(Minghui.org) A Falun Gong practitioner in Jilin City, Jilin Province, has been endlessly persecuted ever since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide campaign to wipe out Falun Gong in July 1999.

Ms. Li Cuiling has been arrested a total of eight times during the past 23 years because she refuses to renounce her faith. She was incarcerated for three years, held in a forced labor camp for nearly a year, detained in a brainwashing center for a month and a half, and spent a total of a year and a half in various detention centers. She has suffered unspeakable tortures and humiliations. She was released from prison in November 2019, only to see her pension suspended in July 2020. With no other source of income, she struggles to make ends meet.

Most recently, she was arrested on June 14, 2021, and detained for five days for filing a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the CCP who initiated the persecution.

Ms. Li’s husband divorced her in September 2001, fearful of being persecuted himself, and was given custody of their then-18-month-old child. They remarried in 2006, but the harassment got so bad that he had to divorce her again in 2014 while she was living away from home to avoid persecution.

Her two children were denied their mother’s care. The police frequently threatened and terrorized her father-in-law, a retired police officer. His health worsened and he eventually became bedridden and needed a feeding tube. His wife lived in constant fear and jumped every time people knocked on the door.

The following is Ms. Li’s account of what has happened to her over the past 23 years.

=============================================I'm Li Cuiling and I became a Falun Dafa practitioner in 2000. Over the past 23 years of the persecution, the authorities many times arrested me and locked me up. They tortured me because I refused to renounce my faith. My husband twice divorced me because he couldn't stand the endless harassment.

When I got out of the prison in November 2019, I was a little over 50, but my hair had turned completely gray. My pension was suspended in July 2020. I had to live with my parents, bit the police still would not leave us alone.

Becoming a Practitioner Because of the Persecution

I knew many Falun Gong practitioners before I became one. After the persecution started, the police arrested one of my best friends and put him in a forced labor camp. I knew how much his health and personality had improved after he took up the practice, and I couldn't comprehend why the authorities did this to him. Out of curiosity I started to practice Falun Gong in 2000, and I am glad I did. My health and worldview changed for the better.

My husband divorced me a year later because he did not want to be implicated in the persecution. The judge granted him the custody of our child who was then just 18 months old. The pain of losing my child was unbearable.

Police Arrest and Harassment

As soon as I moved in with my parents after my divorce, officers from Gangyao Police Station in the Longtan District arrested me, claiming that I had Falun Gong fliers with me. At the police station they hit and kicked me. An officer pulled out a hank of my hair, leaving a permanent bald spot on my head. They slapped me with the sole of a shoe. I tried to tell them why the persecution was wrong, only to get slapped harder.

The police arrested me when I handed out Falun Gong informational fliers in October 2001. When I refused to get in the police car, they assaulted me and injured my lower back. They said that their superiors had ordered the arrest and they had to do their job. I didn’t get in the car that day.

I decided to go to Beijing to tell the central government that Falun Gong was good.

Tortured in Changping Detention Center

The police questioned me on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. They arrested me and took away the banner I had. When I shouted “Falun Dafa is good,” they grabbed my hair and threw me on the ground. They put me and other practitioners in a police station and denied us use of the toilet all day.

That evening I was transferred to Changping District Police Station, where an officer beat me up. I said to him, “As a police officer, why do you arrest good people and leave felons alone?” He replied, “That's what I do.”

The two days I spent in the police station, I had nothing to eat and couldn't clean myself. When I did Falun Gong exercises, the police beat me with a baton and left the window wide open to freeze me. They transferred me to Changping District Detention Center. I refused to put my hands over my head, so a guard ordered the inmates to humiliate me. They stripped me and poured cold water over me while a male guard watched. I broke down and cried.

To protest the abuse, I went on a hunger strike. Four days later the guards force-fed me by jabbing a tube into my nose and down to my stomach. The repeated insertion process caused unbearable pain. I became emaciated in a few months and was released on March 1, 2002.

Torture illustration: Force feeding

Force-fed and Injected with Unknown Drugs in Forced Labor Camp

The police arrested me from my parents' house on July 20, 2002, and put me in Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp on September 1. Several guards took turns beating me. I protested by going on a hunger strike.

To force-feed me the guards pried my mouth open and inserted a tube into my stomach. They stirred the tube inside of my stomach, causing me to vomit all the stomach juice out. They cursed me at the same time. A doctor told me, “Wasn't Liu Mingke from Jilin as well? Didn’t he die while we force fed him?”

I faced the threat of death incessantly. One day, after seeing me meditate, two guards called me into an empty room and beat me. One of them stuffed a dirty mop into my mouth while the other tried to choke me. I nearly suffocated.

In the camp the guards did not need any reason to beat me. They only gave us five minutes to eat. Many elderly inmates with dental issues had to throw away their food most of the time.

A guard shocked me with an electric baton in March 2003 because I refused to put on the prison uniform. He had four guards watch me around the clock. I went on a hunger strike to protest the abuse. When they tried to force-feed me, one of them pinched my nose shut, while the others held me down. I choked every time they poured food down my throat.

Afterward the guards tied me to a bed and kept me awake for ten days. They did not allow me to use a toilet. A bucket was placed under the bed to catch my waste. During those ten days they frequently injected me with unknown drugs. I felt drowsy and terrible after the injections. Later I learned that they’d tried to poison me with the shots.

It was hell in the forced labor camp, and I couldn’t have been more grateful the day I was released.

Arrested at a Fellow Practitioner’s Home

When I knocked on the door of practitioner Ms. Ming Yanbo’s home at around 3 p.m. on May 26, 2005, a plainclothes officer opened it. I saw two other plainclothes officers there as well. They had turned her home upside down. Before I could leave, they grabbed me and held me down, asking if I also practiced Falun Gong. I refused to answer, and one of them hit me on the head. I felt as if my head had cracked open. To see if I practiced Falun Gong, they broke a Master's photo. I shouted, “Don't do that! It's not good for you.” The police took Ms. Ming and me to Longhua Police Station.

We were transferred to Longtan Police Department that evening. The police interrogated me and ordered me to sign the deposition. I tore it up. They detained me there that night with two officers watching me. The next morning I opened up the window and shouted “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good” to passersby. Officers rushed in, slapped me, and put handcuffs on me.

The police took Ms. Ming and me to Jilin City Detention Center. I couldn't stop having spasms because my health had declined after years of persecution. The authorities at the detention center refused to take me, but the police just left us there.

After I refused to eat for three days, the guards started force-feeding me. One held my head and chest, while others stepped on my limbs. The doctor kicked my face when I struggled. He inserted a tube into my nose and down to my stomach and poured in brine and corn flour. It made me vomit up all the contents of my stomach. Covered in food, I asked the doctor if that was how they saved and healed patients. He told me that was how they treated people who wouldn't eat. They force-fed me twice a day.

Whoever I came across in the detention center, guards or inmates, I told them what Falun Gong was and why the persecution was wrong. This angered the guards, and they put heavy shackles and handcuffs on me in retaliation.

On the tenth day of my hunger strike, the authorities transported me to Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp. When I got there, they refused to take me because of my poor health. The authorities transported me back to Longhua Police Station on June 6, 2005. An officer dragged me into a room and said, “I don't believe in retribution!” He slapped me many times. My head and face swelled up and my mouth bled. That night I escaped from the police station.

My ex-husband and I remarried in 2006.

Taken from My Mother's Home

I was at my mother’s house in May 2012, when Xin'an Police Station officers broke in and arrested me because I had put up Falun Dafa couplets on a door. They released me the same evening.

Ribs Broken in Brainwashing Center

Xicheng Police Station officers arrested me while I was posting Falun Gong fliers on June 29, 2012. After two weeks in Wumahe Detention Center, I was transferred to Yichun City Brainwashing Center and forced to watch videos that slandered Falun Gong while sitting on a tiny stool or standing still. I had to stand still at night and was not allowed to sleep. They played the videos loud until late at night and gave me no break. The exhaustion put a lot of stress on my heart. The guards taped my mouth when I demanded to sleep.

The guards knocked me down and kicked me until one of my ribs broke because I refused to watch the news on China Central Television (CCTV).

For a month the guards handcuffed one of my wrists to a heating pipe above me and the other to a heater on the ground. Staying in this awkward position for two days left my shoulders in excruciating pain. They then handcuffed my hands to the heating pipe above me for two days. They then handcuffed my hands behind my back and attached the handcuffs to the heating pipe, so that my toes barely touched the floor. I was hung up this way three times, and I don't think anyone can imagine that kind of pain. When they put me down, my hands were numb and had no strength. I couldn't even open a bottle. Whenever I tried to pick up something, my hands would cramp.

Torture illustration: After the victim is handcuffed behind, the handcuffs are attached to a higher bar and the person is suspended.

For the two months in the detention center, I often shouted “Falun Dafa is good” and did the sitting meditation. The guards would slap me, stomp on me, pull my hair out, deny me use of the toilet, and jab my legs and feet with pencil tips until they bled.

They tried to take me to the Harbin Drug Rehabilitation Center on August 7, 2012. On my way there the head of the Yichun District 610 Office slapped my head and made my nose bleed. The rehab center refused to take me because of my poor health. They took me back to Yichun Brainwashing Center and started force-feeding me.

A guard named Liang Baojin brought in a bowl of rice and an egg on the night of August 10, 2012, and told me that I could go home after I ate. I didn't obey him. Quickly, three men started to force-feed me. They held me down and one of them pried open my mouth with a spoon. They did not succeed in force-feeding me because I fought hard. The next morning they came back. One of them pinched my nose, trying to force me to open my mouth. I did not, and they let me go after I nearly suffocated. Two days later, a doctor from a psychiatric hospital came and threatened to put me in a psychiatric ward if I did not eat.

I was released on August 15, 2012.

Nonstop Harassment of Family Members

After I returned home, the local police, an agent from the 610 Office, and a member of the local Political and Legal Affairs Committee harassed and intimidated me. In August 2012, my father-in-law fell ill and was hospitalized. The police continued to harass him in the hospital, and he was unable to recover. Now he’s bedridden and can’t care for himself. The police came to harass me because I gave out New Year calendars in the winter of 2013.

Wumahe Police Department officers frequently harassed my family beginning on March 6, 2014. My mother-in-law couldn’t see well and each time someone banged on the door, she was terrified. My father-in-law often cried in fear after the police came. My husband had to take care of them and our two children on his own. The children couldn’t study or eat well. My father-in-law became so weak that he was bedridden and needed a feeding tube to survive. He was a retired officer from Wumahe Police Station, but these officers did not seem to care.

Unable to take all the pressure and terror, my husband divorced me again in late 2014 to avoid future harassment.

Escape after Arrest and Becoming Destitute

Mr. Wang Xinchun from Heilongjiang Province became disabled after being tortured for practicing Falun Gong. I accompanied him to submit his letters of complaint on September 17, 2014. Officers from Nan’gang Police Station in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, arrested me. Two days later officers from Wumahe Police Department took me back to Jilin and interrogated me overnight. The next day they took me to a hospital for a health exam, and I escaped.

The police put up a 10,000-yuan bounty on my head and posted warrants with my picture on them. They stationed themselves outside my home around the clock. I couldn’t go home and became destitute.

Three months later, on December 24, 2014, I went to Wumahe Police Department to demand that they stop harassing my family. The police chief arrested me and put me on a tiger bench. I was detained for 15 days.

Imprisoned and Tortured for Four Years

Wumahe Police Department officers arrested me on November 23, 2015, for helping a practitioner make Falun Gong information materials. They put me in Yichun City Detention Center in Heilongjiang Province, where the guards beat me because I did the Falun Gong exercises and refused to answer roll call. The authorities put me in Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison in October 2016.

The guards put me in a warehouse to isolate me from other practitioners. I went on a hunger strike, and they ordered the inmates to force-feed me. My nose bled and I was covered in the food I vomited up, yet they wouldn’t let me clean up. Every day I had to watch videos slandering Falun Gong. I stayed in the warehouse for two months, during which time they put a straitjacket on me because I tried to do the exercises. The guards transferred me to a cell and ordered the inmates to watch me around the clock to prevent me from doing the exercises.

The guards put me in solitary confinement in June 2017 because I read Falun Gong books. They gave me one set of dirty clothes and fed me a small piece of bread each day. To prevent me from doing the exercises, the guards handcuffed me to a ring on the ground for 15 days. The place was damp and cold. I couldn’t use a toilet when I needed it. When I got out of there, I had lost all my senses because of the extreme hunger and cold.

A guard arranged for the inmates in my cell to prevent me from sleeping. For two weeks I did nothing but sit on a small stool. As soon as I fell asleep, the inmates hit or pinched me. The guard threatened the inmates who sympathized with me. The guard on duty put me back in solitary confinement one day because she got tired of watching me.

Back in my cell, the inmates watched me closely to prevent me from talking to other practitioners or doing the exercises. I went on a hunger strike, and they made me sit on a small stool from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., until I started eating. The television that broadcast the CCP propaganda was turned up as loud as it would go, and I couldn’t rest.

By the time I left the prison in November 2019, my hair had turned completely gray and I had no strength.

Endless Harassment, Detention, Pension Suspended

My parents picked me up from the prison. My former employer suspended my pension in July 2020, and I have not received anything since, despite my requests to have it reinstated. Officials in the Longtan District of Jilin City and the police came to our home to ask questions and take pictures. A man called me on October 29, 2020, and told me I would be attending a brainwashing session in Heilongjiang Province, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

A Xin’an Police Station officer deceived me into going to the police station on June 14, 2021. I was held for five days because I filed a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese leader who singlehandedly launched the persecution.