(Clearwisdom.net) Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on December 12, 2005 that December 10 was International Human Rights Day, and that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture conducted an investigation in China recently and confirmed that the use of torture was widespread. On December 9, RFA special reporter Zi Jing interviewed Falun Gong practitioner Wang Huimin, who was recently rescued from China. and asked her to recount her experience in China.
Ms. Wang was an art editor after graduating from Guangzhou Art College in 1985. Her artworks have been exhibited in Italy, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. The website US Contemporary Art once featured her. She started to study Chinese culture after she found during her work in modern art that many western people respect Chinese traditional culture.
She started to practice Falun Gong after reading Falun Gong books published by her publishing company. At the time, many people in the Huangcheng Publishing Company were reading the books. After the communist regime started the persecution of Falun Gong, all those who practiced Falun Gong were questioned and forced to not practice any more. Those who published the Falun Gong books in the company were forced to conduct self-criticism in a meeting of all employees of the company.
Police investigated to see if Falun Gong made money from the books, and found that the publishing company had published 300,000 books without paying the author's royalty. The result could not provide justification for the persecution.
Ms. Wang said that on July 19, 1999, one day before the regime initiated the persecution, contact persons at the Guangzhou practice site were arrested. She and others went to the provincial and city governments to appeal. They were taken away to the suburbs and told that it was an order from Beijing. So they went to Beijing to appeal.
During several appeals, she was arrested and taken to brainwashing classes. She said that the Dongshan Brainwashing Class in Guangzhou Law Education School was run by jobless people employed as police. They wanted to maintain their employment and so they executed orders from the upper level.
Ms. Wang said, "Once I was forced to stand for four days and nights, without even squatting once. I was tied up and police stomped on my feet. My feet were swollen a lot. I was beaten and had bruises on my buttocks and thighs. They also tied a rope around my neck and asked me to confess by lowering my head. I did not lower my head, then they dragged the rope down."
Ms. Wang said that those who wrote repentance statements suffered mentally more than physically. They felt like a shell and did what they were told. Their suffering was more miserable than death itself.
In August this year, Ms. Wang was taken to brainwashing class again, allegedly because of distributing Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party and advising people to withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The brainwashing class forced practitioners to swear under a large red flag to love the Party. She said that CCP's propaganda professed nice treatment and no forced transformation in the brainwashing class. But in the class, programs slandering Falun Gong were played for two weeks and no personal freedom of thought was allowed.
Ms. Wang said, "It is a lie. The CCP's evil thinking is notorious. You are persecuted but they say you harmed yourself. The CCP police said it wasn't because of the persecution that you went on hunger strike. They are just thugs."
Three days after Ms. Wang was taken away, the news was released overseas. She went on hunger strike in the brainwashing class. She became very weak and was released to live under surveillance. With help from friends, Ms. Wang came to the US.
(Based on RFA reports)