(Clearwisdom.net)
[The writer of this article is a Dafa practitioner from Guangdong Province who was forcibly subjected to brainwashing and brutally beaten for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and clarify the truth after the persecution started. Through her personal experience, and by relating the sufferings of other Dafa practitioners, she has exposed the evil conduct of the brainwashing center officials in Huangpu District, Guangdong Province.]
I had been sick and weak for more than twenty years and my life was extremely painful. For many years I practiced Tai Chi boxing, Tai Chi sword forms and other keeping-fit forms, but nothing helped, and I felt frustrated and miserable.
However, after I practiced Falun Gong for about one month, my digestive system improved, I was able to eat things I could not eat before, and I also stopped having loose bowels.
After I read the book Zhuan Falun, I understood that practicing Falun Gong requires us to become better people according to the principles of Truth, Compassion, Forbearance. I took part in a morning exercise group practice as well as group Fa-study and experience sharing. I set strict requirements for myself, based on Truth, Compassion, Forbearance. I would always look inward when encountering conflicts and let go of my attachments. Soon, all of the illnesses I had suffered from disappeared completely.
On July 20th, 1999, the Jiang regime started its persecution of Falun Gong. In order to let people know the truth, I went to Tiananmen Square, hoping that I could help people learn the facts with my personal experience, such as that we are good people, we are not involved in politics, Falun Dafa is good. However, as soon I entered the square I was pushed onto a police van and interrogated. I told the police that Falun Gong teaches people to be good people, but the police slapped me seven or eight times on the face and then held me for five days in a detention center. Together with other practitioners, I went on a hunger strike for five days.
During the evening of the fifth day they sent me to another police station for interrogation. I kept silent to begin with. They got angry and yelled loudly, "Handcuff her and lock her up!" I was not afraid at all, knowing that I had done nothing wrong. The police locked me up in the office basement where more than ten Falun Gong practitioners were already locked up for going to Tiananmen Square, including women with children still breast-feeding. After being illegally detained for a week, the police took me to a detention center where I was again illegally held for 15 days. My work unit also deducted close to 10,000Yuan [500 Yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China.] from my salary.
One afternoon in May, a police car came to my house, and four or five police officers with several cadres from the neighborhood committee rushed in, demanding that I go with them right away. I asked them why, and they said, "Because you practice Falun Gong." I refused to go with them. They forcibly dragged me to the police station where I saw three white-haired older women who were also Falun Gong practitioners. The four of us were detained in the police station. They did not give us any food nor allow us to sleep. We sat there until dawn the next day.
The next morning they drove us to a brainwashing center in the Huangpu District, actually the Huangpu Drug Clinic. In the beginning, several of us were locked up in one room. During the day we were forced to read materials that slandered Falun Gong and watch VCDs. In the evening they forced us to write our "feelings and thoughts." Because we did not write according to their requirements, we were forced to stand as a form of punishment. Additionally, for three or four days we were not allowed to sleep. Still we refused to write, so they locked us up separately, in solitary confinement. The door was locked and we had to do everything in the room, including eating, sleeping, washing and relieving ourselves.
After midnight, we would hear thumping noises from the male rooms upstairs where male practitioners were being beaten, kicked and knocked around. We could also hear the wailing and yelling from the perpetrators of this violence. They were "security guards" trained by the police. Each of these men had a label, such as No.1 hatchet man (most vicious and beat up most people), No. 2 hatchet man (vicious, but beat up fewer people). There were also No. 3 and No. 4 hatchet men. All of them were young men in their twenties and early thirties. They would usually punch practitioners' heads, faces, acupuncture points, kick them and knock them around or pull out their hair by the handful. Sometimes they actually partially scalped people, while making grotesque noises. The floor was covered with hair. Some would pull your hair and twist you around and throw you onto the floor (the hatchet man was tall and I was short and small). If I fell they would force me to get up straight away and do the same thing to me again and again.
I was beaten black and blue, so that my body, my arms and legs all turned dark purple. I was in extreme pain and could hardly lie down. Some practitioners' lips were torn from the beatings and blood was running profusely. In addition, we were deprived of sleep for about ten days. When we were allowed to sleep, it was only for three or four hours. They also forced us to stand for more than ten hours without moving. Our backs were bent at a 90o angle and they would put a little plastic stool or a book on our backs. If these would fall, someone would come over and beat us. We were forced to stand like this for five or six hours every day, for several days running.
Whoever tried to explain the truth of Falun Gong would get a dirty rag stuffed into his or her mouth. Not only that, with the director's encouragement, a guard even shouted during a meeting, "Whoever dares to refuse to write the 'three statements,'*) I can throw him into the pond or hang him up in the air with a rope." When I heard this I wrote a note and put it into the pocket of my pants, in hopes that, in case something disastrous happened, my family might find it. The note said, "If I have died, it would have been from being beaten to death. I did not commit suicide. You must seek justice for me."
Seeing that I refused to write the "three statements," the brainwashing center supervisors, Lin and Wang, harassed me in the middle of night. Lin said, "If you don't write it, you have these choices: 1. We send you to the labor camp; 2. We send you to the hospital and give you injections; 3. Stay here in the center." Wang said, "If you don't write it, I won't let you leave alive."
Later, I wrote an article and sent it to Minghui.net and exposed the situation, "How the Huangpu Brainwashing Center Persecutes Falun Gong Practitioners." Someone in the police station saw my article, came to my home and abducted me again. Back and forth like this, I stayed in the brainwashing center for almost a year. After I went back home, they still wanted me to write articles about my understanding, and try to make me give up Falun Gong completely. I did not give in, but I endured extreme mental pressure. When I was home, I felt dizzy all the time; my arms and legs were trembling, and I was very sad. I felt I was on the verge of collapse.
Ordered by the director, the brainwashing center uses very cruel ways to persecute practitioners. One practitioner did not write the "three statements" while in the labor camp. Although his term was over, they still detained him illegally. The police finally released him when he was extremely weak. In April 2002 they kidnapped him into another brainwashing class in a drug center, and kept him there until January 2003. They tortured him with some extreme methods. They tied up his hands and feet, hung him upside down and soaked his head in the toilet. They made him drink the water in the toilet, and kept adding more water. He was very ill from drinking sewage. They would not let him urinate in a toilet, but forced him to urinate in his pants. Upon seeing that he was very weak, they were afraid they would suffocate him to death, so they put him down and untied his hands and feet. They forced him to squat by the toilet. The guard stood behind him, stepped on his head and forced him again to drink the toilet water. His hands and arms were bruised and bleeding. The police declared that if he still refused to write the "three statements," they had over 20 other ways to torture him, such as injecting poisonous drugs, forcing him to drink human excrement and urine, and other beastly things.
The "Huangpu Law Education Class" is a brainwashing class for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. It is located inside the Huangpu Drug Center, which used to be a jail. Every practitioner is locked inside a separate room. There is closed circuit TV to monitor the practitioners. They only assemble the practitioners when they play the VCD and the CCTV programs that slander Falun Gong. The practitioners are not allowed to talk to each other. At mealtimes, the practitioners are let out of their rooms, one by one, to get their meal. During the illegal detention, no one was allowed to visit them.
The "Guangzhou Law Education School" looks like a jail, with tall walls surrounding it. There are monitoring devices to prevent the practitioners from climbing the walls to get out. Even after the brainwashing class is over and they release a practitioner, the practitioner is still not left alone. During sensitive dates, legal holidays, or days for some important meetings, the police and neighborhood committees would send seven or eight people to the practitioner's home, harass them in the middle of night, and then abduct them back to the labor camp or brainwashing class and force them to write the "three statements." The police searched my home and took away three computers, one laptop, a printer, a laser jet printer, a motorcycle, my cell phone, cash, and my Falun Gong books.
Note:
* Three statements (also called guarantee or repentance statements) are documents coerced under extreme pressure, torture and brainwashing, designed by Chinese authorities to ensure that detained Falun Gong practitioners be appropriately brainwashed. The statements consist of a letter of repentance, a guarantee to never again practice Falun Gong, and a list containing names and addresses of all family, friends and acquaintances of the detainee who practices Falun Gong.