As a Dafa practitioner, I was illegally arrested and escorted back home by the local police after appealing in Beijing. I was later sent to and was detained at the Jidong County Detention Center in Heilongjiang Province. I was further illegally sentenced to two years of labor "re-education" because I refused to sign a "repentance paper" and remained firmly committed to my cultivation of Falun Dafa. I was sent to the Wanjia Labor Camp at Harbin City on January 10, 2000.
During my detention at the Wanjia Labor Camp, I received numerous beatings from inmates at the camp due to my insistence on practicing Falun Gong. My body was badly bruised and scarred. On Chinese New Year's day in 2000, the guards took away the Teacher's articles and the book Zhuan Falun during our absence. We started a hunger strike to protest their act of thievery. After we went on a hunger strike for 12 days, we were sent to the hospital because we were getting weaker by the day, and we were having difficulty breathing and walking. At the hospital, doctors administered an IV infusion to me. I was so weak I could not even talk. It was the judgement of the doctors that I was beyond medical treatment, and their opinion was that I would be in a vegetative state even if I could recover. They notified my husband, and then they made preparations to cremate me after my death. But Dafa practitioners are supernormal in every respect. After we stopped our 16-day hunger strike, they sent the other practitioners and me to Jiamusi Labor Camp, even before we had a chance to recover. Many determined Dafa practitioners were sent to this notorious place.
I have personally witnessed and heard about many incidents of persecution against Dafa practitioners during my yearlong stay at the Jiamusi Labor Camp. I am listing a few below to expose the evil.
As Falun Gong practitioners, we were constantly battered by guards and other inmates because we kept striving for our right to study the Fa and practice. The labor camp used inmates to supervise us and every day they beat and swore at us. After we went on a hunger strike to protest their atrocities, the inmates would force feed us using a saturated saline solution mixed with milk powder. To paraphrase comments from the camp deputies, the salt contents were so high in the solution that it would be good for preparing pickled vegetables. After force-feeding, many practitioners suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. They were so thirsty that they even had trouble drinking water. During our hunger strike, the deputies were even more abusive to the practitioners. During force-feeding, they would brutally open a practitioner's mouth by prying it open using any utensils at hand. Many practitioners had wounds in their mouth and had their teeth broken.
One evening around 10pm, the guards woke me up and told me they would like to talk to me. At the guard station, there were four female guards and a male doctor. One guard told me to drink some porridge. I refused. They started to force feed me. They pushed me into a chair and tied both of my hands behind the back of the chair. Both of my legs were also tied so that I could not move at all. The male doctor pressed my mouth open with his hands. Another guard started feeding porridge into my mouth using a spoon, while pinching my nose at the same time. I could hardly catch my breath. I was choking so much that I rolled onto the floor. They pulled me up and continued the feeding. After they did this to me for more than half an hour, I passed out 4-5 times. I rebuked them, "Don't anyone of you have sisters?" They ignored me and finally just poured the rest of the porridge inside my clothes. It took me more than half an hour to recover after returning to my quarters. During the forced feedings, two other female practitioners were beaten unconscious by the deputies and revived only after they were sent to the hospital.
Due to prolonged detention in close quarters, all daily activities were done inside the room. In the summer, many practitioners developed scabies and diarrhea. No one was allowed to go to the bathroom, so they had to eliminate into plastic bags right inside the room. There were usually six people in a room with as many as five having diarrhea. Every day there would be a pile of plastic bags and the smell in the room was disgusting. Sometimes it took several months to recover from the diarrhea. When we asked them to open the door to allow some fresh air circulation, the guards would cruelly say, "Only if you repent!" This is how we endured months of spirit crushing and physical torturing.
Because of the dampness and the filthy air inside the totally blocked off room, many of us developed scabies. The large-scale scabies infestation virtually covered every part of our bodies. The guards took advantage of this opportunity. When they applied medication on our bodies, they would ask practitioners who had not been subject to this kind of confinement to observe us. Some of them were so scared by what they saw that they screamed out in fright and could not sleep well for several days. Due to prolonged confinement under tight security, we were devastated both physically and mentally. I had become a skeleton. With scabies all over my body, no one could stand the sight of me. Nonetheless the guards would warn us, "This is what you will become unless you repent ."
We did not cooperate with the evil, and so they dealt more ruthlessly with the Dafa practitioners who started the hunger strike, including myself. On the Chinese New Year's Eve we were tied down on the bed with buckles so that it was impossible for us to move. Later we heard the guards saying, "You were attempting to commit group suicide. We have asked and received authorization from the senior authorities to put you under severe disciplinary action." This was not only the most ridiculous lie, but it was also the most horrible defamation of the practitioners.
Since I was resolved to stick to my hunger strike, I did not eat, drink or sleep in order to protest the persecution for a total of 120 days before my release. On June 17, 2001, they finally let me go home. Before my release, the authorities were afraid to let others know that I never signed any "repentance affidavit," and I was released before my sentencing date. So in front of everybody, they announced that I was being sent to the hospital. I thought that they were going to send me to the prison. It turned out that outside the labor camp my husband was there to pick me up. This was how I honorably walked out of the evil's den.
None of this is coincidental. I realized the joy of using my life to safeguard the Fa, to rectify the Fa and to conquer the evil.
