(Clearwisdom.net) The following statement from a Falun Gong practitioner in Gansu Province tells how he was persecuted at a local detention center and again in Lanzhou Prison.

While on my way home on May 18, 2004, I was seized and taken to a local township police station. In the evening they started torturing me. They began with the tiger bench torture. They then used the method known as "drawing and quartering," where my wrists and ankles were tied with rope and then stretched outward in four directions, lifting me up into the air.

The severe pain made me faint. After regaining consciousness, I found myself lying on the floor feeling dizzy, and all my limbs were numb. Grinning hideously, the police told me that another kind of torture was coming and then began burning my legs with cigarettes. It was so painful that I banged my head on the floor. They then took me to the suburban police station. After being hung up for three days and nights, my entire body was numb, with both hands purple and black.

More than ten people went to ransack my home, including Li Guoming from the County Domestic Security Division, Lu Zhengpin, and the Party secretary. They checked shelves and dressers, stomped on the bed, dumped clothes on the floor, and even checked in the chicken coop. My wife tried to stop them, but they forcibly restrained her, causing her to faint. After coming to and seeing what they were doing, my wife was so furious that she drank kerosene. They took her to a local hospital emergency room at around 11:00 a.m., where she remained until about 10:00 p.m. In the end, they had taken our tricycle, motorcycle, cell phone, ID card, driver's license, and other personal property.

On the third night, I was transferred to a detention center and tortured again. A guard surnamed Tang hit me in the upper left side of my chest, injuring my ribs. I had difficulty breathing and walking. After being detained there for more than eleven months, I was sentenced to a four-year term and sent to Lanzhou Prison.

In the transition division of Lanzhou Prison, each inmate was ordered to prepare two large bags of garlic every day, and we were not allowed to sleep until the work was finished. We sometimes had to work on the garlic under candlelight after 10:00 p.m., when the lights were turned off, and at times until around 2:00 a.m. We had to get up again at 4:00 a.m. to continue the work. More than 30 people had to work and sleep in the same cell. It smelled really bad, and lice were present everywhere. Because there were so many people in the cell, we often slept in alternate directions, with one person's feet next to another person's head. One day when I was doing the work with my legs crossed, a guard saw it and ordered other inmates to hit me hard on my lower back.

After being persecuted for a long time in the transition division, I was sent to Division 3. Political head Li Wen, deputy political head Ren Hongjun, and division head Li Xiaojun were very vicious. While handcuffed around the clock, I was deprived of sleep and had no access to a toilet. They hung me high in the air with my feet off the ground several times. I called out, "Falun Dafa is good!" I was then taken to the interrogation room and handcuffed to heating pipes so that I couldn't move. Several guards came to torture me with electric batons, and the discharged batons were replaced with new ones. As a result, I had bruises and blisters all over my body, and many areas turned purple or black. The injury on my head was the most severe. I felt dizzy and couldn't get a sense of direction, and I lapsed in and out of consciousness. Because I was also beaten with rubber batons, my lower body became purple and black. With the back pain and general weakness, I had great difficulty walking. I also lost bladder control. It took me two years to gradually recover.

To protest the persecution, I went on a hunger strike. The guards mixed hot water with uncooked corn flour and cooled it down by adding cold water. They then used a large syringe to force the mixture through a tube inserted into my nostril into my stomach. Sometimes they intentionally pulled or pushed the tube to induce pain, and one time I fainted from the pain. They took me to emergency and then continued the torture after I came to. Because of this torture, I had stomachaches and couldn't eat for a long time. I vomited whenever I ate.

This traumatic experience ended in May 2008.