On December 24, 2000, Tianmen Square was filled with plainclothes policemen and policemen in uniforms, as usual. At about 10:00 AM, Dafa practitioners unfurled their banners on the northeast side of the square. They shouted: "Falun Dafa is good!" "Falun Dafa is an orthodox Fa!"
Policemen, already holding batons and waiting around in the square, immediately rushed at them from all directions, hitting and catching Dafa practitioners. They seized practitioners' clothes, pulled their hair and put them into police vehicles while Dafa practitioners still kept shouting: "Falun Dafa is good! It is indeed good"! After the police vehicles started their engines, a practitioner opened the window and threw out Dafa flyers to the people on the square, which instantly incurred cruel blows from a policeman (whose badge number was 051621). All practitioners on the vehicle shouted together: "Don't beat him! Are you qualified to be a people's policeman?" The policeman was forced to stop the abuse. When the policeman (badge No. 051620) who was driving heard his radio announcing: "Three military persons just unfurled a banner", he said to another policeman (badge No. 051621): "Let's say that no sooner have they unfurled the banner than we caught them. Then we can get a larger bonus". Actually those three military people had already spread out the banner and moved forward more than ten meters. These two "people's policemen" fabricated lies in order to gain a small amount of money.
Dafa practitioners caught on the square were continuously sent to the Tiananmen Square police branch bureau. Almost all of them refused to give their names, addresses and names of their employers. They were all sent to the empty space between two buildings. Within only one hour the place already had two to three hundred practitioners. Practitioners all recited "Lun Yu" and "Hong Yin" together and shouted "Falun Dafa is good", "Falun Dafa is an orthodox Fa" and "Restore the reputation of Falun Dafa". When policemen swore at Dafa and Teacher, practitioners shouted: "suffocate the evil"! One hour later, Dafa practitioners were sent to different police stations in Beijing and police branch bureaus in counties around Beijing. 50 people were sent to the Miyun County police branch bureau.
Around 1:30 PM, the practitioners sent to the Miyun police branch bureau were numbered, photographed and then interrogated. The central offices of the bureau, the offices of the traffic administration, and the offices of criminal investigation all became temporary interrogation rooms. They kept beating and humiliating practitioners. Because four practitioners were beaten to death in that place before, the policemen there did not beat practitioners themselves any more. Instead, they employed thugs to do it. The means that those thugs used to torture practitioners was extremely vicious. For example, a 60-year old male practitioner was slapped on his face over 100 times. Then four guys stepped on his hands and feet, the other two guys beat him with batons for three hours. There were 8 other male practitioners suffering the same torture. Female practitioners were beaten brutally and humiliated. Three gangsters beat a female practitioner at the same time, and made her mouth keep bleeding. Then they beat her buttocks badly. Her body was full of wounds. Another practitioner's head was beaten and swollen to twice as big as usual, his face was bruised and swollen, both eyeballs bled and swelled so that the eyes were squeezed into a thin line, and not able to see things. His whole face was seriously deformed. Even some policemen with a little conscience said: "They are too malicious". Some female practitioners were beaten on their private parts until they lost control of their bladders and excretory functions. The gangsters stomped upon some female practitioners' abdomens so fiercely that they could not hold their urine. Those scoundrels even grabbed at the clothes of the female practitioners, and wanted to rape them. Only due to the constant and loud condemnation by the other practitioners did they give up.
For practitioners who refused to give their names, addresses and their employers, policemen interrogated them continuously and beat them maliciously. They were not allowed to put on their shoes during the interrogations, and some interrogations lasted until 10:00pm for days. The detention center's conditions were very bad. Each cell had only one brick bed on the floor without heat, which could accommodate about 10 people. There were no quilts. There was a small piece of heating pipe below the window, a small sink with a cold-water only faucet, and a small concrete hole in the ground as a toilet. The room was cold and with a fishy smell. It was not a place for humans. Even real criminals were treated better.
According to what I heard, until December 24, there had been 18 batches of practitioners sent to Miyun police branch bureau. 50 people were sent there on December 24. It was said that the number for December 26 was 80 people. Every day each police branch bureau in counties around Beijing was assigned a quota to receive detained practitioners. All detention centers under these bureaus had been full. In order to make room for receiving more practitioners, they had to transfer those practitioners refusing to give out their names and addresses to detention centers and labor camps in nearby Tianjing City, many times. Therefore, some practitioners' information became lost.
According to the practitioners returning from Pinggu County, 50 practitioners were sent there from Tiananmen Square police station on the evening of Dec. 24, and 30 of them were male. With the female practitioners' situation unknown, every male practitioner was badly beaten. They were handcuffed to heating pipes in the cells. Policemen instigated criminals to beat them. The longest beating lasted for one whole day and one whole night. Even the men doling out this brutality became exhausted.
December 29, 2000
