How Falun Gong Practitioners Helped Me Give Up Thoughts of Suicide

[Minghui Net] I'm an ordinary person. I worked in Guangzhou City (in Guangdong Province) after I graduated from high school. Because my credentials were incomplete, the police arrested me and sent me to the Guangzhou Shahe Detention Center (address: No. 41 Shuiyinhenglu Road, Guangzhou). I want to share my experiences in that detention center with the public. I was brought to the detention center in early August 2000. There, one must squat down when eating. The guards walked around with electric rods, roaring all the time. If somebody wasn't pleasing to their eyes, they immediately ran over and beat the detainee. The second day I was there, I didn't squat down promptly enough. The superintendent on duty instantly took an electric rod and hit me with it. I said, "Don't beat people! Beating people is illegal!" That female superintendent said, "Why does it matter if I beat you? Prosecute me if you can! Here my word is the law!" I pushed away the electric rod and retreated. The superintendent called two female guards. They hit me with electric rods. I fell to the ground, losing consciousness. After I woke up, I found my hands were handcuffed behind my back. Someone helped me get up. The female superintendent took a bottle of pepper water, usually reserved for riots, and sprayed me with it. I was so angry! I said, "Aren't there any laws here? You will regret this!" The superintendent came at me. I tried to break the window. The glass broke into pieces and I fell to the ground. Afterwards, they took me to a "spiritual sick ward" (solitary confinement cell) on the second floor where there was no water, no electricity and no bathroom. I had nothing to eat for three days. I got a headache and developed a fever. I cried for a whole day, but nobody cared. Two days later, I was brought to room 301; there were nine Falun Gong practitioners there. At that time my face was puffy from the wounds I had suffered. They took good care of me. They gave me water, urged me to eat, and gave me the only blanket they had. Before then I had only heard some things about Falun Gong, but it was not very clear. They had been imprisoned there more than a month. Every day there were two meals, always left over food with a little salty vegetable in it, but they were cheerful every day. They also taught me the meaning of living well, how to be a decent person. At that time I learned what a genuinely good person was, and what a truly immoral person was. I gave up the thought of committing suicide. I came to understand that the guards here often beat people with electric rods, their fists, and their feet. In June, a female practitioner was sent here who fasted for 12 days. Because she persisted in doing the exercises and studying Dafa, the guards hung her from an iron widow, beat her mercilessly, then snatched and ripped up her Dafa books. In order to protect the Dafa books, she threw her body on them. The guards hit her with electric rods, and spurted pepper water on her. Later, I learned a special case team, established by the public security department, was in charge of the treatment of the Falun Gong practitioners. From the end of July to the beginning of August, more than 30 female practitioners were brought here, one after another. They informed the special case team about the ill treatment in this detention center, including the beatings of the detainees by the guards at will and the spurting of pepper water at them, but the situation had improved only a little. One time, the special case team wanted to converse with several practitioners, so the guards called all the practitioners to the first floor of the building. At that time, the practitioners requested the right to report the situation to the person in charge and said they should not have been detained. But the female superintendent of the detention center maligned the practitioners, saying they wanted to escape. She convened the center's guards and the special case team personnel, who rushed the practitioners with high-voltage electric rods, beat and dragged them. Some seized practitioners' hair, some use electric rods to shock practitioners' temples, necks, heads, faces and so on. They even continued the electric shocks for several minutes; electric sparks flew all around and there were horrible cracking and popping sounds. The practitioners' hair fell all over the ground; at least ten practitioners were thrown down in that place. Meanwhile, several guards spurted pepper water into the practitioners' faces. All the detainees in the center building witnessed the scene; some were crying, some called for a stop of the abuse. The entire scene was chaotic and horrible to watch. Then, three female practitioners were seized by their hair and dragged to the second floor. There they were closed separately into three small solitary confinement cells that had no water, no electricity and no bathrooms. They were detained there more than 10 days without being released. During that period they couldn't even go to the washroom. It should be noted that the detention center's policy is that detention in solitary confinement cells must not exceed 48 hours. All the practitioners, therefore, went on a fast, and each one requested the center's leader to release the three practitioners. They were informed that the special case team didn't agree, so the center didn't have the authority to release them. At the beginning of August, five Falun Gong practitioners were sent to the detention center. Among them, there was a male baby less than 10 months old. The practitioners had been sent back to Guangzhou because they had gone to appeal in Beijing. The police appropriated the more than 2,000 Yuan RMB [approximately 4 months salary for an average urban worker] they had taken with them. The young baby had been weaned. The center's officials confiscated the powdered milk and all the other foods in order to blackmail the grandmother and the mother into telling their names. Because of the lack of food and the bad environment, the young baby had high fever all the time and his whole body was painful and red, but the center's supervisors ignored that. Half a month later, the mother was forcefully separated from her baby. The grandmother and the baby were closed up in a temporary room, where there were lots of flies, mosquitoes, and mice. They slept on the icy cold cement floor at night. The detention center compelled them to tell their names if they couldn't withstand such torture. People were moved to tears by this scene; they couldn't imagine the supervisors treated a baby in such an inhumane way. In that group of five people, a senior one was secretly carried away after she fasted for 23 days. Later on, we found out that she had been sent to the madhouse. No one was told of her whereabouts. In the middle of August, the center forcefully crammed food into three practitioners who had been fasting. Their mouths were pried open, their front teeth were broken, and their oral cavities developed festering sores from the ordeal. Falun Gong practitioners were continuously brought in, and some were imprisoned nearly two months. Because the family members or the work place unceasingly looked for those people, the Shahe Detention Center had to shift them to areas outside the center, and then the transferred person was released on bail. Generally, bail releases cost 300 Yuan to 600 Yuan. For Falun Gong practitioners, however, they asked an outrageous price. One practitioner was forced to hand over 1,600 Yuan. I was nearly driven mad in the Shahe Detention Center, and almost lost my life. It was nearly December and the weather got colder and colder, but the long-term detained Falun Gong practitioners in the center still (further content of the article is unclear)... (Manuscript received on April 18, 2001)