(Minghui.org) I visited a practitioner that lived where I had lived 10 years before. It was a time of great turmoil, but I recall everything as if it had happened today.
It was cold on the day another practitioner and I went to a prison to rescue another practitioner who had already been on a hunger strike for more than three months. She was released that day, and her husband picked her up at the prison. It was about 4 p.m. when I arrived in my old neighborhood. I went to the market to buy some fruit because I was looking forward to visiting a friend's mother. Before I had bagged my fruit, I heard a police car siren. A few plainclothes officers got out of a car and walked towards me, yelling, “Someone here is involved in human trafficking. We are here to make an arrest.” While I was wondering who that was, a female plainclothes officer grabbed my collar and screamed, “She kidnapped my child!” I was caught off guard. I tried to explain to the “poor mother” that she had mistaken me for someone else. By then I was surrounded by people cursing at me. A plainclothes officer said to me, “Stop explaining. We're leaving!” He punched me in the head and dragged me into the police car.
In the car, the driver punched me in the face and I fainted. When I came to, something was stuffed in my mouth. I was dizzy and my hands were shaking. A man was groping me, claiming that he was conducting a search. I told them again that I did not traffic in humans. One of them laughed and said, “No, we know you don't. But don't you practice Falun Gong?” I realized what was going on. I told them that I did, indeed, practice Falun Gong and that they did not have the right to humiliate and falsely accuse me. I told them they were violating the law, so they hit me again.
The man who searched me said, “Last time we tried to catch a practitioner, the guy was on a bike and we just could not catch him. We used a loudspeaker and asked the bystanders to help us stop him, but they stopped our police car instead. This time we have learned our lesson. We have monitored you for several months. We could not afford to make a mistake. Everyone hates human traffickers. That made it easier to catch you.” He laughed and seemed very proud of his deception.
I later learned that there were arrests made city-wide. Many practitioners were arrested and searched because someone had tapped into the city's television broadcast system and aired a truth clarification video about the staged self immolation on Tiananmen Square. People in the city learned that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was intent on discrediting and slandering Falun Gong. The authorities thus launched a large scale arrest of practitioners, including my entire family. They ransacked my house and it was a mess. Many of my jade pieces that I was going to sell were lost or damaged. I lost almost 300,000 yuan (US$43,000) worth of goods.
My family members were not even practitioners. My husband had had a stroke, and his movements were impaired. When I saw him in the detention center, he was handcuffed behind his back and could barely walk even though a policeman was pushing him. His hair was a mess and he was covered with dirt. The night I was abducted, I saw my daughter for a short moment. Her face was pale and drawn, and she was handcuffed. I knew she had come down with a fever the day before. When she saw me with little clothes on, she said, “Mom, you are not wearing enough. Let me give you my clothes.” The police slapped her face immediately. After that, she was forced to drop out of college because her mother practiced Falun Gong.
I was employed in the television industry. The police tortured me during interrogation. I was tied to the iron chair, handcuffed in an awkward position for an extended period of time, and viciously beaten. If I fainted during the interrogation, the police poured icy cold water over me. One afternoon during interrogation, they had to wake me up 3 times. From then on, they had a doctor on stand-by when they interrogated me.
In April, they took off my coat, tied me to an iron chair, and placed me at the door with all the windows open. While I was freezing, they were in their heavy coats playing mahjong in a heated room. They put me back in the house before going home. They did this every day for five days. For several days, they would not let me use the toilet. They tried to force me to admit that I was the one who tapped into the city's television system. They told me, “You are not making it easy for us. You also are preventing us from getting hundreds of thousands of yuan reward money.” They even tried to beat me into confessing. I tried to clarify the truth to them and told them that they were committing a crime. One of them listened and stopped torturing me.
One time I was allowed to use the toilet after two days. When I went back to my room, the water in my cup was yellow. Needless to say, I did not drink it.
I was tortured like this for many months before I was released.
While I was detained, Teacher was always beside me. One time the police handcuffed me so tightly that the metal cut into my flesh. It hurt so bad that I screamed for Teacher's help. They took off the handcuffs right away and looked around apprehensively. Another time they took turns interrogating me. They beat me relentlessly, demanding to know whether I had tapped into the television. It lasted the whole day and I was in a very bad shape by the evening. After returning to my cell, I laid on my back feeling groggy. A miracle happened: I felt a Falun touching my wounds like a mother caressing her child. It was so warm and comfortable. It was the first time that I cried during my detention.
After the practitioner who tapped the television system was arrested, the police would not release me because they did not want me to sue them. They forged evidence and framed me. The authorities sentenced me to a five-year prison term. Before I was sentenced, my husband and daughter were released. My husband was near death. They released him because they did not want him to die while in their custody.
During those years, every day felt like a lifetime, and I suffered tremendously. The day I was released, I looked up at the blue sky not feeling any happiness. Hundreds of practitioners were still being tortured in the same prison. Who knew how many other practitioners were still being persecuted in this country?
I did not give up my practice, and I went home openly and nobly. I thank Teacher for being with me and helping me all the way.
