there were many plainclothes policemen who had infiltrated the crowd of practitioners. In turn, they signaled other plainclothes policemen to make an arrest whenever they heard a practitioner say, "Falun Dafa is good," or whenever anyone expressed disapproval of the police brutality.

A father was there with his ten-year-old son. For some unknown reason, the plainclothes policemen suddenly took the father away in a police car. Sadly, the boy was left there crying out loud, "Papa! Give me back my papa!" On that day, The People's Square, where Dalian City Hall is located, was filled with horror. All practitioners who insisted on staying at the square were arrested and detained in various school buildings. The practitioners were forced to give policemen their names and work units before being released. Many practitioners resolutely refused to cooperate with the police or reveal their names, and they were detained until 11 p.m.

After July 22, 1999, work units and neighborhood administration offices thoroughly studied each practitioner's case, and then threatened each practitioner with the loss of whatever was individually important, including government jobs and housing assignments, in an attempt to coerce practitioners into renouncing Falun Gong. Officials of the local neighborhood administration office and the local police station continually visited my home to harass me. They forced me to relinquish my Falun Gong books and tried to force me to write the so-called "guarantee statements (1)." They enlisted my neighbors to spy on me. The police were in my neighborhood all day long. My quiet and peaceful family life had been disrupted. In October 1999, I decided to go to Beijing to appeal, in order to reveal the true situation of Falun Gong. Appealing is a basic right of citizenship, as defined in the Chinese Constitution.

As soon as I arrived in Beijing, I immediately felt the ghastly atmosphere. Everywhere there were police cars, policemen and armed military personnel stopping all out-of-town pedestrians and asking, "Are you a Falun Gong practitioner?" Once one replied affirmatively, they would be put into a police car, and once the car was full they would be driven to a police station where a large bus would take them to a large sports arena. When I arrived, the sports arena was already filled with several thousand people who were practitioners from all over the country. We were detained in the outdoor arena for an entire day without food or water, and we were not allowed to use the restrooms. Each of us was individually interrogated. At around 8 p.m., the policemen began sending practitioners to different prisons. I was loaded into a large bus with a group of other practitioners, each of whom was handcuffed to the next. At around 11 p.m, after driving for several hours, the bus stopped at the Yanqing Prison in a suburb of Beijing. By this time, we had already been without food and water for sixteen to seventeen hours. Nevertheless, the policemen interrogated and searched us all through the night. They even removed our hair clips and hair ties to search through every hair. The money we had hidden in our clothes, even in our underwear, was discovered and looted. Our shoelaces were also removed. Finally, we were put into different prison cells.

These prison cells were an old-fashioned type that were very small. The bed was very cold because it was made from planks placed on the concrete floor. There were about fifteen or sixteen practitioners to a prison cell and we all went on a hunger strike. In the daytime, one after another, practitioners were taken out for interrogation. It was very common for practitioners to be verbally and physically abused. When they asked for my name and address, I addressed them in an upright and dignified manner, saying, "My name is 'Falun Dafa practitioner.' According to CCTV's propaganda, whenever there is a problem, we have the right to complain to the government through a normal channel. Although I have not yet found the Appeals Office, you've already arrested and imprisoned me. I didn't violate the law, so why do you keep me locked up?"

The policemen ordered me to half-squat and half-stand while stretching both my arms forward. As soon as my posture was a little bit off, they would slug and kick me. Practitioners were punished by being forced to squat on top of a stool. After a long while, she would eventually pass out and fall off the stool. The policemen used a needle to pierce her philtrum (2). Policemen also used electric batons to shock the practitioners' faces, creating so many circles on the skin that facial hairs were all singed off and their faces were all red from burns. When we were back in our cells, they forced us to memorize the prison regulations, but we absolutely refused. The policemen then beat us by punching us with their fists and kicking us with their leather boots. On the large common bed, they kicked a practitioner from one end of the bed to the other. Then they repeated the same process from the other end. A young policewoman by the name of Li said, "This is called sit-ups." When they got tired from the kicking, they punished us by forcing us to kneel down on the hard plank bed and ordered us not to move. Practitioners who did not kneel down well were brutally slapped across the face. (At the time, because we did not have a clear understanding of Fa-rectification, we just endured it quietly and considered that as eliminating karma.)

After four or five days, those of us who were on a hunger strike were subjected to force-feeding. Five or six male prisoners held me in a chair and twisted my hands behind me. One man grabbed both my arms from behind while another grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head backward. Another man used a pair of tongs to force my teeth apart while yet another stepped on my feet in the front. I was tortured to the point that I could not catch my breath, even before they began force-feeding me. A man roughly forced a tube through my mouth and down my throat, deliberately making it as painful as possible. Then he forced down a lot of cornmeal. My stomach was unbearably bloated when it was filled with this much cornmeal all at once. When the tube was removed, it was covered with blood. This was how male prisoners performed forced-feeding on female practitioners, but it was even more brutal when the policewomen performed the forced-feeding. The aforementioned policewoman named Li would laugh loudly and wildly upon seeing the practitioners suffer. She would roll up her sleeves and say, "Come on, let me feed you some." Then she pushed the tube down really hard into the practitioner's' stomach, laughing loudly. As she inflicted the pain, she would say, "I'll make you 'to live with no pursuits, to die with no regrets.'(3) One more. One more..." Because too much was forced into my stomach so rapidly, the cornmeal would often be regurgitated all over my clothes. During that period, each day seemed like a year to us. Each day, we were interrogated, beaten, punished, brutally force-fed and then deprived of sleep all night. Within only about a dozen days the continual torture had disfigured us to the point where we no longer looked like normal human beings. We never expected to leave that place alive. (At the time, I had resigned myself to the acceptance of my own death, if worse ever came to worst.) Many practitioners had severe diarrhea due to forced-feeding. The prison doctor was afraid to take responsibility should anything dire happen to us, so he kept reporting to his supervisors.

We were again sent back to Beijing. When we left, they asked us to pay: 80 Yuan (4) for the cost of bedding, 100 Yuan for each session of forced-feeding and various other fees for different items. Everyone was made to pay approximately 2,000 Yuan. If the money they had initially looted from us when we first arrived was not enough, they would subtract the difference from another practitioner's money. One practitioner had 3,000 Yuan with her when she first got there, but when she left they gave very little money back to her. The prison had no intention at all of giving our money back to us.

I was taken to a prison in Beijing along with four other Falun Dafa practitioners, but I don't remember the name of the prison. I remember only that it was called an "advanced, top prison." Once we arrived, they searched and verbally abused us. Then the head of the cell ordered us to take a coldwater bath. Winter in Beijing was very cold. We were supposed to bathe once each day and were not allowed to skip it. The head of the cell was a seventeen-year-old prostitute who tortured me. She grabbed my hair and slapped me on the face. She grabbed me by my clothes and shook me. She reported my situation to the police every day and when she returned, she ordered someone to beat me. I was the only Falun Dafa practitioner in my cell. During those days, I was miserable. When I had previously been in the Yanqing Prison, I experienced physical pain, but at least I was with fellow practitioners there. We always encouraged each other and recited the Fa together, so no matter how much hardship I had to endure, I was still able to persist. Now, I was the only one that was being hit and cursed. There was no one with whom I could converse, I was not allowed to read the teachings of Falun Dafa and there was no one to whom I could turn. I used to be able to memorize some of Teacher's articles, but I couldn't remember them very well anymore. So I would recite only "On Buddha Law(5)" and Hongyin (6) and tried to suppress all sorts of bad thoughts. Because I was trapped into dwelling on my physical and emotional pain, I sometimes felt that I would soon collapse.

After a long time, I was finally able to quiet my mind, so I asked myself who I really was, and what I was doing in Beijing. Why was I suffering there? My answer to these questions was that I was a Falun Dafa disciple, and while Dafa was being humiliated, I should play the role of a Dafa particle and use my experience to prove that Dafa is good and upright.

After policemen from Dalian extradited me back to Dalian, they sent me straight to Dalian Detention Center, located in Yaojia, where I was detained for a month. The Dalian Public Security Office extorted 5,000 Yuan from my family and said that it was for the cost of extraditing me back home. After returning home, because I had refused to give up my belief in Falun Gong, I was put under surveillance. Liang Kun, an officer from Chunhai Police Station, took away my ID card. The neighborhood administration office, the police station and my work unit would either call to check up on me each day, or visit my home to make sure that I was at home, disrupting my home life on a daily basis. One day, nobody was at home to answer the phone while I was out grocery shopping. Officer Liang Kun looked for me everywhere, and even called my sister to find out where I was. They had also ordered my neighbors to spy on me and then periodically called them to check on my situation.

In February 2002, I was again taken hostage by the Dalian City Public Security "610 Office (7)" and transported to a drug rehabilitation center where they informed me that I would have to write the so-called "guarantee not to cultivate" statement in order to go home, or face brainwashing classes indefinitely. Practitioners who were taken hostage resolutely refused to write the so-called "guarantee statement" and undertook a unified action to hold a hunger strike. Failing to hold a brainwashing class, they then sent practitioners to various places, including detention centers and mental hospitals. At that point, several people from my work unit came and took me to the Lushun 215 Military Troops Hospital, a mental hospital.

After being admitted to the hospital, I was taken to a meeting room on the second floor. The staff momentarily left the room and I couldn't hear what they were talking about, but I felt that something was wrong, so I picked up my clothes and went downstairs. No sooner had I reached the door, than they caught up with me and were dragging me backward. I held on fast to the door knob, yelling, "Why did you lie to me?" The five or six male staff members firmly grabbed me and pried my hands free. They dragged me to the third floor, to Mental Health Ward III. I was stripped of my regular clothes, put in a patient garment and injected with unknown drugs. In a short while, I was no longer myself. I kept hallucinating that my relatives were standing around my bed. I wanted to tell them how I was being persecuted, but I could not move my mouth to utter a word.

I felt dizzy and drowsy for the entire day. The night duty nurse was kind enough to get my home phone number from me, so she could call my family, but I could neither move my mouth nor express myself clearly. My legs would not move freely either. I was barely able to make it to the cafeteria, where I fell on the floor and could not get up. A kind-hearted nurse carried me back to my bed and brought food to me, but I could not use my hands very well, nor could I use chopsticks, so I didn't eat. Then I fell asleep again. I didn't know how much time had passed when I was awakened and forced to take some pills. In this manner, I was given one injection a day and forced to take oral medication in the morning and evening. I was dizzy and drowsy every day and was always hallucinating.

After a week, I was transferred to a hospital room nearby, where they stopped giving me a daily injection, but they still made me take medicine orally, twice a day. Gradually, I was able to get up from the bed to walk. Every morning I was supposed to stand up beside my bed, waiting for the Ward Chief to make his rounds of the wards and question me. One day, the Chief asked me, "How have you been feeling for the past few days? Are you still associating with them [Falun Gong practitioners]? Are you still going to Beijing?"

I realized that he meant no good, so I didn't want to say much. I just said, "I didn't cause any trouble."

He then asked, "So, what is on your mind?"

I didn't know how to answer, so I just mumbled, "I never thought about it."

He said, "Then you think hard about this!"

On the second day, they increased my medicine dosage. When he checked the wards, the Ward Chief asked me again, "Have you thought this over?"

I said, "Not yet." As a result, they increased my medicine dosage again. For a few days in a row, they kept increasing my medicine dosage, starting at three pills per time, and finally to a dozen pills per time. Each time, I had to go to the pharmacy and wait in line to get my medicine, swallow it with water in the presence of the pharmacist and then open my mouth to prove that I had indeed swallowed the pills. Besides regularly increasing my medicine dosage, every Friday they also took me to a lab where they closed the door and made me swallow two big yellow pills. They let me out only after opening my mouth and allowing them to carefully check whether the pills had been swallowed. After taking those pills, I felt dizzy, nauseous and weak all over my body. I decided to go to the Ward Chief and ask him not to increase my dosage. I explained to him why I practiced Falun Gong, and how much I had benefited from the practice. He certainly didn't understand. All he knew were the lies made up by the government's mouthpiece. I told him that Falun Gong teaches people to become good people, that freedom of belief is a citizen's right and that it was wrong to suppress Falun Gong. At last, I requested that my dosage be lowered, and the Chief said that he could do so, but only by two small pills.

Not long after I had been admitted to the mental hospital, my work unit sent in another practitioner, one with whom I had once attended a brainwashing class. After she was injected with drugs in an intensive care ward, she first fell unconscious, and then later began to hallucinate. She squatted on the floor and tried to pick up things from all over the floor, claiming that it was covered with bugs. I felt so bad for her and took her back to her bed. After awhile, she repeated the same process again. They wrote both of our names on the blackboard in the ward office and requested that hospital staff strictly monitor our medications.

I was detained in the mental hospital for over four months, during which I was always dizzy and drowsy from the daily torture of the medicine. I also felt nauseous and weak, and had edema all over my body. My whole body had become totally disfigured. What was even more painful was that I was required every morning to go with the mental patients to a "club" for the so-called "mental treatments," which included singing and dancing. The two of us could only sit in the last row and recite the Fa. Often there were a few specific male and female mental patients who sat in the back and pulled some obnoxious stunts. In such a filthy place, had I not kept my mind on the Fa, I would surely have had a mental breakdown. There were also times when my mind was in chaos, and I felt that I could no longer bear the psychological stress. It was as if I could no longer stand it for even another minute. I was also afraid that I would become unable to control myself, so I kept telling myself not to go crazy and I recited the Fa over and over again, suppressing all kinds of bad thoughts. I eliminated all sorts of interference and tried hard to calm my mind. The Jiang regime tried to use torture as a means to turn good, innocent people into mentally ill people. It was Dafa that helped me make it through the most difficult crises.

Four months later, the Ward Chief contacted my work unit and they sent someone to pick me up. When I left the hospital, the Chief walked me to the front entrance with guilt written all over his face. Not long after leaving the hospital, my eyes began to fester, and even opening them became difficult. The insides and outsides of my ears also started to fester and ooze yellow fluid, as did my scalp and neck. It caused itchiness and simply heart-wrenching pain.

The festering began in the summer of 2002. To date, the insides and outsides of my ears and scalp still ooze yellow fluid. The worst festering that I endured occurred during the two years between 2000 and 2002. Were it not for being a Falun Gong practitioner, I would have become completely festered and possibly died. Old acquaintances that saw me couldn't bear to see me looking like that, and after learning what had happened, they all cried.

I was not the only one who went through this. In 2002, while I was in the drug rehab center, Li Hong, a Dalian Second High School teacher, was also admitted to the Dalian City Mental Hospital. First, after leaving the hospital, both of her eyes began to fester. Because she told her supervisors and colleagues in her work unit about the persecution that she had experienced in the mental hospital, they reported her to higher authorities. As a result, Li Hong was then sentenced to two years of forced labor in the notorious Masanjia Forced Labor Camp. The last time anyone visited her, they reported that her body was still festering, her hair had turned completely gray and she had become disfigured beyond recognition.

After leaving the hospital, my work unit, the neighborhood administration office and the police station had me under constant surveillance. They continually visited to see what I was doing. One day in April 2002, I was at home preparing for my daughter's wedding. At around 8 p.m., Liang Kun and Zhao Guangyuan from the Chunhai Police Station, and two other female workers from the neighborhood administration office, barged into my home and barbarically demanded to know, "Do you still have a desire to practice Falun Gong?" I explained the truth to them, but they replied, "We don't care. Today, just tell us whether you are still practicing!"

I replied resolutely, "Of course, I will still practice." They immediately ransacked my home and took my hand-written Falun Dafa materials and exercise audiotapes away from me, and then told me to go to the police station. At the time, I thought that although my daughter was not a practitioner, for the past three years she had suffered the pain and horror of losing her mother, and now her wedding might be cancelled due to this disruption. Because I couldn't bear to watch her suffer again, I followed them to the police station. (My attachment to sentimentality towards my family is what caused me to cooperate with these despicable people, and in the end, my cooperation with them actually caused harm to my family members.)

Soon after my arrival at the police station, another two practitioners were also sent in by force. One of them was a practitioner in her seventies whose leg still had wounds that made it difficult for her to walk. At about 10 p.m., we were sent to Dalian Detention Center located in Nanquanling (a.k.a., Yaojia Detention Center). The Dalian Police had arrested many practitioners and were putting them in the detention center. Since it was very close to the "sensitive day" of April 25 (8), the Dalian Police were rounding up people on a large scale for arrest. I told one of the policemen, "You have totally disregarded the law. You are simply randomly arresting and detaining people. Not only haven't you abided by the law that is your job to uphold, but you, the ones who best know the law, are flagrantly violating it. From now on, I'll be on a hunger strike without water to protest your illegal abductions." I felt that I had not yet come close to being qualified as a Fa-rectification period Dafa disciple, so this time I resolved to do well and not give in to the will of the evil forces. I refused to wear the vest that indicated I was a criminal suspect in the detention center and I refused to recite the prison's regulations.

At first, there was a woman in the detention cell who had a very mean disposition. However, practitioners kept explaining the facts to her, and she soon came to understand Falun Dafa and actually began volunteering to help us. Later, at a time when I was supposed to be force-fed, she volunteered to carry me over there on her back. She also told me, "Those people from your police station are the worst. The detention center has been calling them for the past few days, asking them to come pick you up but they refused. Yesterday, someone from your police station came to understand your situation and wanted to give you a sentence. They said that as soon as you started eating, they would transfer you to another place. A few people have been released from here, but after a few days they were arrested and sentenced."

I told her, "Bear in mind that Falun Dafa is good and that you will be blessed."

She said, "After I'm out of here I'll look for Falun Gong practitioners."

During those few days, my body was exhibiting abnormal symptoms, so the prison doctor came to take my blood pressure every day. A detention center "instructor" came and tried to talk me into eating, so I explained the true situation of Falun Gong to him. He angrily shouted at me, "Let me tell you something. Don't ever think about leaving here." However, I knew that he was not the one that called the shots.

I mentally vowed to Teacher, "Teacher, I won't acknowledge the evil's persecution and I resolutely eliminate it." Thirteen days later, the police station notified my family to come and take me home. I stayed in my relative's home and rested for a few days. After awhile, police station officers resumed cruising by in their police cars to look for me all over again.

They went to my daughter's work unit several times to ask for my whereabouts, and they spread rumors in my daughter's work unit to negatively influence her colleagues. My daughter's work unit supervisor took her aside and asked her to hand me over to the police. My daughter bravely challenged them, saying, "If you really can't handle this situation, then why don't you just fire me?"

I was left with no choice but to leave home in order to avoid implicating others and to avoid further persecution. Later, I heard that those two practitioners I had seen at the detention center that night were subsequently sentenced to forced labor after first being released from the detention center, and were both taken to Masanjia Forced Labor Camp. At around 12 a.m., Officer Liang Kun took away the older of the two practitioners, Ms. Duan Liwei. The other practitioner, Ms. Ma Xueqing, was abducted from her work unit. She reportedly refused to cooperate and the policemen had to carry her to the police car.

Now I cannot return home due to the evil persecution by the Jiang regime. I lost my normal living environment and my family members also suffered tremendous emotional stress. Jiang Zemin uses his propaganda machine to lie to the people, deliberately keeping them ignorant of the truth. He then incites the people to become hateful toward Falun Gong and practitioners. I will use my personal experience to expose Jiang's lies that have deceived the entire world. I will let people clearly see the truth of this persecution and truly understand that Falun Gong is good.