(Clearwisdom.net) Ms. Wang Yumei is from Weihai, Shandong Province. Since the persecution of Falun Gong started in July 1999, she has traveled to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong four times. Each time she returned home, she was detained. She was detained in a psychiatric hospital for two months. To try to force her to give up practicing Falun Gong, her husband was pressured into divorcing her and she was sent to a labor camp for one year. This is her personal account.

I was so fortunate to start practicing Falun Gong in the spring of 1996. I felt my whole body was light just seven days after I began practicing.

On July 20, 1999, Jiang's regime started persecuting Falun Gong. I thought I should appeal in person for the right to practice, so I went to Beijing four times. Each time I returned home I was detained and twice kept in detention centers. I was also held in a psychiatric hospital for two months.

In October 2000, the authorities from the police department in Weihai Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone attempted to sentence me to three years of forced labor, but they later changed it so that I could serve the time outside of prison. They constantly harassed my family, and my family lived in fear. I had to leave my home and live out of town. They illegally arrested me eight months later.

They took me to Weihai Detention Center. Officer Wang Hongjia from the Weihai Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone 610 Office would not let my family visit me and pressured my husband into divorcing me. A month later, they transferred me to Wangcun Forced Women's Labor Camp and kept me there for a year.

As soon as I arrived, the guards locked me in a bathroom . The windows and doors were locked and curtains closed to completely isolate me from the outside world. In the first two months, they forced me to sit on a small stool in a fixed position around the clock, and I wasn't allowed to sleep. The skin on my bottom festered and bled. In time, I was no longer able to stay in that sitting position because I was very weak and my entire body was inflamed. At the end of the two months, the soft flesh on my bottom had turned into calluses.

In the following two months, the guards forced me to wear a pair of very tall high heels and stand in a fixed position without leaning against a wall. All day long, I was not allowed to close my eyes or move.

In the following four or five months, the guards forced me to stand barefoot on tiles 24 hours a day, and from time to time would pour cold water over me. It was winter and my clothes were constantly wet. A few months later, my whole body was swollen and in pain, and my heels became extremely painful. I had decreased vision and started to become disoriented. Because my legs were extremely swollen, the skin below my ankles would bleed with the slightest movement of my feet. I felt I had reached the limit of my endurance, both physically and mentally.

Later on, division head Li Aiwen directed the guards to torture me. They taped my mouth shut so that I could not cry out and took turns beating me. My cervical vertebrae hurt terribly due to the long term torture and it was hard to raise my head. My vertebrae were so damaged that I couldn't use a pillow when I slept. During the four to five months of torture, I became extremely weak and only had a slight awareness that I was lying on the floor.

One night, Li Aiwan and a few guards came to the bathroom and locked the door from the inside. They beat me and kicked me. One of them held a piece of paper and an ink pad. Later on I realized that they often use this method to get fingerprints on what they wanted to sign in order to get credits from their supervisors.