(Clearwisdom.net) I was sent to the Beijing Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp because I committed a scam. In recent years, this labor camp has become notorious for persecuting Dafa practitioners.

What I want to say today is not about the "drug scandal," involving collusion between the police and criminals that occurred in early 2003, or about where the chopsticks used in ordinary restaurants come from. What I want to discuss are the many Falun Dafa practitioners who are threatened by violence and persecuted badly, yet still persist in their wonderful belief in "Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance."

The reason that we were sent to the Falun Gong unit in the middle of our term was because the police wanted us to closely monitor the Falun Gong practitioners whom they regarded as uncooperative. It was said that they learned this tactic from the Beijing Women's Forced Labor Camp.

Depending on the situation, the police put either one or two criminals into each Falun Gong sub-unit. Almost every night, we reported information from our sub-unit to the guards. We worked diligently in order to have our terms shortened.

Influenced by the media's vicious propaganda against Falun Gong, I initially regarded Falun Gong practitioners as dangerous people who went insane because of practicing qigong, and had a lot of antipathy toward them. Instigated by the guards, I often swore at and beat practitioners. As I stayed with them longer, I realized that they were not dangerous people like the government said. They got along well with each other. The younger practitioners took care of the older ones (the oldest was 69 years old). We all slept on either lower or upper bunks, and they let the seniors or disabled sleep on their lower bunks. When having a meal, they took out the food that their families brought them and invited others to share. We never saw this phenomenon in our ordinary division at all.

Although privately we no longer agreed with the persecution of Falun Gong, and treated Falun Gong practitioners better, being tempted by profits and threatened by guards, we still tortured those poor people without conscience in order to win the guards' favor and the rewards of shortened terms.

Two of my close friends and I, together continually took care of the older man, Qian Shiguang from Gansu. According to police, Qian Shiguang was put in a forced labor camp once in Gansu. This was the second time that he was put into a labor camp. He was a headache for the guards because he refused to renounce Falun Gong. Their treatment of Qian Shiguang included depriving him of sleep, not allowing him to use the toilet, reduced food portions, and physical punishment with beatings and swearing. But Qian never gave in. Instead, he told them things about Falun Gong, and cautioned them not to help a tyrant do evil, lest they get retribution in the end. When talking about these things, sometimes we also thought that what he said had some rationality. Sometimes our bodies felt uncomfortable for no apparent reason. Could this be the punishment from God? But as soon as we thought of having our terms shortened, we would again continue our old ways.

One night, when it was snowing heavily, guard Yin Hongsong ordered two people to drag Qian Shiguang outside. They stripped off all his clothes except his underwear, tied him to a big tree, and let him freeze for almost two hours. Later, those two people bragged about it to me and I felt very sad.

These kinds of things happened often. For instance, some of us shoved a Falun Gong practitioner, whose family name was Liu, into a toilet, dunking him in there for a long time. We also pushed Falun Gong practitioners we thought were stubborn under a bed and had a person sit on the bed, which broke some Falun Gong practitioners' backs.

I often thought of those brutal scenes after I left the forced labor camp, and was often in fear and trembling because of the bad deeds I had done. I always hope that I won't get retribution. This year, one of my acquaintances, who always participated in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, almost lost his life in a car accident as he was driving after drinking alcohol.

I had not realized until now that doing bad deeds without receiving retribution just does not happen. We should repent to the people that we hurt and repent to God--not just to reduce the pain of feeling guilty but to learn from those Falun Gong practitioners and become truly good people!

I hope to reduce my guilt by speaking out about these things today. But more importantly, I want to call for more people to stop the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

May 26, 2005