(Minghui.org) Ms. Cuixia, who now lives in Belgium, lived in Wuhan City, China, when the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) persecution of Falun Dafa first began. Remembering those horror-filled days, she can still hear the echoes of practitioners calling out, “Falun Dafa is good,” on Tiananmen Square. Like countless other practitioners, Ms. Cuixia was arrested and brutally tortured. She did not give up her faith. Instead, she became even more determined to practice. 

In 2016, Ms. Cuixia participated in a peaceful protest in front of the Chinese Embassy in Belgium, to protest the CCP preventing Mr. Wang Zhiwen from coming abroad to reunite with his daughter. 

Carefree Through Practicing Dafa 

In March 1997 when she was 47 years old, Ms. Cuixia’s friend told her about Falun Dafa, (also known as Falun Gong). She, her husband, and daughter began to practice. Dafa helped her understand why we are here, and that the meaning of one’s life is to return to one’s original, true self. In order to do this, one has to become a better person. She began to follow Falun Dafa’s principles in everything she did. Through Fa-study and by doing the exercises, more than 20 years of severe stomach cramps, frequent tachycardias, and cervical spine osteophytes all disappeared. She said that many practitioners she knew experienced similar positive transformations. They frequently discussed and compared their joyful experiences of being illness-free. 

She said that when she began to practice she wanted to attend group Fa-study and do the exercises with other practitioners. In early 1999, practitioners in Wuhan decided to get together for Fa-study every day. There were approximately 20 practitioners in the Fa-study group, and they took turns reading the Fa. “My living room was so big, that it became a Fa-study site for playing the recordings of Master’s lectures and reading Zhuan Falun. Practitioners’ work schedules were all different, thus we set up three different time slots, and practitioners came to my home to study the Fa during each time slot.” 

Arrested for Appealing to the Hubei Provincial Government 

On July 20, 1999, the CCP openly launched the persecution against Dafa. The CCP used all media, including TV and radio to defame, slander, and frame Master Li Hongzhi (the founder) and Dafa. People in all levels of organizations, enterprises, institutions, and schools had to state their stance. The CCP created an atmosphere of hatred towards practitioners, and carried out the former CCP head’s policy of “ruining their reputation, bankrupting them financially and destroying them physically.” The perpetrators did everything they could think of, ignoring the fact that more than one hundred million people improved their physical and mental health and strove to be better people after learning the practice.

On July 19, 1999, at 5:30 a.m., like every other day, Ms. Cuixia went with her husband to the practice site at Zhongshan Park in Wuhan. The practitioners gathered and talked about how earlier that morning the assistant was arrested from his home by police. Some practitioners decided to go to Beijing, while others decided to go to the Hubei Provincial government. They did not know it, but the CCP’s suppression and persecution of Falun Dafa had already begun. 

“At 10 a.m., we went to the Hubei Provincial government. The sidewalks, streets, and alleys were packed with practitioners from all over the province,” she recalled. “No officials came out to receive us. All of us quietly waited. At 5 p.m., heavily armed police officers came, placed us on buses and we were taken to different locations.”

Along with more than 1,000 practitioners, she was taken to the great hall of the provincial TV University. Police officers took notes on everyone, including their names, addresses, political status, work, when they started practicing, and why they came to the government building. Nobody was allowed to go home until the early morning hours of July 20^th. 

After they arrived home, police officers came and ransacked her home and confiscated her Dafa books, sitting mats, and other personal belongings. People from the Wuhan Public Security Division and local police officer Luo Yong took Ms. Cuixia away for interrogation on two separate occasions. They pressured her to give up practicing Dafa. She refused. Each time when police officers took her away, they did not release her until the early morning hours of the next day. From then on, whenever she went out grocery shopping, she was followed and monitored by a neighbor. Her elderly neighbor who lived in the lower level of the same building told Ms. Cuixia that people from the police station asked her to record the times when she went out and came back, and what she brought with her. But the elderly lady said that she would not report Ms. Cuixia and cautioned her to be careful.

Arrested and Beaten for Holding Up a Banner on Tiananmen Square 

On December 30, 2000, Ms. Cuixia and other practitioners decided to go to Beijing to tell the world that Falun Dafa is wonderful. They felt as practitioners, they should speak up for Master. In order not to be stopped by the police, five of them took a long-distance bus to Xiaogan Railway Station first, then they took a train to Tianjin, and then a cab. By the time they arrived in Beijing, it was already the following morning. 

“There were many police vehicles parked around Tiananmen Square, and police were patrolling it. There were also many people wearing red armbands. Uniformed and plainclothes police walked around the square. ‘Falun Dafa is wonderful!’ was occasionally heard on the huge square. Then the police, people with red armbands and plainclothes officers swarmed in on the Dafa practitioners and knocked them to the ground, causing a lot of commotion,” Ms. Cuixia said. “We had no fear. The three of us quickly took out the banners hidden in our sleeves and opened them up. We shouted ‘Falun Dafa is wonderful!’ We hoped people could hear us. Instantly, we were surrounded by police officers and dragged into their vehicles.” 

Ms. Cuixia was taken to the Tiananmen Police Station, where more than 200 practitioners from all over China were held in the courtyard. Everyone recited Master’s “On Dafa” and other articles in unison. They had no access to water or food the entire time. At 5 p.m., they were placed inside covered public security vehicles and transferred to various places. More than forty practitioners were taken to the Dongcheng District Detention Center in Beijing, where many practitioners were being held. The first test Ms. Cuixia and others had was to go to a room to report their names and addresses. She saw police officers cruelly beating those practitioners who refused to do so. One practitioner’s face was badly swollen from the beating. 

Then they were put into separate rooms for detention. They recited the Fa together. Ms. Cuixia said, “The sound of our collectively reciting the Fa resounded throughout the entire building. Right then, the guards came and took out one practitioner from each cell that they thought was the leader. A police officer grabbed my hair to drag me out of the cell and into the hallway. I was pushed into the hallway because no one could see what they did there. The guard had pulled out a handful of my hair. A few of them picked up their batons and gave me a terrible beating. In my mind, I kept reciting Master’s poem:

‘Steadfastly cultivate Dafa, the will unflinchingThe raising of levels is what’s fundamentalIn the face of tests one’s true nature is revealedAchieve Consummation, becoming a Buddha, Dao, or God’(“True Nature Revealed,” Essentials for Further Advancement II)

"I only focused on reciting Master’s words, and I didn’t feel the pain at all.” 

“The guards locked eight of us who were brutally beaten into a separate cell. I couldn’t see what my head or face looked like. A practitioner asked me to touch her head. When I felt her scalp it was soft like a sponge. That night, the eight of us formed a circle with our feet together, then one of us took off her coat and covered our feet so we could sleep.” 

Eight days later, Ms. Cuixia was taken to another police station in Beijing. She was asked again for her name and address but did not answer. She said, “There were a few police officers. One in his 20s picked up a hard object and began hitting my eyes. I suddenly couldn’t see. Then I heard another officer come up to me. He grabbed my arms and pulled them up behind me, straight against the wall. My head was shoved between my legs, and he used the stick to poke my back and threaten me about which part of my body he could disable by hitting. That’s when my eyesight suddenly cleared and I could see.

“After they finished beating me, I sat on the ground. A police officer said to pour water over me. It was January and very cold in Beijing. I was wearing a winter jacket. They first poured cold water into my collar. Then they thought it was too much trouble to pour it, so they emptied two water bottles inside my collar. Water not only wet all my clothes but also flowed all over the floor. They sneered at me. In order to humiliate me, they said I peed myself.” 

She said, “Later, a police officer came who pretended to be nice and took me to another room. He said something sympathetic in order to trick me. He said he would buy a train ticket to take me home. As soon as I told him I came from Wuhan City, he immediately left.” 

Later that night, people from the Wuhan Liaison Office in Beijing came to take her to their office. When she removed her wet clothes, she noticed her entire body was covered in dark purple bruises. 

Sent Home and Subjected to Brainwashing

At the Wuhan Liaison Office in Beijing, she saw her husband who had also been arrested. On January 10, 2001, both of them were taken back to Wuhan City in handcuffs. She was held in the Wuhan Women’s No.1 Detention Center. A month later, because she refused to be transformed, people from the police station came to take her to a brainwashing center for detention. 

During the two months of detention, the detained practitioners were forced to watch videos full of fabricated lies to defame Dafa, but none of them acknowledged it. After the CCP’s “Two Congress” was held, Ms. Cuixia was released. She had been held at the detention and brainwashing center for over three months altogether. She and her husband knew they would continue to be monitored by the local community management committee and harassed by the local police. They knew they couldn’t return home. 

They hid in different places. After a few detours, they finally left China with their daughter’s family and moved to Belgium. Now Ms. Cuixia and her husband have the freedom to practice Falun Dafa openly and they participate in activities to tell people about the persecution. 

“We didn’t give in to the CCP’s suppression and persecution. Instead, it made us determined to uphold our belief, and walk our cultivation path steadily.” Thinking back, she had a lot to say. 

In Belgium, she often goes with other practitioners to hold activities in different cities, to expose the CCP’s crime of persecuting Dafa. She wants people to understand what Falun Dafa is, why it only brings people benefits, why the CCP persecutes Dafa, and that they should help stop the persecution. 

Now, 22 years have passed. The voices of practitioners calling out “Falun Dafa is wonderful!” non-stop on Tiananmen Square, still echo in her mind, encouraging her to continue, and to tell people: “The world needs Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance!”