Local authorities of Zhaoyuan City, where Mr. Zhao Jinhua was tortured to death, continued to persecute other Falun Gong practitioners relentlessly

[Dear Editor: Practitioners went to Beijing to appeal by overcoming all difficulties and pressures such as being intercepted by police officers of all levels and being questioned by plainclothes agents. Since practitioners do not tell lies, in a short while, they would be handcuffed and transferred to their local police station. After some beatings and kicking, they would be sent to jail. In order to defend Falun Dafa, practitioners do not submit in front of the pressures. Some have been thrown into jail for many times. They continued to go to appeal as soon as they got freed. Some have been fired or expelled from school. Some practitioners had their water supply and electricity power cut off.]

[1] On September 20, the associate chief police (Last name Nan) of the Ling-long Town police department ransacked the home of practitioner Ms. Youying Lu without any warrant and confiscated the Falun Dafa materials.

On September 22, police officer Gui-bo Li searched practitioner Rui-su Gao's home without any warrant and took away Falun Dafa materials and tape recorder. Then they arrested Gao. On the same day, 15practitioners were taken to the local township police station and detained in a place of 6 square feet. Three days later, 18 more practitioners were taken to the Ling-long hotel and detained in two rooms.

During the detention, the police officers beat these practitioners at will and ordered them to do a lot of physical labors such as cleaning floors and windows but did not provide practitioners drinking water. One day, practitioners were required to read a book slandering at Falun Gong and its founder, but they all refused to do that. Therefore, Dong-fang Chang, Cai-mei Lu and the other practitioner were tortured for more than 3 hours including being electrically shocked. Practitioner Mr. Wen-de Li had been hung up and beaten up for a whole night. He suffered all kinds of torture devices. In the end, he was forced-fed with poisons. The communist party secretary Yu-hao Shao tortured Cui-hua Liu and Chun-nan Qu till they lost consciousness, but he continued to torture them after pouring cold water on them.

A police officer disclosed that if one practitioner went to Beijing to appeal and went into the appealing offices in Beijing, the officials of the hometown of the practitioner would be removed from their posts. Therefore, the officials sent out lots of police officers to stay at Beijing to arrest local appealing practitioners. Some liaison offices even hired local ruffians to arrest practitioners.

[2] On December 28, 1999, 5 practitioners, Shao-mei Sun, Cui-xiang Wang, Xiu-fang Nu, Yuan-mei Lu and Cui-qing Song, were intercepted on their way to Beijing and taken back to the Ling-long police department. A police official, Zheng-tao Chen, body-searched them by stripping them. It was cold winter. They were frozen to tremble on the ground. At night, they slept on the cement floor without quilts. The guard Bing-xin Li did not allow them to use restroom and kept the windows open on purpose. They had been frozen for two days and two nights. Shao-mei Sun was later sent to hospital for emergency treatment by her family members and was able to recover later.

[3] From January 23 to 27 of 2000, 9 of us practitioners including You-ying Lu and Cui-hua Liu were escorted back from Beijing and detained in the police station. We slept on the cement floor and were forbidden to use the quilts sent to us by our family members. We were forced to clean the floors and windows everyday. Otherwise, we would be denied food.

On the afternoon of February 4, we were released. Our home phones were monitored. We lost our personal freedom. Each of us was monitored by two local villagers everyday. We could not have a normal life.

We only practice truthfulness-benevolence-forbearance. We are law-abiding citizens. We appeal to all kind-hearted people in theworld for help.

February 5, 6pm