(Clearwisdom.net) In 1989, during the Tiananmen Square student Democracy movement, I was in Guangdong Province and saw via satellite TV the bloody scenes of tanks driven by "the people's soldiers" mowing down innocent students and ordinary citizens. I couldn't believe my eyes while thinking, "So, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is doing harm to the people while it claims to 'serve the people'!" From then on I lost my faith in the CCP and reflected on my past experiences with an objective mind. I loathed politics even more.
I searched and searched for answers amid the dark reality and the disappointing facts of life. When I was about to give up, I encountered Falun Dafa, which taught me the true meaning of life. I started on a path to return to my true, original self. Hatred vanished from my heart, replaced by kindness. I was able to look at the world - including everything around me - with a tolerant mind.
Over the past several years I have corrected my thoughts and actions according to Truthfulness- Compassion-Forbearance [the principal teachings of Falun Dafa] and experienced peace of mind and true health. Every change in my body and mind took place exactly as Teacher tells us in his lectures. I was completely bowled over, although I had been cynical toward everything in the past. After a long period of observation, study and practice, I found the meaning of life and the way to truly improve myself. I finally established my belief in Falun Dafa. Witnessing the miraculous changes in me, my parents also started practicing Dafa, and they became healthy as well. We lived a very happy life.
However, the most villainous, insidious and malicious persecution suddenly fell upon us and caused us tremendous physical and mental suffering.
After the persecution started, on January 3, 2001 my mother went to Tiananmen Square to appeal for justice for Falun Dafa. Two police officers beat her to the ground until she vomited blood. They sentenced her to forced labor, an unlawful act. My wife, who accompanied my mother during this appeal, was at first illegally sentenced to three years of forced labor, but was later released on medical parole. During a period when she was compelled to become homeless in order to avoid arrest, she was abducted during the 16th Party Congress for printing Falun Dafa truth clarification materials and was sentenced to eight years in prison. More than 20 other practitioners who also worked at the Taiyuan City Dafa materials production site were also sentenced to prison. My wife is still being held at Shanxi Province Women's Prison in Yuci City. My father-in-law told me over the phone that she often vomits and cannot eat because she has been holding a long-term hunger strike to protest the illegal detention.
My mother suffered a nervous breakdown due to the relentless persecution and has not recovered; my elderly father wrote a self-criticism statement against his conscience under pressure, as ordered by the perpetrators, and gave up Dafa practice.
Living under this atmosphere of terror, our other family members and friends were afraid and concerned for their own safety.
I was grossly abused under this persecution until my legs were disabled.
Former president Jiang Zemin, who initiated this persecution, and his followers have abused and violated the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, ruthlessly destroying people's morals and conscience.
Because I persisted in my belief, I was unlawfully detained for 68 months and 21 days, or 2,090 days, from August 26, 1999 until May 2005. I am still being persecuted, as I am classified as, "out on bail, awaiting trial."
Over the past five years, I was abducted and detained in four provinces: Guangdong Province, Hebei Province, Henan Province and Qinghai Province, and in five different cities: Shenzhen City, Beijing, Sanmenxia City, Xuchang City, Xining City. I was unlawfully detained at ten different locations: Hongling Middle School in Shenzhen City, Shenzhen Liantang Police Station, Beijing Tiananmen Police Station, Sanmenxia City Liaison Office in Beijing, Xia County Detention Center, Xia County Custody Center, Sanmenxia City Forced Labor Camp, Henan Province No. 3 Forced Labor Camp in Xuchang, the 2nd session of Sanmenxia City Brainwashing Class, the former Sanmenxia City Armed Forces compound and the No. 2 Detention Center in Xining City. I want to emphasize in particular that no legal procedures were followed in my abductions and detentions in the brainwashing classes at Hongling Middle School, Tiananmen Police Station in Beijing, Sanmenxia City Liaison Office in Beijing and at the Sanmenxia City Armed Forces compound.
The legal departments themselves violated the law. I was detained under "criminal detention" three times at Xia County Detention Center alone, the third detention lasting 18 months! The three detentions lasted 74 days, 145 days and 518 days respectively, for a total of 737 days. Since the law states that criminal detention must not exceed 14 days, the Xia County Detention Center held me 626 days past the legal limit, even if based on the maximum detention limit of 37 days each time.
After my first criminal detention at Xia County Police Department, I was further held at the Xia County Custody Center for six months and 21 days, which was 21 days past the legal limit.
Zhang Xiufeng, a police officer and the former head of the Political and Security Section of the Xia County government in Henan Province, told me that originally I was unlawfully sentenced to one year of forced labor. When this verdict was issued, though, I had already been detained for 14 months, so they changed the sentence to two years. Under the instigation of Jiang's group, the so-called law administrators have not the slightest regard for the rule of law.
After I had been held at Sanmenxia City Forced Labor Camp for seven days, I was transferred to the No. 3 Forced Labor Camp in Henan Province, located in Xuchang City. To control Falun Gong practitioners such as I and prevent us from returning to society, the labor camp authorities extended my sentence by eight months, but in actuality they detained me for 18 months.
During the past five years I have suffered unimaginable physical torture and mental torment. At the detention centers and labor camps, I was tortured many times with the Death Bed. In addition I was tortured with "Tying the Ropes," shackles, force-feeding and gang beatings. At the No. 3 Forced Labor Camp, the guards ordered about 100 inmates to beat us and force us to do intensive slave labor. They also assigned persons to try to brainwash me round the clock, and I was subjected to threat, intimidation, deceit, starvation, extortion and had icy or boiling water poured on me.
1. Appealing at the Shenzhen City government
On July 20, 1999, because Jiang's group started arresting Falun Gong assistants who volunteered their time to teach the exercises, we went to the Shenzhen City government the next day to hold a peaceful appeal and demand the release of the arrested practitioners. About 2,000 practitioners went.
The Shenzhen City government dispatched riot police, military police, security officers and persons from the National Security Bureau's Special Female Police Division. They tricked us into getting on a bus and took us to Hongling Middle School in Shenzhen City.
While at the school, the perpetrators recorded the practitioners' names and phone numbers. Around 5:00 p.m., they sent us to Liantang Police Station where we learned that the Ministry of Public Security had banned Falun Gong. In the evening, they issued subpoenas that they were supposed to present in the morning and they ordered us to write "guarantee statements", which we firmly refused.
On July 22, people from our work units and street committees paid our bail and we were released. I later learned that my work unit, Guowei Electronics Factory, fired me on July 19 due to pressure from the police.
2. Going to Beijing to appeal
In the morning of July 23, 1999, led by the head of the Shenzhen City Political and Judiciary Committee, officers from Liantang Police Station in Shenzhen City forcibly dispersed the practitioners who were doing the exercises and announced that our practice site was forever banned. They said this decision had nothing to do with them and was made by Jiang Zemin, and if we wanted to appeal, we must appeal to the central government. At that time, we believed that the central government was deceived and didn't know the truth about Falun Gong. Because of this, I decided to go to Beijing to appeal according to the law and to clarify the truth to the government officials.
When I got off the train in Beijing I saw military police searching passengers' bags for Dafa books. They intercepted Falun Gong practitioners who went to appeal. There were about a few hundred police officers at the train station exit.
The temperature that day was dangerously high (about 131 0F), rarely seen in the last hundred years. The area near Tiananmen Square was teeming with plainclothes police officers. I saw a few police officers from Shenzhen near the Square. It turned out that soon after I had left, police officers blocked the Shenzhen Train Station. They went to my home several times, ransacked it and took all the Dafa books and materials. Two police officers were asked to remain at my home and four other officers were sent to Beijing to stop me from appealing.
There were many tourists in the square, with many plainclothes police mixed in them. I didn't dare to ask anyone for directions. I couldn't find the Appeals Office after circling the square for a while, so I left Beijing.
I could not return to Shenzhen City, so I took the train to my hometown. On the train I learned that the highway to Beijing was blocked. I regretted not going to the Appeals Office to clarify the truth.
3. Going to Beijing to appeal for the second time, I was illegally detained until now
In the following days, the persecution of Falun Gong quickly escalated. On August 18, 1999, my wife and I went to Beijing to appeal. After we arrived in Beijing, however, we learned that the Appeals Office had stopped receiving Falun Gong practitioners, and the Appeals Office was now turning the practitioners over to the police. With all channels of appeal blocked we had no choice but to clarify the truth to people we met on the street. We sat in Tiananmen Square and did the Dafa exercises to attract people's attention, so they would come to us and learn the truth about Falun Gong.
The police handled us with brutal violence. They took us to the Tiananmen Police Station and confiscated our Dafa books, including the hand-copied versions. They stomped on Dafa books and desecrated Teacher's pictures. One young police officer screamed as he stomped on the books, "Now let me receive retribution! Let me die! How come I'm still alive and well?"
I saw two middle-aged female practitioners at the Tiananmen Police Station. The police officers slapped their faces because they refused to give their names and addresses. They forbad them to go to the restroom and only gave them food but no water. One female practitioner from Beijing, around 45 years of age, had been holding a hunger strike for two days and her face was pallid.
After learning my name and the city where I came from, Tiananmen Police Station personnel sent me to the Sanmenxia City Liaison Office in Beijing on August 23, 1999, where I was detained in Room No. 7 on the first floor.
4. The first illegal detention at Xia County Detention Center
On August 26, 1999, an official from the Sanmenxia City Appeals Office in Henan Province, along with Zhang Xiufeng from the Political and Security Section for the Xia County Police Department, sent me to Xia County Detention Center, nicknamed the West Courtyard. Also involved was Ge Jianzhong, a former member of Yuandian Town Criminal Police Division in Xia County.
Before I went to the detention center, police officer Zhang Xiufeng extorted 200 yuan from me. Guard Yuan, who was on duty at the time, and perpetrator Zhang Xueyi forcibly searched me, forcing me to remove all my clothes. They took my belt and leather slippers.
The guards often said, "If one person dies, we carry him out; if two people die, we take them out on stretchers." The guards often verbally abused and beat the inmates as well as extorted money from them. They even handed their cell phones to the inmates and ordered them to give false witness accounts.
Guard Zhang Xiufeng illegally interrogated me and extorted money from me. He accused me of "disrupting the social order" and treated me as a political detainee. He set the bail at 8,000 yuan and tried to force me to move my household identification to another area. No other area government dared to accept me, therefore his scheme failed.
The living environment at the detention center was terrible and the food was of very poor quality. I slept on the concrete floor throughout the detention. What bothered me the most was not being able to do the Dafa exercises. I was forced to participate in growing vegetables and cutting up hawthorns. The most exhausting labor in growing vegetables was carrying the fertilizer - urine - in buckets, because I had to carry over 100 buckets during one session. Equally tiring was cutting hawthorns. I had to jump on an outmoded machine with my whole body weight for it to work. Gao Jianye, the detention center deputy head saw that I was well-built (approximately 173.5 lbs) at the time, so he ordered me to focus on cutting hawthorns. I often had to work extra hours at noon and in the evening. It was also exhausting to lay the hawthorns slices out in the sun. I had a very hard time during the early detention period, trying to adjust to the hard labor.
One day after October 1, 1999 my wife came to the detention center and asked for my release. Later, her father came to look for her because of losing contact with her. My colleagues, the head of the Security Division of my former work unit as well as my father also came. They tried to persuade me to write a self-criticism. The police officers from Xia County had promised to release me after I wrote the statement. I wrote it against my conscience because I could no longer endure the endless tortures, but I immediately regretted it.
The Xia County police went back on their word and refused to release me after I had written the statement.
(To be continued)
