(Clearwisdom.net)
For her firm belief in Falun Gong, Ms. Zhang Xihong of Jinzhou City was persecuted by the police in 2002. In the end, she suffered severe paraplegia. Her personal life, mental state, and physical condition, as well as her family life, have been drastically impacted and damaged. Unable to bear the mental and economic pressure, her husband left her. Now Ms. Zhang is without any income and barely survives. She depends on help from her parents, relatives and close friends. The following is an account, in Ms. Zhang's own words, about the persecution:
My name is Zhang Xihong. I am 35 years old. I was once a resident of No. 135-8, Taian Alley, Taihe District, Jinzhou City in Liaoning Province. But I now live at No. 75-26, Xingye Alley, Jingye Street, Guta District, Jinzhou City in Liaoning Province.
In 1995, after giving birth to my baby, I got rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, indigestion, nerve malfunction and nephritis. Every day I had to take many pills and use acupuncture or electrotherapy. I would also have to go in for tests. I even took Chinese herbs. All of these helped only a little. In addition, I was made feeble and unable to hold my 11lb baby. My dresser was full of medical bottles of various sizes. In the summer, while others only wore a thin shirt, I would wear two shirts and still feel cold. During the spring and autumn, I had to put on a cotton-padded jacket and could not take it off until May. At that time I was only 25 years old, but had been tormented by illnesses and a low quality of life. I would secretly cry about the suffering inflicted on me at such a young age.
While visiting my mother in April of 1997 I encountered some Falun Dafa practitioners. They enthusiastically told me about Falun Dafa's health effects and how to cultivate one's moral character as well as the teaching of being a good person. A few months later I borrowed a copy of "Zhuan Falun." After reading the book with a calm state of mind, I found answers to my many questions about life. Afterwards, my worldview totally changed. I started to know the true meaning of life and how one should behave as a good person.
Before I read Zhuan Falun, I had actually acted like a crook when doing business. I cheated and stole things, and also shamefully tricked others, fought them or cursed them. After beginning my cultivation practice in Falun Dafa I got rid of all those bad habits. In sales, I would be honest and not cheat. I would even give out more than the amount bought. I respected my parents and my husband's parents and stopped fighting for personal gain among my sisters and brothers. I started to yield to others and bear the sufferings. I critically required myself to follow the standard of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.
Upon the elevation of my personal cultivation and moral behavior, my body went through earth-shaking changes too. Cold food that I had never dared to eat now became okay to eat. My hands and feet would not ache when encountering cool air or cold water. When I was excited due to some urgent matters, my heartbeat no longer went way up and I no longer felt weak. My body gradually recovered to normal and I enjoyed a sense of well being. My physical health and mental state produced smiles on my face every day and I enjoyed a harmonious atmosphere at home.
Just as I was experiencing all these blessings, Jiang Zemin started the suppression of Falun Dafa by overriding the national constitution with his personal will. At the end of August 1999, I went to Beijing to appeal to the central government by telling them my personal experience and the benefits I had gained from Dafa. I wanted to ask them to restore Falun Dafa's good name as well as Teacher Li's good name, but instead, I was unlawfully taken back to Jinzhou City and held in detention.
In 2002, on a Saturday morning around 6 a.m., when I was at home with my husband, a bunch of police arrived and knocked on our door. They announced, "We are from the police station, here to get Zhang Xihong. Open the door!" I answered back through the door, "Please see me during working hours. Right now, I can't open the door for you." I knew the police were up to no good. The persecution had been going on for almost four years and they knew by now that Dafa practitioners only want to be people of high moral standards, yet they still persecute unarmed and peaceful practitioners in pursuit of being rewarded by their superiors. Thousands of practitioners had been brutally persecuted to death, while a quarter million or so practitioners were sentenced to forced labor, causing their families to break up or practitioners being forced to leave home to avoid further persecution. I could not let them persecute me and help the tyrant do evil. I also could not leave my dear relatives without me.
Immediately, I called my husband's parents and my own parents, telling them, "The police are in front of my home demanding me to open the door without saying why. I will wait and see if they will go away so as to avoid unnecessary trouble." After hearing that, my mother-in-law came over right away to negotiate with the police. But it was useless, so she left. Then my sister and brother-in-law came. As they saw five or six policemen get out of a police car with a locksmith, my sister and her husband didn't dare to get closer to my house.
Around 8 a.m., the police had the locksmith try to pry open the lock of my apartment door. My husband grasped tight to the lock bar so as to resist their efforts. This situation went on for some time. Then suddenly another police van came with seven or eight fully armed policemen to charge towards my apartment. At the sight of this, my sister was scared to death. To avoid their persecution, while my husband was blocking up the door, I escaped from the east window of my apartment to the balcony on the 4th floor. Because of the police's intimidation, I fell down accidentally from the 5th floor. Meanwhile, the police broke into my apartment and pushed my husband down on the bed. They hit and beat him, cuffed him and restrained him so he was unable to move. A lady watching from outside passed out at seeing the whole process of my falling down. A policeman watching me from the first floor was stunned due to his fear. Seeing me falling through the second floor, my brother-in-law on the ground rushed to catch my body, but it was too late.
The ground floor of our apartment complex was within the Beichuan Road morning market, so the road was full of people, especially since it was a weekend . When my accident occurred, a sea of people crowded on to the scene. My brother-in-law called the emergency number "120" for an ambulance while my sister got dumbfounded and kept crying while she held me tight. Before I was sent to a hospital, the policemen stayed in my apartment. Some of them held my husband while others started to search my house. Later they dragged my husband to the police car and took him to the police station. After searching his body, they detained my husband several hours until his classmates and friends went to the police station to demand his release.
I was sent to a hospital in the city center for emergency rescue. Upon hearing about my accident, my parents, brothers, and other relatives came in a hurry to the hospital. They saw three or four guys carrying a video camera asking around about me; they wanted to videotape me. My sister told the relatives that those police officers were responsible for the harm done to me in falling. Thus, my family members bitterly denounced the bad deeds of those guys. As a result they hid for the time being, but still remained to monitor me quietly. During my 9-day stay in the hospital, there were always some plain-clothes police watching me.
Later I came out of the crisis and back to life. My relatives and friends said, "Fortunately you survived, otherwise those bad police video taping you could spread a rumor that you had gone haywire because of cultivation practice. The police would have said you committed suicide so as to fabricate a charge against Falun Dafa and to deceive the people. They would have freed themselves from their liability of causing harm to you, while they received rewards or promotions. Nobody is worse than those wicked police."
From then on I have suffered from severe paraplegia. My injuries included two fractured left ribs, three fractured right ribs, two cracks to the left shoulder, a broken and fractured right collarbone, two fractures to the right pelvis, and a broken thoracic vertebra between section 3 and 4 with marrow flowing out. Damage to my nerves and internal organs caused the paraplegia. My body is numb, and I lost control over bowel movements and urination. I cannot walk or take care of my daily necessities. I have to be bedridden forever.
Having already suffered the overwhelming pressure, my husband blacked out and fainted at hearing about my severe paraplegia. My mother is more than 60 years old and my father is 70-something. My family members and relatives have worried about me as well as bore immense pressure, causing their bodies to become weak without recovery. Economically, they have lost directly and indirectly more than 100 thousand yuan. Today, my parents still keep a vendor stand on the street to try and earn some money. Due to the persecution, my husband has suffered enormous mental pressure and became physically feeble. He takes some Chinese herbal medicine every day. In light of this, we both agreed to a divorce.
In this unprecedented persecution, I lost my family and became alone. My former husband lost his wife and became a lonely person. My son lost the tender loving care of his mother. My happiness and my once warm family have been torn to pieces.
Meanwhile, those police involved, and even the officials who sent out the command to persecute me are also victims themselves. Under the temptation of personal gains and the deceiving lies, unknowingly they have been used by the scoundrel Jiang's regime to do bad things. Hereby, I wish those of you being used can reverse and mend your ways so as to stop helping the tyrant do evil. Stop deliberately breaking the law. Stop persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners. Utilize the rights you possess to make amends for your previous faults by doing good deeds. For your own future, to avoid retribution, start now to collect evidence of the Jiang regime's persecution of Dafa. Also, I plead to the nice and kind people, for the sake of truth and justice, please help stop the persecution of the innocent practitioners and punish the murderers.