Centralmaine.com(Portland, Maine): Student says Chinese beat him

Friday, March 29, 2002

VASSALBORO - Daniel Pomerleau left on a journey to China this week with a calm heart and a pure will bound for Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where he planned to speak out against persecution and the killing of practitioners of Falun Gong, a form of meditation banned by the government.

He returned with a calm heart, even after being thrown into a cell and pummeled for his beliefs by Chinese authorities.

Staff photo by JIM EVANS

Daniel Pomerleau of Vassalboro was recently detained in the People's Republic of China and his brother is now missing after arriving there.

He arrived Monday in Beijing where he took a shuttle bus into the city and got off at a subway stop where the street was filled with bicyclists. He carried cards that explained his purpose in China and how people in 50 countries practice Falun Gong.

"I came to tell them that this is good, and good people should not be killed for practicing it," he said.

He gave a card to one person, who smiled. After handing out five cards, a scraggly man dressed in civilian clothes wearing a red armband grabbed Pomerleau's right arm. He was holding one of the cards he gave earlier to a passerby.

"I told him to let go in his language," he said.

A large group of people began to circle Pomerleau. Four others wearing red bandannas arrived and tried to take him behind a gate so bystanders couldn't see him, he said. "I said I wasn't moving and I stayed right there," he said.

One man found a policeman with a radio and about 10 minutes later, seven policemen arrived in a van. One of the men showed an officer the Falun Gong literature Pomerleau distributed on the street.

The policeman grabbed him while he yelled out, "Falun Dafa Hao," or Falun Dafa is good. Pomerleau said he knows some Mandarin.

"The police got very angry and slapped me in the face," he said. "They kicked me in the legs, but I continued to say 'Falun Dafa Hao' before they shoved me into the van."

He said the authorities pushed him down in the back seat of the van and kicked him while others closed visors, blocking visibility from the outside. He focused on his teachings, based on the universal principle of "truthfulness-compassion-tolerance."

"At that point, I was thinking I knew what was going on and stayed calm," he said. "I was level-headed and a little nervous, but not too much."

It took about five minutes to get to the nearest police substation. Everything moved like clockwork.

"They definitely have done this before," he said. "They had the whole thing set up."

There he was told he broke the law and was interrogated about his visit for more than an hour. He disagreed with the authorities, saying that killing and torturing people for practicing Falun Gong is a violation of the Chinese constitution and the International Covenant of Human Rights.

He said he was then put in a nicely decorated room where he found his luggage. A video camera continued to document his captivity, he said. One of the officers asked him to pick up his luggage. Worried that authorities planned to use the video footage against him, he refused.

"I told them they need to let me go if they want me to take my luggage," he said. "A man then got very angry and threatened me."

He was led out of a room to the police van and was taken to a nearby detention center underneath a large "classy" building.

He said he was asked to sign some forms, but refused. He tried to reason with his captors and told them why he came to China. He explained how Falun Gong changed his life, transforming him from a hot-headed loudmouth to a peaceful, much calmer person. Some listened, but others grew tired of his words.

He asked one of the guards if he could have his books. He carried with him some homework he needed to complete before he returned to class at Clark University next week. But he couldn't reason with some of the guards.

He was pushed inside a cell with three walls and a gate. He said one of the guards punched him in the mouth, in the stomach and then kicked him down onto a stained mattress lying on top of a filthy, cement-like floor. He then tasted the blood from his split lip. Although hurting, he restrained himself from showing any pain.

Before he went to sleep that night he practiced his exercises, sitting with his legs crossed in a "double lotus." Some of the guards watched almost in awe, he said, to see a Westerner practicing an exercise the Chinese people once did in public before it was outlawed in 1999.

Tired, he tried getting some sleep.

Pomerleau woke up in the middle of the night, lying on a mangy mattress with only his jacket for a pillow. A guard sat in a chair, asleep with the television set on. Although they took all of his belongings, they didn't take a coin that he used to carve on his jail cell wall, "Falun Gong is Good."

He managed to sleep some more, until he was awakened around 6 a.m.

"At first, the guards didn't see what I wrote that morning. They kept reading it over and over again," he said. "One guard kept asking me what time I wrote it, but since I didn't have a watch, I didn't know. They were afraid others would find out. It caused quite a commotion."

Hunger began to settle in. Pomerleau hadn't eaten since his flight. He meditated and around 8 a.m. a boy entered his cell to wash the writing off the wall. Again, the guards wanted to know when he wrote his message

"I told them in Chinese, that their question has no meaning -it was pointless," he said.

While sitting, one of the guards put him in a headlock and pulled him off the mattress. He was dragged out of his cell in a headlock and they tried taking his picture. Refusing to let them take his picture, a guard then pulled his hair, slapped him and then punched him in the face.

He was worried that propaganda could be spread about him.

Shortly after he was put in his cell, he was told by a guard it was "time to go."

"I didn't know where they were taking me," he said. "I was hoping they would take me to the airport."

Luckily, they did.

He was escorted by seven policemen to the airport, where he boarded a plane, bound for Vancouver. Before Pomerleau boarded, he got the attention of one flight attendant.

"I told him Falun Gong is good, and he smiled and said, 'Yeah,' " he said.

"... This persecution will only end in vain," he said. "They can't crush these principles. My concern is not only for the Chinese practitioners, but also for the Chinese society."

Pomerleau remains somewhat humble about his experience. He said it was very insignificant compared to what others have done - people in China who continue to appeal to the Chinese government and face the threat of death.

"We need to pay attention to this and we need to look back in history, like Nazi Germany," he said. "We need to prevent something like that from happening again."

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