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Dafa Practitioners in Northern China Reflect on the Filming of Torture Reenactments

October 04, 2004 |   By Falun Dafa practitioners in China

(Clearwisdom.net)

After the Minghui website requested that Falun Dafa practitioners in China provide photographic footage exposing the brutal tortures and persecution, practitioners from our area began a series of intense preparatory efforts. We readied the clothing, stage props, personnel and venues, and we then rushed to convene. During the process, certain matters that appeared ordinary and minor would ultimately move us deeply, and many of the later pictures we took contained images of Faluns of different colors.

We completed our first filming, only to find that the images had many shortcomings. The clothing and props were improper, the actors' demeanors did not meet our standards, and the "police," especially, were not vicious enough to convey the true atmosphere of evil. Furthermore, some of the torture demonstrations were too simplistic and unrealistic, inadequate for depicting the real persecution and torture that Falun Dafa practitioners suffer.

We shared our thoughts on these issues and realized that if practitioners in China provided accurate torture displays, Jiang's regime's evilness will be exposed more directly, and we will be saving sentient beings in a more profound way. We also enlightened to the solemn and sacred nature of the torture display and its grand historical significance in this Fa-rectification. After developing this clearer understanding of our duties, we all agreed to re-film the exhibitions and to reuse the available torture instruments in accurately depicting the tortures we encountered.

We arrived at our filming venue for the second time, but this time a fellow practitioner told the "policemen" straightaway, "You can really hit me. It does not matter as long as it looks real." Another practitioner who was recently released from detention and still very weak demonstrated personally all the tortures he had encountered. In order to illustrate faithfully the pain he had suffered during the prison force-feedings in which a tube had been inserted into his stomach, he chewed a hot chili pepper to make himself sweat, thus recreating his feeling of suffocation and his profuse sweating. An elderly practitioner carefully fashioned leg shackle props to be extremely lifelike, and he also personally demonstrated its use in torture. Another fellow practitioner demonstrated tortures such as the water dungeon and being hosed with high-pressure water. For the water dungeon, he wore a soaked, cotton-padded jacket and pants and sat on the cold cement ground, while an actor portraying a "criminal obeying police instructions" continuously poured cold water on his head. In order to make the torture called "tying with ropes" more realistic, a practitioner actually learned how to tie ropes while helping with other efforts. Although they were already exhausted after a hard day's work, still other practitioners placed the Fa (1) as their priority and still squeezed in time to aid in the filming.

A practitioner who had only recently been released from prison demonstrated many tortures and suffered numerous "beatings." He took the initiative in volunteering to demonstrate the torture called "hanging with an iron chain." When we removed the chair from under his feet, his whole body was suspended by the chain, and the ensuing pain caused him to knit his eyebrows and to groan in a low voice. By the time we lowered him, the skin on his wrists was already broken, and there were deep marks where the chain had cut into him. Seeing how injurious our demonstration turned out to be, despite its lasting only for that short period we were filming, it is easy to imagine how cruel and sinister the actual torture is!

Our torture demonstration made us realize that Fa-rectification work is incomparably sacred and should be handled with the most earnest attention. (Of course, paying earnest attention does not imply going to extremes. We should take enough protective measures to ensure that the practitioners are not physically harmed during the demonstrations.) During the process of re-filming, and after our xinxing (2) improved on the whole, the golden, shining Falun manifested its supernatural powers as we cooperated as one body, revealing the wonderful and sacred nature of the Fa-rectification in this and other dimensions.

Notes

  1. Fa: Law and principles; the teachings of Falun Dafa.
  2. Xinxing: mind-heart nature; moral character.