(Clearwisdom.net) The Chinese Communist Party's brutal policy of genocide against Falun Gong is defined as such: "defaming Falun Gong practitioners' reputations, bankrupting them financially, destroying them physically," and "transforming 1000f Falun Gong practitioners or leave none alive." The CCP's atrocious physical and mental persecution against Falun Gong practitioners is beyond description. Its inhuman, heinous crimes against practitioners are numerous. To transform 1000f Falun Gong practitioners is to give a choice only between giving up his/her belief in Falun Gong and enduring the forever-escalating persecution. For a determined practitioner, giving up his/her belief means spiritual death, while enduring unlimited persecution very possibly results in physical death. The CCP is deliberately eliminating the Falun Gong group of practitioners.

2. Horrific Tortures

According to the inquiry report by The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), more than 100 methods are used to torture Falun Gong practitioners, who are simply trying to be good people, including:

Using many high voltage electric batons together to shock the body's sensitive areas for a long time; various handcuffs and shackles; hanging-up in different positions; electrocution; beatings; inserting bamboo chips or iron nails into fingernails; punching with large needles; using iron wires to poke through the flesh; using clamps to crush the flesh; inhuman force feeding using a rough plastic tube and pouring in chili water, highly salted water, and feces; pouring cold water on naked practitioners in the cold of winter; exposing them to the burning sun during hot summer days; burning practitioners with fire; branding; submersing them in filthy water; burying them alive; preventing them from excreting; putting practitioners in dungeons or water dungeons; sleep deprivation; the Tiger Bench; "Splitting the body with five horses;" "Strait Jacket;" Death Bed; forced labor; rape of female practitioners; sexual torture; and injecting drugs that damage the nervous system or internal organs.

2.1 Physical Torture

The Tiger Bench:

Ms. Wang Yuhuan is a kindhearted woman in her 60's. Because she is firm in practicing Falun Gong, the Chinese police in Changchun City "illegally imprisoned" her and sentenced her to forced labor nine times within six years. She was tied to the Tiger Bench for three days and two nights. They repeatedly shocked her face with electric batons, which severely disfigured her. The police guards blew cigarette smoke into her eyes and poked into her ears with thin bamboo sticks. Just as they had done with other female practitioners, the guards stripped this senior woman naked before tying her to a wooden board with her arms and legs spread apart for as long as 26 days. During those 26 days of humiliation, she was subjected to numerous insults from the police guards, prison doctors, and male prison inmates. The following is her testimony:

"Several police guards pressed me down on the Tiger Bench and handcuffed me behind my back. Then they put my arms over the back of the Tiger Bench with my chest and abdomen tightly fixed by two steel clubs that crossed the bench and my feet held rigid by two big steel hoops. Then they began to brutally torture me, repeating the torture every five minutes. Every time, they pulled my arms forwards and backwards, I heard the sound of my bones cracking. I almost fainted from the excruciating pain. The floor was wet from my sweat and tears. The pain made me tremble continuously. This cruel torture was repeated every five minutes. My sweat, tears, and blood soaked my hair and clothes and the unbearable suffering caused me to faint repeatedly. They poured cold and boiling water on me to make me come to. I didn't want to endure the never-ending agony any longer. I wished they would shoot me."

During 17 days in March 2002, I was taken for torture three times, and each time the tortures were worse. They wouldn't release me until I was unconscious. The guards, in order not to let others see that I was covered in blood, put a very thick sweater and baggy pants on me. Even so, my blood still soaked through the sweater and the pants.

Electric shocks:

This is one of the most often used tortures. This torture is used in different ways, each more inhuman than the previous one. They wire a woman practitioner's nipples together and charge the wire with electricity. They use an electric needle that carries 220 volts and shock practitioners continuously until they faint and have numerous black spots on their bodies. They lock a practitioner in a small compartment with electric needles covering the walls. The practitioner can't squat or stand straight. Every time the victim moves, he/she receives a shock when touching the needles. They use up to a dozen electric batons to shock a practitioner's sensitive areas such as inside the mouth, the top of the head, the chest, the breasts, and the private parts. They even insert a baton inside a woman practitioner's vagina or a male practitioner's rectum. They wet a male practitioner's penis and use several batons to shock it at the same time.

On May 7, 2004, inside the Longshan Forced Labor Camp in Shenyang City, guards Tang Yubao and Jiang Zhaohua tried to force Ms. Gao Rongrong, a student of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, to write a Guarantee Statement to renounce Falun Gong. Ms. Gao was handcuffed to a warm air pipe and the guards shocked her face with electric batons many times. Her body twitched as the current went through her. Her facial skin buckled up, blistered, and burned. Her face swelled up and was so disfigured that no one could see her eyes. She sweated heavily. The air was suffocating to everyone and smelled of blood and burned flesh. The laughter of the guards and sound of sparks from the high voltage electric batons were the most horrible sound filling the area. While every minute seemed to last forever, she was tortured for seven hours. When Ms. Gao's incident was exposed to the international society, the world was shocked. Spotlighted by international public opinion, Luo Gan, head of the 610 Office, gave orders to "take good care" of this case and arranged to destroy the evidence secretly. On June 16, 2005, Ms. Gao was murdered at the age of 37.

Ms. Gao Rongrong before the persecution

Ms. Gao Rongron disfigured by electric shocks (Photo taken 10 days after she was injured.)

Strait Jacket:

Since April 2003, the Shibalihe Women's Forced Labor Camp in Henan Province has used "Strait Jackets" on Falun Gong practitioners who refuse to renounce the practice. The Jacket is made of fine canvas. It is put on from the front and ties in the back. The sleeves are about 10 inches longer than the victim's arms and there are strings on the sleeves. Guards put this jacket on practitioners, pull their arms behind them, cross them, and tie them down. Then the guards pull the arms upward, across the shoulder, to the chest, and then tie the strings to person's legs. They then hang the victim up on a window. Practitioners tortured this way have to wear earphones that continuously play words slandering Falun Gong. The guards stuff rags in the practitioner's mouth so no one can hear her cries. According to witnesses, this torture causes the victim's tendons and shoulders, elbows and wrists to tear and break immediately, and the arms are disabled. The backbones of those tortured by the Jacket over a long time all broke, and they died in excruciating pain. Within a few days, six practitioners were tortured to death this way, including a 60-year-old man.

In April 2003, the central 610 Office and the Ministry of Justice held a meeting in Hebei Province and demanded that forced labor camps nationwide start a "Spring Thunder Movement" to focus on "transforming" Falun Gong practitioners. This Strait Jacket torture was the "advanced technique" and was advertised nationwide.

Damaging Force Feeding:

When Falun Gong practitioners suffering from illegal imprisonment and inhumane torture go on hunger strikes to protest the persecution, they are forced to undergo "damaging force feeding." This is also a popular way to increase the number of transformed practitioners. The guards violently insert a hard plastic tube through a practitioner's nose to the esophagus and then pour in large amounts of overly salted water, chili water, liquor, or even irritating chemicals. To intensify the pain, the guards pull the plastic tube in and out repeatedly and cause practitioners' mouths and noses to bleed and injury to the esophagus. Some practitioners suffocated because the plastic tube mistakenly punctured the trachea. Some bled heavily and vomited blood because the tube punched a whole in the trachea or the lung.

Mr. Qu Yanlai, a graduate from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, won the top prize in chemistry and mathematics in the Chinese National Olympic Contest. He was a talented, considerate, and highly moral person. Because Mr. Qu insisted on practicing Falun Gong He was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison on September 30, 2002. To protest the persecution and strive for the right to the practice, Mr. Qu was on a hunger strike for over 900 days during his incarceration. The guards in the second prison ward of Shanghai Tilanqiao Prison brutally tortured him with force feeding, trying to destroy his willpower. The guards purposely poked around in Mr. Qu's stomach with a plastic tube and caused his stomach to bleed for over four months. After the torture, the guards dragged him up and down concrete stairs, scraping the skin and flesh off his legs and exposing his bones.

Mr. Qu Yanlai

Forty-one year-old Mr. Gao Xianmin was a teacher at Jinan University in Guangzhou City. On January 1, 2000, Mr. Gao and a dozen other Falun Gong practitioners were arrested while they were eating lunch at the Guangzhou's Tianhe Park. Guard Zhu Wenyong ordered ordinary prisoners to step on the practitioners' limbs, cover their noses with damp cloths, and force-feed them with highly salted water. Mr. Gao went into shock immediately and passed away a few days later.

Mr. Gao Xianmin, teacher at Jinan University in Guangzhou

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Zhang Shengfan, a disabled man who walked with crutches and made his own living, was only 38 years old when he was tortured to death. He was known as a very good man in his neighborhood and among his friends. On June 10, 2001, the police from Shuangcheng City, Heilongjiang Province, arrested him, telling him that he was needed at the police station for questioning. On June 12, prison doctor Mr. Na Yanguo and the deputy warden of Shuangcheng City Detention Center tried to force him to sell out his fellow practitioners. They inserted a plastic tube into his nose and poured Yuquan Daqu (a brand of high proof liquor) into the tube. Doctor Na Yanguo forced the alcohol into Mr. Zhang, causing him to choke and cry out in agony. Nevertheless, the prison doctor, the assistant director, and the cell supervisors continued to force-feed him once every minute. Mr. Zhang's shrieking grew weaker each time. By the last alcohol feeding, Mr. Zhang could only whisper weakly before he died.

Sleep Deprivation:

Professor J. Allan Hobson from the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote in his book, Sleep, "People who by choice or because of work, illness, or force of circumstance go without sleep for five to ten days become irrational, paranoid, confused..." Guards in the Xinan Forced Labor Camp in Beijing told Falun Gong practitioners, "We will treat you like spies and 'transform' you after you mentally collapse."

To force Mr. Li Deshan, an outstanding teacher from Dezhou City, Shandong Province, to give up practicing Falun Gong, guards in the Wangcun Forced Labor Camp in Shandong Province tortured him with the "Five Horses Split the Body," in which guards tied Mr. Li's legs and hands to two beds and pulled the beds away from each other; with "Flying," in which the guards hung Mr. Li up in the air with his toes barely touching the ground for over two weeks; by shocking him with high voltage electric batons; and by sleep deprivation, in which Mr. Li was allowed to sleep for only one or two hours per day for six months and was brutally beaten if he closed his eyes. After Mr. Li became delirious, the guards made him read words slandering Falun Gong and taped it. After he came to, the guards played the tape of to him in front of others to humiliate him. The guards repeated this type of torture. Mr. Li insisted on his practice and belief, despite continued torture, until he lost his life.

Ms. Luo Qingshu, in her 80s, was a retiree from the Bureau of Geology in Gansu Province. She was handcuffed and hung up in the air for a long time in the Gongjiawan Legal Training School (a brainwashing center) in Lanzhou City and was forced to write the Three Statements to renounce Falun Gong. Her legs were so swollen that the skin was shiny. She couldn't bend her legs and she couldn't take her pants off. The cuts from being handcuffed went deep into the flesh. Her hands were also swollen. Once she was handcuffed and hung up in the air for over 12 consecutive days without sleep. When they took her down, she was barely alive. During that time, guard Qi (first name unknown) slapped Ms. Luo's face so hard that her nose bled and her mouth and her face swelled. Qi yelled, "If you don't listen to the Communist Party, I will hang you up hundreds of times, peel your skin off, and draw out your tendons."

Volatile Tortures

"Dripping Naked:" Falun Gong practitioners are stripped naked in winter and drenched with ice-cold water, followed by a violent brushing of the entire body with a tooth-brush, until blood appears on the lacerated skin.

"Turtle Moving the Sand:" Practitioners are stripped naked in winter, drenched with water and covered with detergent. The victim is then rolled on the ground until blisters form all over the body, one bleeds, and passes out.

"Stir Fry the String Beans:" A practitioner's finger is sandwiched between toothbrush handles and smashed down hard, until the skin has come off. Sometimes the finger becomes severely infected and the bone sticks out.

"Fry and Stew Pig's Feet:" Practitioners are tortured by pressing a burning cigarette end against the fingernails, burning them. The smell is awful, and later the fingernail usually decays and peels off.

"Fire the Glands Penis:" Male practitioners have suffered incredible sexual torture and in this case have their penis foreskin tied with paper twine and then the paper is lit. Soon the penis foreskin begins burning and blistering, and later becomes infected, causing agonizing pain.

"Kneeling on a Nail Board:" A practitioner is forced to kneel down on a piece of wooden board through which nails have been driven upward like spikes. Then two accomplices stand on a plank placed on the person's bent knees, adding more weight to the knees.

2.2 Sexual Abuse

In his third letter to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the famous Chinese human rights attorney, Mr. Gao Zhisheng, said, "Almost all who have been persecuted, be they male or female, were first stripped naked before any torture. No language or words could describe or re-create our government's vulgarity and immorality in this respect." A woman Falun Gong practitioner that survived and escaped from the imprisonment said, "The evil there is beyond anyone's imagination."

Police in the second detention center of Beijing's Zhaoyang Police Station pushed women practitioners on the ground and put a wooden slab on their abdomens. Four officers stomped on the slab to ruin the women's internal organs. Practitioners bled after this treatment. When a single woman practitioner refused to compromise after she came to, the guards stripped her and four of them raped her. Some women practitioners were hung on a cross after they were stripped. They couldn't move and were not allowed to get off when they had to use the restroom. Some of them were menstruating and their blood ran down their legs, but the male guards walked around these women practitioners like nothing was happening. Young girls were not spared. Many guards would use dirty, shameless words to humiliate young women practitioners for a long time, pull their hair, slap them, kick them, and pinch their private parts.

In 2003, Ms. Wang Yunjie, a practitioner form Liaoning Province, refused to give up her belief in Truth, Compassion, Tolerance. Guards Guo Tieying and others in the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp used two high voltage electric batons to shock her breasts for several hours and caused her breasts to burn and fester. The next day, the guards forced Ms. Wang to double-cross her legs and used a cloth strip to tie her legs and head together to make a round shape. They handcuffed her behind her back and hung her up in the air by the handcuffs for seven hours. From then on, Ms. Wang could no longer sit or walk normally.

Festered breast due to electric shock

Ms. Chang Xuexia was from Dalian City, Liaoning Province. She was very quiet. She was locked in the Dalian Brainwashing Center and forced to "transform." Captain of the guards Wan Yalin ordered criminal offenders to strip her and hang her up in the air, beat and kick her, pinch her nipples, pull her pubic hair, and violently brush her vagina with a shoe brush. The guards used a rough rope to violently rub back and forth on Ms. Wang Liyun's private part. They stabbed her vagina with the rough end of a broomstick and caused severe bleeding and swelling in her lower abdomen and vaginal area. She couldn't wear pants, couldn't squat down when she used the toilet, couldn't pee, and couldn't sit for two months. Her legs were also crippled. Ms. Fu Shuying, 60 years old; Ms. Cheng Hui, 27 years old; and Ms. Sun Yan, 30 years old, were stripped and handcuffed into a T-shape. The evil guards used rough toothbrushes to violently stab into their vaginas until they were bleeding heavily. They even poured chili water and stuffed chili noodles into the victims' injured vagina areas. These practitioners were in excruciating pain and traumatized. They even did this to very young girls.

Brushing the vagina with a shoe brush (torture exhibition)

Inside the Shibalihe Women's Forced Labor Camp in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, guards ordered drug addicts to strip a 47-year old practitioner, hang her up in the air, and stuff dirty rags into her vagina. They then kicked her groin with hard-toed shoes and brushed her vagina with a toothbrush. Another practitioner refused to scold Teacher and was hung on an iron window after being stripped. The gangs took turns grabbing her breasts and pulling them down with force. Blood streamed from her nipples.

In Guangdong Province, guards in almost all detention center and forced labor camps brutally beat women practitioners' chests and private parts, electrically shock their breasts and groins, burn their nipples with lighters, insert electric batons into their vaginas and shock them, poke and twist several toothbrushes inside their vaginas, use a fire hook to poke their vaginas, and have male guards improperly touch women practitioners' private parts in public and humiliate them. The means used were extremely debased and cruel.

The sexual torture of male practitioners is also horrifying and shocking.

Mr. Qu Hui, 35 years old, went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in January 2000 and was taken to the Dalian Forced Labor Camp. On March 19, 2000, the camp organized a group of guards to participate in torturing practitioners and used many torture instruments. Practitioners were brought into a room one by one and brutally tortured until they signed the Guarantee Statement that they would renounce Falun Gong. Practitioners were forced to use dirty words to denounce Teacher and Dafa. The whole building was full of roars of pain and blood curdling screams. Practitioners were physically disfigured and lay on the floor in excruciating pain. The scene was just as one imagines hell to be like.

Mr. Qu was tortured from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next morning. Guards used electric batons to shock his body and penis. They burned Mr. Qu's penis until it festered. They also used a plastic baton and smashed the flesh on his buttocks. The baton broke his neck and he vomited blood and fainted many times. Guard Qiao Wei beat Mr. Qu and at the same time laughed and told the bystanders, "I haven't had fun like this for many years."

Mr. Qu was exhausted and dying the next morning when he was sent to a hospital. Twenty days later, he had still lung problems and was unable to breath. His trachea was cut open and he was on a breathing machine. His had kidney problems and a catheter was inserted into his bladder. He also was given intravenous injections. His buttocks had festered down to his pelvic bone. His spine was exposed. His penis was festered and bleeding. His neck was broken. He is still paralyzed.

Mr. Qu Hui's family portrait before the persecution

Mr. Qu Hui became paralyzed due to the brutal beating by the guards in the Dalian Forced Labor Camp

Bloody urine

Disabled leg due to the torture.

In the secret torture room located on Jingyue Mountain in Changchun City, practitioner Mr. Zhang Zhikui was stripped and immobilized on a Tiger Bench. He was handcuffed, and a guard repeatedly flipped his hands from the front to the back. His bones cracked and broke. The excruciating pain made him struggle so hard that his ankles, which were shackled, rubbed against the restraint so violently that his bone and tendon were exposed. The guards used cigarettes and candles to burn his back and drizzle wax on him. Mr. Zhang was badly disfigured, but the guards couldn't make him compromise, even by electrically shocking and finally crushing his penis.

Bloody scenes are a daily occurrence. Brutality and horrifying tortures means are commonplace in the forced labor camps.

2.3 Sexual Violation

According to the Falun Gong Human Rights Report: "Driven by their animal desires, the prison guards raped or even gang raped women Falun Gong practitioners. The guards have also stripped women Falun Gong practitioners naked and thrown them into male prison cells at the mercy of beastly male prison inmates."

Ms. Wei Xingyan, a third-year graduate student earning a Master's Degree in High Voltage Power Transmission at Chongqing University, was 28 years old when a policeman raped her in a detention center. The police illegally arrested her on May 11, 2003, when she was clarifying the truth about Falun Gong. On the evening of May 13, a policeman in Baihelin Detention Center in the Shapingba District took her to a room and ordered two female prison inmates to strip her naked. Next the policeman threw her to the ground, pressed against her body, and raped her in front of the two inmates. Ms. Wei firmly warned the officer, "I have memorized your police badge number! You won't get away with this!" After the rape, Ms. Wei went on a hunger strike to protest this outrage, so the police maliciously punished her by purposely injuring her trachea when they inserted the feeding tube. As a result, she no longer could talk.

After the despicable rape was exposed to the world, the Shapingba Public Security Branch did not punish the policeman who had committed the crime. Instead, they arrested several dozen Falun Gong practitioners that had helped expose the rape. The 610 Office in Chongqing and Chongqing University worked together to conceal the truth. Chongqing University even denied the existence of Ms. Wei Xingyan or the academic department of High Voltage Power Transmission. Female college students who had been on the same floor of the dormitory as Ms. Wei were suddenly missing. Everyone who talked about Ms. Wei became a target of the staff from the 610 Office. All the policemen with insider information about the rape were transferred elsewhere. To this date, the whereabouts of Ms. Wei Xingyan is still unknown.

In the evening on November 25, 2005, police officer He Xuejian from Dongchengfang Town Police Station, Zhuozhou City, Hebei Province, raped Ms. Liu Jizhi, 51, and Ms. Han Yuzhi, 42, two Falun Gong practitioners in Xituan Village, Dongchengfang Town, during a so-called "official investigation." It was at this time that a group of rapporteurs from the United Nations were investigating torture in China.

The police beat Ms. Liu Jizhi with stun batons and rubber clubs. They demanded, "How many people are practicing Falun Gong in your village?" A policeman named He Xujian even groped her body in a lewd manner and told her obscenely, "Do you think I am being thuggish?" Later he took Ms. Liu to a room with two beds. Officer Wang Zengju was also present. He Xujian pressed Ms. Liu against one bed and started groping her breasts. Then he lifted her shirt up and shocked her breasts with a stun baton. While watching the sparks from the stun baton, He Xuejian repeatedly commented, "This is fun! This is fun!" Despite Ms. Liu's protests and struggles, He Xuejian stripped off her shirt. During the struggle, Ms. Liu pleaded, "You are a policeman! You must not commit such a crime! This is totally wrong! You are a young man! I am an old woman. Please spare me." He Xuejian ignored her pleas and took out his penis and penetrated her. During the rape, He Xuejian repeatedly slapped her face and choked her neck. The other policeman, Wang Zengjun, simply looked on and did nothing to stop the outrage. Shortly afterwards, He Xuejian raped 42-year-old Ms. Han Yuzhi.

The savage beating and rape marked Ms. Liu Jizhi's body with many bruises

In June 2000, Masanjia Forced Labor Camp in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, stripped 18 women Falun Gong practitioners naked and threw them into a male prison cell at the mercy of the brutal male inmates. The camp encouraged the male prison inmates to rape and abuse them. The camp has also stripped women practitioners naked and forced them to stand naked in front of a video camera in order to humiliate them. They have also forced women practitioners to stand outside naked in the snow. They have also shocked women practitioners' genitals with stun batons. All the aforementioned rapes and sexual offenses were done for the purpose of making them give up their belief in Falun Gong and its cultivation principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance.

The Chinese Communist Party and Jiang Zemin's faction have turned sexual abuses and molestations into official routines, turned thuggish crimes into a national policy, and turned sexual offenses into a means to force Chinese people to give up their spiritual belief in Falun Gong.

2.4 Psychiatric Abuse

Beside mental and physical tortures, the CCP has also used drugs to destroy practitioner's nervous systems and caused them to become mentally disoriented or even to become vegetables. According to the joint investigation report by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong and China Mental Health Watch, cases of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners with abusive psychiatric treatment are common occurrence in 23 provinces. Numerous practitioners have been persecuted to death by poisonous drugs. Most of the psychiatric hospitals were forced (by the CCP) to disregard medical ethics and join the persecution. Most doctors said that they knew Falun Gong practitioners were normal but still used various poisonous drugs on them because the doctors had to perform their political tasks or would lose their jobs. This persecution is a systemically arranged and implemented policy.

This happened in a psychiatric hospital in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province. The "medical staff" tied an absolutely normal Falun Gong practitioner on a bed and injected and fed the practitioner with drugs. The practitioner became unconscious immediately. Once the practitioner woke up, she/he was in excruciating pain. Another practitioner asked a medical staff member, "Why do you give me drugs when I am not sick?" The person answered, "There is nothing I can do. I have to keep my job. If you stop practicing Falun Gong, I won't have to give you drugs. But you should never try to run away. If I don't gradually decrease the dose of the drug I am giving you, even if you escape, you will be in excruciating pain from the drug withdrawal." One day when a practitioner was doing the sitting meditation, the director came over and threatened the practitioner, "Are you still practicing? I will increase the dose of your drug so that you will wish you were dead!"

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Wu Chunlong was from Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province. Mr. Wu used to have severe rheumatoid arthritis and couldn't walk. Only after he started the practice did he know the feeling of being healthy. After the persecution of Falun Gong began, Mr. Wu went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong twice and was brutally tortured. To force him to give up his belief in Truth, Compassion, Tolerance, guards Liu Hongguang and Yang Chunlong tortured him with the "Tiger Bench" for seven days in the Jiamusi Forced Labor Camp. Later they injected him with unknown drugs. A few days later, Mr. Wu lost control of his bowels and became paralyzed from his knees to waist. He couldn't feel anything or think properly. Later he lost his memory and ability to think. He had no facial expression or reactions. His muscles atrophied and he became skin and bones. On April 30, Mr. Wu's life was in danger and the guards extorted money from his family before letting him go. The guards extorted almost 20,000 yuan from Mr. Wu's family. On August 20, 2005, Mr. Wu passed away at the age of 30.

Mr. Wu Chunlong before the persecution

Mr. Wu Chunlong one week before he passed away. He was only skin and bones

Mr. He Weihua, an independent intellectual and a freelancer, was confined to the psychiatric hospital because he criticized the government. He said, "In that hospital I witnessed those who firmly believed in Falun Gong being violently beaten, stripped and tied down on cold metal beds, and being force fed or destroyed by drugs. They were either injected with drugs or had a plastic tube going from their nose to their stomach through which drugs were dispensed. I witnessed a victim's legs tremble and the eyeballs roll up. The victim appeared in terrible pain and as if his eyeballs were going to pop out, but he couldn't make a sound. Those normal, lively people became zombies within a few days. From then on, they looked pale, with lifeless eyes, closed faces, and sluggish. Some even lost their memory and ability to think. Until now, I haven't been able to finish any article exposing the tribulations of Falun Gong practitioners. These articles suffocate my emotions so that I can barely breathe. These firm believers' ordeals are more than 'hell on earth.'"

(To be continued...)