Witness of History

On the morning of July 21, 1999, Beijing was enveloped in fog. However, the events of this day will be clearly inscribed on the memory of humankind. It is from this day on that Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners in China began to suffer the tribulation brought by the wrong decision made by the current Chinese ruler. It is on this day that the practice of Falun Gong was made illegal. On this day, countless practitioners were rounded up and forced into buses to be taken to several sports stadiums (e.g., the Shi Jing Shan Stadium, the Feng Tai Stadium, the Chao Yang Stadium, and the Asian Games Village, etc.) The police beat those practitioners who refused to get on or off the buses willingly. Some practitioners' clothes were torn, some practitioners' faces and noses were bleeding, but all practitioners who were beaten did not retaliate. Instead, they explained to the police with a practitioner's great compassion, and hoped that the government would make the right decision. On July 22, more Falun Dafa practitioners went to Zhong Nan Hai (the Chinese government compound) and the appeals bureau for the city and various regions. However, they were again forced onto buses to be sent to even more distant places. Some practitioners, including myself, were taken to a farm at Lai Guang Ying. We were locked in a room there, forced to watch a videotape defaming our teacher and Falun Dafa with fabricated "evidence", made by CCTV (Communist China TV.) We recited together Lunyu (A Statement of Comments) and poems from Hong Yin written by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, while the police tried to stop us. In the end, the police required everyone to register their name and address. They then informed the residents' committee or local police station of the practitioners' residence to escort them back. Many practitioners were put under surveillance from then on and lost their freedom and privacy. Some practitioners were harassed when they tried to go shopping.

Since then, almost daily, there have been practitioners from across China coming to Beijing. They either practice the exercises or open up banners on Tiananmen Square, or go to the Appeals Bureau of the State Council to make appeals. They know the consequences of their actions: being beaten by the police, being arrested and sent to labor camps or being imprisoned; yet they give no thought to their own lives. With great compassion and forbearance, they express their wishes openly and honestly: withdraw the warrant for our teacher; Falun Dafa is great; Falun Dafa is a righteous teaching.

The government began brutally persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. They were sworn at, beaten and tortured by the police. At around midnight of Jan 1, 2000, I went to Tiananmen Square. I saw some practitioners doing the sitting meditation exercise there. Several minutes later, the police arrived and dispersed the watching crowd with their nightsticks. They snatched away cameras and destroyed the film. They then began beating and kicking the practitioners, dragging them away by their hair and lifting up practitioners who were meditating and throwing them into the police cars. I saw that there were practitioners doing exercises in at least four different locations in Tiananmen Square. The police cars came and went many times to take them away.

In the early morning of Jan 27, I went to Tiananmen Square alone. Shortly after I stood underneath the national flag post, I heard the sirens of police cars. When I turned my head, I saw that the police were arresting practitioners. I ran to the police and told them that I am also a Falun Dafa practitioner; they quickly put me in the police car as well. There were three female practitioners in the car already. In the car, I saw with my own eyes how the police brutally beat two of these practitioners. A policeman kicked the faces and chests of the female practitioners with his heavy shoes. One practitioner's forehead started bleeding. The policeman then slapped the other practitioner's face for about ten minutes. The policeman said "Even if I beat you to death today and bury you somewhere, nobody will know." I was sitting in the row in front of them at the time and I could no longer stand the brutality of the police. So I mustered my courage and asked him: "Do you know that you are doing wrong things and you are creating karma for yourself while losing virtue?" Perhaps the policeman was tired, or perhaps he has not completely lost his human nature; he could no longer give free play to his demonic nature in the face of the righteous Dafa. In any event, he stopped.

The police sent us to the police station of the Tiananmen district. It was not until we arrived there that I found out that the other three practitioners were from Jiangsu province. The police left us there to await our "sentence". By around 10AM, twenty more practitioners had been brought in. Several practitioners had blood all over their body. A female practitioner from Sichuan province said that she and several other practitioners tried to open up a banner saying "Falun Dafa" on Tiananmen Square. When the police saw them, the police rushed over and beat all of them to the ground. The police grabbed her hair and pounded her head against the ground. She lost consciousness and was thrown into the police car. When she woke up, she discovered that the others had also been beaten, and several of them were piled one on top of another. Her nose was still bleeding and the front of her garment was soaked in blood. Despite the beating, the practitioners did not fight back or argue back. They clarified to the police that Falun Dafa is a righteous teaching.

After being interrogated by the police several times, I was sent to the Chao Yang detention center. There I met other practitioners. Every day, we were forced to sit on the floor, we were not allowed to read our book or practice the exercises. Once when we persisted in doing the exercises, the guard ordered the prisoners to restrain us. An inmate viciously stamped on the hands of a practitioner and bound her and threw her onto the floor.

In prison, I saw some practitioners did not want to go in the hallway that is specifically for the prisoners. They were hence handcuffed and shackled and dragged on the floor back and forth for many times. Some practitioners were beaten by other prisoners under the orders of the guards. They pulled their hair and banged their head against the wall. A fellow practitioner in my cell was beaten by the police because her answers were not considered satisfactory during interrogation. The police beat her head with a wooden stool, the stool was broken and her head was bleeding.

By Feb. 4 (the Chinese New Year Eve), the number of practitioners locked in my cell had reached 22. The room was small, so each one of us had to sleep on our side. Moreover, many people had to sleep on the floor. On Feb. 6th, all the practitioners demanded the right to do the exercises and study the book together. The guard refused our request, so we went on a hunger strike to express our wish to continue our practice of Falun Gong. The guards ordered all of us who went on the hunger strike to sit on the floor, and did not allow us to sleep for two nights. During the hunger strike, a practitioner was force-fed through the nose. She refused to be force-fed, so several male guards held her down and force-fed her. The entire process lasted about 45 minutes. This action caused great damage to the practitioner, she began to defecate blood later that day. Everyone in the cell could hear the painful groan from the hallway as she suffered being force-fed. Our hunger strike lasted for six days until the official from the detention center agreed to pass on our requests to higher levels of government. All practitioners in the detention center signed a petition addressed to the guards and all levels of officials to voice our heartfelt wishes:

1. Falun Gong is a righteous teaching. It teaches a person Truth, Compassion, Forbearance, and hence it is by no means "evil". We hope that all officials will respect the facts and clear Falun Dafa's name;

2. Withdraw the warrant for Mr. Li Hongzhi and restore his reputation,

3. Release all Falun Gong practitioners who are being illegally detained,

4. Give the Falun Gong practitioners a legitimate environment to cultivate'

5. Openly publish all books of Falun Gong.

I was detained for 21 days until the police released me. Later I heard that some other practitioners were also released one after another, but some others were sentenced to reeducation through labor.

At present, the Falun Gong practitioners are still facing great difficulties in China. They are put through all kinds of torture in prison, with high-voltage electric sticks, sent to mental hospitals and forced to take drugs; many were even beaten to death. Those who are not arrested are forced to write letters guaranteeing that they will no longer practice. They are illegally watched; some are forced to quit their jobs and some are heavily fined, etc.

Choosing to practice Falun Gong is a personal belief. Falun Gong practitioners follow the characteristic of the universe: Truth-Compassion-Forbearance explained in Zhuan Falun (a book of Falun Gong principles) to cultivate themselves. We start with being good persons, continuously improve our minds, and let go of our attachments for personal fame and gain. Whenever there is a problem, we consider others first. We only do good things, and we have no other motives. I think the fact that Falun Gong is embraced by so many people around the world has already proved that the profound principle explained in Zhuan Falun can benefit people so much, this is why there are so many people joining the practice. We appeal to all kindhearted people to pay attention to the current persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Please use your just and kind heart to support these innocent practitioners, to realize the truth about Falun Gong, and to learn about the Great Law of the Universe that Mr. Li Hongzhi has taught us. It is closely related to you and me.