(Minghui.org) A few local practitioners and I were arrested in April 2015 and illegally sentenced to five-year prison terms. We were detained at Liaoning Women’s Prison for those five years, during which time so many things happened. I would like to share a few such experiences, which hopefully provide a reference for other practitioners.
A month after I was imprisoned, one of my daughters heard that I had been tortured so badly that I showed symptoms of illness. She was thus very anxious and came to visit me. (Actually, it was another practitioner that was tortured, not me.)
The guard in the reception office called the prison section where I was detained, but the section management wouldn’t allow my daughter to visit me and refused to explain why. My daughter was very anxious and wouldn’t leave. She stayed at the reception office and kept communicating with them. She asked to speak to the guards. Two guards eventually went there, wearing masks. They said that prison policy forbade visitation at that time, and wouldn’t explain why.
My daughter then asked, “So what does my mother do every day in the prison?” The guards answered, “Study.” My daughter asked, “Study what? How?” The guards said ambiguously, “Just a lot of people sit in a circle and study.” My daughter continued to ask, “Then does my mother do physical labor ?” The guards answered, “No, she doesn’t work.”
My refusing to be “transformed” was the real reason they would not allow my daughter to visit me. Of course, they found all manner of excuses to deny the visitation. My daughter did not relent and said, “I will come again tomorrow!”
My daughter went back to the prison the next day. The two guards did the same thing. They wore masks and covered their police badges with their long hair. They said the same things, “Prison policy forbids any visitation at this time.” They turned on the “law enforcement recorder” and began to videotape my daughter. They asked her if she also practiced Falun Dafa and what she thought about my practice.
My daughter said, “Practicing Falun Dafa is the personal choice of my mother. All the illnesses she had disappeared after she started practicing. Why would I interfere with her?”
Upon hearing this, the guards more firmly refused the visitation. They feared that my daughter’s visit would make it harder to “transform” me. My daughter shouted, “You said it is the policy of the prison that forbids our meeting, then which item of the policy forbids it? Which clause of the law is it based on? Did you say this on behalf of you, yourselves, or of the prison? If it is the prison, then what are your names and positions? You must give me all this information, so I can find you when it is time to hold you responsible!”
The guards continued to repeat the same thing, “It is the prison policy that forbids the meeting.” My daughter said, “If you still don’t allow me to meet, I will expose all your deeds!” The guards looked scared and left in a rush.
My daughter found it very difficult to deal with those guards. She took out all the telephone numbers she had for filing complaints. She called the numbers one by one, from the Department of Justice in Liaoning Province to the Liaoning Women’s Prison. When she called the Liaoning Women’s Prison, the man who answered the call took down my name, the section, and the brigade where I was detained. He told her that they would deal with the issue.
On her way home that afternoon, my daughter received a call from the director of the prison who said that the prison would not allow her to visit me because she didn’t have a “stable mental state.” However, they would allow someone else in my family to visit me. My daughter immediately said that somebody else would visit me.
Thus, my youngest daughter came to the prison and was allowed to visit me. But the director stayed at our side, monitoring me on the phone. My youngest daughter asked me, “Mom, do they force you to work? Are they treating you badly...”
My family members never cooperated in the prison’s attempt to persecute me with overwork. I also kept negating such persecution with righteous thoughts. Therefore, the guards never dared to force me to work. Because the family members of other practitioners detained with me were unable to resist the persecution and uphold justice from outside, the guards recklessly persecuted those practitioners. The daily labor they forced on those practitioners was so heavy it could not be completed. The prison guards used this long-term heavy labor as a means to physically and mentally torture practitioners.
The guards knew that Dafa practitioners hadn’t committed any crimes. Since the practitioners behaved righteously in the prison, the inmates also did not dare to look down on us. If everyone’s family members warned the guards not to persecute practitioners and supported the practitioners with a determined attitude, the prison guards would restrain themselves and not dare to wantonly persecute Dafa practitioners.
One night I went to the restroom and heard someone speaking to me from outside the restroom in a very low voice, “They are simply outrageous! They have knocked her down and are still beating her now!” I realized that a practitioner who was newly imprisoned was being bullied again by the inmates who were assigned to watch her.
The next day in the workshop, the practitioner who was beaten told me secretly that she had been assaulted. I asked her if she reported it to the guards. She said she would wait a while before doing so. I later found a chance to talk to an inmate who is in the cell with her. She told me that the practitioner was beaten because she didn’t return to the cell together with the other two after they went to the restroom.
After I returned to my seat, I said to a practitioner sitting next to me, “We should tell this to the foreman inmate. If she doesn’t deal with it, then we should report it to the guards.” She said, “Yes! We should. How can they dare to randomly beat practitioners?”
I went to talk to the foreman, to whom I often clarified the truth. But she pretended not to know about the incident and said, “They didn’t beat her, it was all because she didn’t stay together with the others.” I told her that she needed to know more details about the situation and resolve the issue. She put on a smile and left. It seemed that she wanted to shield the violent abusers and cover up the issue.
The next morning, I saw those inmates verbally abusing that practitioner. I went to talk to the foreman again, “If you don’t discipline them, I will report them to the guards. Things cannot continue this way.”
Unexpectedly, the foreman still said, “I already investigated it. They didn’t beat her. It all occurred because she refused to carry out their orders.” I said, “It doesn’t count that they said they didn’t beat her up. Let’s have the guards check the surveillance video!”
The foreman said, “If they did really beat her, they must have dragged her to a blind spot, and the camera didn’t record it.”
I said, “There must be something recorded because she is a living person, she wouldn’t have stayed there still and simply born the blow. I don’t want to talk to you anymore, I will report it to the guards. You’d better tell the guards first. Otherwise, the guards will blame you for being unable to notify them in advance. I will write a letter to report this issue.”
Seeing that she could not stop me, the foreman said, “Then you write it, and I will hand it in to the guards.”
In the letter, I provided the details of the violence that I was aware of and the approximate time it occurred. After I finished, I showed it to a few other practitioners. They said, “Great, just write it as you have!”
After the section director learned about it, she immediately checked the surveillance video. She later called the inmates who participated in the violence to her office. She called me to her office at noon and told me that they attached great importance to my report. She said the leaders of the section supported what I did. She then asked what other requests I had. I said, “I don’t want you to punish them, just have them understand that what they did was wrong and to stop doing it.” Finally, the section management symbolically punished the participants in the violence.
If fellow practitioners do not stand up to curb the persecution when they are abused and bullied in prison, the prison management will pretend to be unaware of it. I later learned that the guards asked the foreman to guarantee that no similar incident would happen again. Other inmates complained that those inmates who were assigned to “watch” me failed to “watch” me, which allowed me to successfully write and hand in the letter.
The practitioner who was beaten said to me, “Thanks for your help! Otherwise, I would have suffered a lot more.” I answered, “No need to thank me. Dafa disciples are one body. During difficulties, if our thoughts and actions are in line with the Fa, nobody will dare to persecute us because we are being protected by Master!”
I need to be more diligent in cultivation and fix where I fall short. Please point out anything that is inappropriate in this article.