(Clearwisdom.net)
It came as a shock when I learned that a fellow practitioner in Taiwan, Lin Xiaokai was detained by the Chinese national security. I would like to recount once again my bitter experience in Shanghai early this year.
I am a resident of Taiwan and began practicing Falun Gong in the year 2000. I went to Shanghai on a business trip on January 2 of this year. On landing at the Pudong Airport, before even reaching Shanghai, I was arrested and forcibly taken away by the national security police in Shanghai. I was detained illegally for 28 days.
Throughout the length of my detention, my requests to get in touch with my family members in Taiwan were refused. I was confined in a small room with the window shades drawn, totally cut off from the outside world, and was watched around the clock. There was no clock in the room, and my watch was taken away. I was forced to sit on a chair all day long while being interrogated. I needed permission to have a drink of water or go to the restroom. There was a time I was forced to stand for a long period of time with my arms raised to shoulder level as punishment. I collapsed three times from exhaustion.
On recollection, what happened in those twenty-eight days can be divided into several distinct phases.
At first, the evil scoundrels in plainclothes forcibly dragged me away in their unmarked car. It was literally a kidnapping. There were witnesses, but they were not able to tell who the perpetrators were. The police did not let me contact anybody outside, and certainly would not have voluntarily informed anybody themselves. This way nobody knew that they had kidnapped me. Thus, they threatened me: "No one will know that you are here. We can do whatever we want to you." They were surely true to their words. The situation was most rampant in the first few days. Scores of people took turns bombarding me with questions, using the crudest language and most obnoxious and overbearing mannerisms.
They wanted me to recount all my activities and all the people that I had come into contact with since I started practicing Falun Gong in Taiwan in 2000. They had all the records of my attendance at Fa conferences and Dafa related activities abroad. They even knew about my practice schedules and Fa-spreading activities in Taiwan. I could not figure out why they wanted to know so much about me, an ordinary working class individual.
Around the third or fourth day, my employer and my family knew that I was in the hands of the national security police in Shanghai. The police then changed their strategy, and adopted a soft approach, saying that they would take me to my business meeting as soon as I told them what they wanted to know. The 20 or so people (I believe some of them came from the "610 Office") also stopped pelting me with questions and went behind the scenes, leaving only the Shanghai national security personnel with a noticeably less aggressive attitude.
About ten days later, the Taiwan Strait Foundation sent a letter to the Association of the China Sea. This meant that the news of my abduction had spilled beyond my close families to 3rd party organizations. At the time even though I did not know what was happening in the world outside, I could sense the police's behavior becoming more restrained. They said tongue in cheek: "We Chinese care most about our families and friends. Tell us what we want to know and you can make it home for the lunar New Year Festival." By now they had even lifted the window shades during the day so I could see out.
Around the twentieth day, I learned later, my family members could not hold back any longer and were ready to call a press conference. In the meantime, I felt that the evil scoundrels had suddenly become timid. I believe that they thought that my family would be concerned about my safety and would not dare to publicize the incident, and therefore they thought they were in the driver's seat. They did not expect that my family in Taiwan would bring it out in the open and let everybody know. Not surprisingly, things took a dramatic turn around. In a few days, they tried to find ways to back down while saving face. At first they said they would "do me a special favor" and let me call my family if I would agree to a bunch of conditions. I knew that it was they who could not hold out too much longer, so I did not say anything, hoping the outside world would keep up the pressure. A day later they yielded, and asked me directly if I wanted to call home, with no mention of any conditions attached. They even urged me to call so that "my family wouldn't be worried." I kept silent, and they totally did not know what to do. Eventually, they had to let me go back to Taiwan on the twenty-eighth day.
From my experience described above, it shows that the evil fears being exposed. Therefore the most effective way to save the incarcerated practitioners is to expose the evil. The more we expose them, the less pressure there is on the practitioners. Particularly if we clarify the truth using the illegal detention incidents to expose the evil, the pressure on the evil will become greater and greater. So from my personal experience, I urge all practitioners to act together to bring such incidents to the attention of more people on a large scale, to all government institutions, media, legislators, companies and organizations, Taiwanese businessmen in China, our friends and families, and our fellow citizens in Mainland China. We should keep up our efforts until everyone around us knows the truth: The Chinese government is persecuting Lin Xiaokai, such an honorable Taiwanese practitioner, as well as millions of practitioners in Mainland China.
2003-10-23