On June19, some practitioners who were arrested with Zhao Xin while doing Falun Gong exercises were released. The following are their stories. From them, people can gain a better understanding about how firmly Zhao Xin has cultivated Falun Dafa and how the police have mistreated Falun Dafa practitioners.
1. "I will not cooperate with anything that slanders Falun Dafa"
- Bits of information about Zhao Xin's efforts to safeguard Falun Dafa with her life:
On the evening of June 19, 2000, Zhao Xin and I were arrested together while doing the exercises at Peony Pavilion in Zizhu Garden Park. From the practice site to the police station and then to the detention center, Zhao Xin refused to cooperate with the police. At Peony Pavilion, she had to be hauled to the police car by four policemen. When being interrogated at the police station, she was also dragged into the office. The policemen tried all means to obtain the addresses and names of the last five practitioners. They gave various excuses for this treatment, explaining what we did was wrong. Zhao Xin insisted that we should not go along with anything that defames Falun Dafa. On the evening of June 20, the local police station of the Park wanted to move us to another place. Zhao Xin responded, "Unless you release us, we won't go anywhere else. Zhao Xin, another girl and I then held together tightly. Four or five policemen forcefully separated us, put handcuffs on us, and then hauled us into the police cars. Zhao Xin and I were in different cars. When I arrived at the detention center, Zhao Xin and another girl were there already. Zhao Xin sat on floor in the lotus position. She smiled with determination on her face. The police moved her to the cell using a tricycle, and then dragged her into a medical clinic for a checkup.
The last time I saw her was at about 10:30 AM on June 22 while coming back from my second interrogation. She sat on the aisle of the jail, dirty and tired, but her physical condition seemed well.
2. My experience of being arrested
I am a Falun Dafa practitioner. On the evening of June 19, some practitioners and I were practicing at Peony Pavilion in Zizhu Garden Park. At about 8:00 PM, when we were doing meditation, the police came. They shouted, "Everybody get up! No more practice! Get into the car!" They turned off the exercise music. Some practitioners got up and went with the police. I kept doing the exercise. Some police came over and kicked me and tried to stop me from practicing. They pulled my legs out from the lotus position and I resumed the position. At that moment, I remembered the words from the article "Big Exposure, "some disciples said, 'what to fear? My body would still be sitting there in practice even with my head off.'" They could not move me, so they waited for more policemen to come. Some other practitioners also did not pay attention to these policemen. They waited for a while until they felt they had enough people to take us away. They began to pull our hands from conjoined-hand gesture (Jieyin). Two policemen grabbed my arms and dragged me into a police car. Several tourists witnessed the whole scene. I did not know what they would feel. The other practitioners were probably dragged into the car the same way.
The police brought us to a big room. There was a ping-pong table in the middle of the room. About 20 practitioners of different ages were there already. We sat along the wall and began to recite "Lunyu" and "Hongyin." At the beginning, the police tried to stop us but failed. After that, they interrogated us one by one, asking our names and addresses. Those who answered were sent somewhere else. The six of us that did not give the information were kept there. They slapped me on the face and pulled my hair, giving up after a while. At that time, some practitioners realized that we had not offended the law and that we should not cooperate with them to do wrong deeds. Two female practitioners (one of which was Zhao Xin) were dragged out for more interrogation, because they had refused to answer any questions.
After coming back from the interrogation, I saw a practitioner meditating and then I did too. A policeman came and shouted, "You can't do the exercises here." I did not listen to him. Repeating himself several times and seeing that I would not move, the policeman pulled my two legs apart. He slapped my face, and pushed me down to the ground. When I sat back up again, he struck me angrily. I came to realize that I must still have the mentality of competitiveness. I then stopped practicing. No policeman came to interfere with our practice afterwards. We stayed in that room for about 24 hours.
At about 6:00 PM on June 21, one practitioner suggested that we should ask the police to release us. We cleaned the room and were about to go to ask the police while they came over. They told us that we would be moved to somewhere else. Zhao Xin said, "We can not let them move us, because we did not break the law. We all agreed. Therefore, when the police called us, we did not move. The policemen then dragged us forcibly. Zhao Xin and the two other female practitioners held together tightly. They were handcuffed and hauled to the police car. Zhao Xin and I were in the same car. Three policemen were watching us. She was still handcuffed. At the beginning, because she was so brave, she did not move her handcuffs and did not show any feelings of pain. I did not notice that she was handcuffed very tightly until we arrived. There were deep handcuff marks on her wrists. I asked the police to loosen Zhao Xin's handcuffs, but he refused. Her handcuffs were finally loosened after we arrived at the Haidian detention center. At the place where they searched us, I saw Zhao Xin's legs were still double-crossed. I heard from the police that she was probably dragged all the way like that.
That night, without any legal procedure, I was detained in Haidian detention center. My prison life began. On the first night, a prisoner asked me to stand there and do the so-called "on duty", which was actually a kind of sleep deprivation torture. . That night, a prisoner told me that some Falun Dafa practitioners had been detained there before. They told him about Falun Dafa, and he thought it sounded good and wanted to learn. But they had no chance to practice in jail. At that time, I wanted to create a good environment for cultivation and practice.
Since I did not sleep nor eat for two days. On the third day, I felt sleepy and tired, it seemed that I had no strength to sustain my life. I thought, "How could I pass this tribulation if I was not allowed to sleep." I thought of the Teacher's words, "What is difficult to endure, you can endure it. When it's impossible to do, you can do it." Suddenly a thought came into my mind that isn't it a chance to get rid of my attachment to sleeping? Upon having this thought, my strength came back and the feeling of tiresomeness was suddenly gone. I recalled the Teachers words that "Cultivation practice itself is not difficult, and neither is upgrading one's level itself difficult. It is because they cannot give up the human mind that they call it difficult." (page 383-384 of the book "Zhuan Falun") It was really like that.
In those ten or more days, I only slept one night. For the rest of the time, I stood nights and sat days, just because I did not want to say my name and where I lived. The head of the cell asked two prisoners to watch me and did not allow me to sleep. If I closed my eyes, they would slap my face and hit my head, pull my hair and pour cold-water on my head. Once, after having cold-water poured on me, I shivered and felt like I was in a refrigerator. It took me a while to recover. Of course, as a practitioner, I could basically smile through all those ordeals. I had no hatred towards those who had hurt me. In jail, because I tried to do the exercises, the prisoners could hit me at will every once and a while.
Teacher Li said, "Human has no humanity, Gods have no virtue of God; secular world has no Tao, righteous mentality no longer exists." While in jail, the head of the cell did not allow me to talk about Falun Gong with the other prisoners, so people who were interested in Falun Dafa would not dare to talk to me. I could only talk to them secretly. I began to recite "Hongyin" loudly under such circumstances. Upon seeing me reciting, two prisoners who were watching me came to hit me in the mouth. They pushed me to the ground and stuffed my mouth with a towel until I could not utter a sound, and said, "Let's see how you can recite that now." They even held my nose so that I almost could not breathe. They tied a towel around my mouth to prevent me from speaking and my lower lip swelled and bled. A policeman saw that some prisoners were torturing me and asked what happened. They told him I was a Falun Dafa practitioner and he simply walked away. When I told the guard that I did not sleep for many days, he said that it was my own fault. I asked myself, "What a society?" We are decent Falun Gong practitioners and did not do anything wrong or violate the law. We were detained, sent to labor camps, and sentenced to prison only because we wanted to practice. In prison, the police allowed other prisoners to torture and curse us at will and we became "special prisoners" who were not prisoners. I know what I suffered was not comparable with what other practitioners had. Later, I learned that Zhao Xin was brutally beaten so that her 4th, 5th, and 6th neck vertebra were fractured. She was hospitalized in the Haidian Hospital. The doctor said that even if she could recover, she would be paralyzed. However, at the time when she was arrested, she was a perfectly healthy person!
Writing this is not to say how much I have suffered. As a practitioner, I did not feel I had suffered, but I only felt sorry that I could not let those prisoners have a better understanding of Falun Dafa. I hope more and more kindhearted people will know the truth of Falun Gong. I also hope that more kind people can raise concerns about Zhao Xin, because her family appealed to the judicial office in Haidian and was refused. The reason for being refused was that "The accused, Beijing Haidian District Police Department, was a unit not a person. They said You should have the name of the individual who did it; otherwise, we will not accept your appeal." I do not believe this is the real reason they were refused. Although I know little about the law, I do know that the accused can be a unit. I simply hope our government can punish the criminals and protect the innocent, instead of doing the opposite -- punishing the good and decent ones and protecting the bad and evil ones.
Falun Dafa Practitioner in Beijing
July 15, 2000
