(Clearwisdom.net) When communist China intensified the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners prior to the Beijing Olympics Games, the practitioners in my city were no exception. One day in early July, local police arrested nearly 200 and kept them in detention centers. That day, my wife and I were arrested, too, and our Dafa books, truth-clarifying materials, CDs, computers, CD burner, printer, and cash at home were all taken by the police.
We rejected the persecution by keeping silent during the ensuing interrogation, refraining from revealing fellow practitioners' contact information and the source of our informational materials, and refusing to sign the statements. So after several rounds of interrogation, the police had exhausted all their tactics. They even said to us, "Your fellow practitioner so-and-so has told us about what you've done," to which I replied, "I'll betray not a single practitioner."
Not able to get anything useful from us, they thought of economic gains. When my wife and I were called for the third interrogation, they told us to give them 20,000 yuan (approx. US$3,000) each and they would let us go home on bail. My wife immediately refused. "I need the money to raise my child and live a decent life. I won't give it to you," she said. "If you don't pay us, we'll send you to a forced labor camp," the interrogating officer said. "You are not the ones who decide such matters," my wife replied. When sharing on this later, she said that giving them money means supplying blood to the evil and that she could not justify it from any perspective. When the police asked me to give them money, I told them I wouldn't even though I had it. Although certain unrighteous thoughts crossed my mind momentarily, I managed to get rid of them with righteous ones, not acknowledging this financial persecution.
Because my wife and I resisted the police's demand for payment, other family members that were not practitioners did not pay either when they tried to secure our release through connections.
Later, when the police force-fed me, I became very sick with a heart condition--weakening of the heart. I awakened from a coma only after days of treatment and care at the hospital. Afraid that my family would hold them accountable, the police let my wife, who was still at the detention center and did not know what had happened, come to the hospital, and they quietly disappeared. So my wife and I did not pay the persecutors a penny, not even the hospital fees, which were paid by the detention center.
Now back at home, I've fully recovered and am doing what we are supposed to do.
September 21, 2008
