(Clearwidsom.net) An uncommon snowstorm swept through Dongying City, Shandong Province during the Lantern Festival on Feb. 28, 2010. Heavy winds, mixed with a blinding blizzard, along with thunder and lightning put everyone in awe. While gazing at the dancing snowflakes, I allowed my recollection of the past to surface.
I recalled Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, coming to Dongying to spread the Fa in February 1994. Despite the long journey, and giving up the opportunity to spend time with his family for the Chinese New Year, Master held a nine-day lecture to teach the Fa and exercises in the Kengli County auditorium. Afterwards, Master gave another two lectures at the Shengli Oil Field. Each time, upon concluding, the room erupted with a thunder of applause and cheering. Many people's illnesses that had plagued them for years were instantly cured. Buddha's compassion illuminated each and every place where the lectures were held. Everybody was immersed in a kind and benevolent atmosphere.
Falun Dafa quickly spread in Dongying. In the years that followed, the practitioners were often seen doing exercises in parks, school yards, public squares or roadsides. The melody of the exercise music along with the soft, slow movements gave the city a beautiful and harmonious atmosphere.
In Kengli County, a person's hunchback straightened up after practicing Falun Gong. In the Shengli Oil Field, a person's kidney stones came out with his urine. Up to now, he still keeps those stones as proof of Dafa's miraculous effects. An officer in the Shengli Oil Field decided to live a truthful life after he began the practice. After the persecution began in 1999, the police searched his office and found nothing but a pile of restaurant receipts. The 'findings' stunned everyone. Another officer at the Shengli Oil Field chose to work hard, without grievance after he obtained the Fa. When no one was willing to clean the office bathrooms, he took over the task and asked for nothing in return. A couple in the Transportation Company originally had a marriage that was falling apart. When the wife saw the enormous changes in her husband after he began practicing Falun Gong, she came back to him. Soon the family of three all became practitioners. These examples are too enormous to list. Wherever Falun Gong is spread, it upgrades morality, makes people behave with kindness, and promotes health, peace and happiness. As someone put it, "Falun Dafa can prove to be beneficial to the entire country."
Even with such a kind group of people, the former dictator of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Jiang Zemin, still willfully launched the unprecedented persecution against Falun Gong. It was like the clouds closed over the sky on July 20, 1999. All the regime's official media including TV stations, newspapers and radios broadcast fabricated stories slandering Falun Dafa. Suddenly, the group of people who believed in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance faced nothing but brutal persecution. Infuriating news about the persecution came to light, one after another.
According to available statistics, throughout the 10 years of persecution, a total of 4 practitioners from Shengli Oil Field died. 168 people were sent to labor camps. More than 900 people were arrested, detained or sent to brainwashing centers. Over 60 people went through 54 types of vicious torture, including: Twisting the flesh with pliers, the Tiger Bench, high-voltage electric batons, hanging upside down, force-feeding, sleep deprivation,Death Bed, injection of drugs that damage the central nervous system, iron cage imprisonment, burning with smoking cigarettes and sexual harassment, etc. At the local brainwashing centers--the official persecution places supported by the 610 Office, the total amount of money accumulated through extortion of Dafa practitioners in 153 persecution cases added up to 1.04 million Yuan. Almost every Dafa practitioner in the area had been persecuted in one way or another. As long as practitioners refused to give up their belief, they had to face the threat of losing their jobs, being expelled from school, and sentenced to forced labor camps. The persecution affected their families with no exceptions. Elderly parents were distressed by the brutal torture and harassment their children went through. Some of them developed serious illnesses and even lost their lives. Under-age kids became homeless because their parents were persecuted for their beliefs. Heartbreaking tragedies were happening every day.
In the winter of 1999, six practitioners, from Shandong province, went to Beijing with the hope of expressing their personal opinions to the central government. Four of them were arrested and sent back. The local authorities paraded them through the streets for public humiliation for 6 consecutive days. Five police cars drove ahead, followed by a military truck with anti-Falun Gong banners. Two under-dressed practitioners stood, handcuffed, on each side of the truck. The winter in Shandong was bone-chilling, with the temperature below zero centigrade. The center of the truck, on the contrary, was packed with heavily dressed policemen. The parade covered every single corner of the county.
A middle-school teacher from Shengli Oil Field was denounced by the police while doing exercises at a hotel in Beijing. He was sentenced to two years in a forced labor camp. During two months of inhuman torture, he developed cirrhosis and ascites, and was on the verge of death. To avoid responsibility, the officials in the labor camp asked his family to take him back home. The family could hardly recognize him when they went to pick him up: His clothes were tattered and ragged, his hair and beard a salt and pepper color; his abdomen bulged high up. He was unconscious with a high fever, while pus and blood emerged through a hole in his hip. He was sent home on Feb. 17, 2007 and died on Mar. 30, 2007 at the age of 52.
Similar examples also included an elderly man from Shengli Oil Field who was tortured for one month in a labor camp. After being sent back home, he lost the ability to take care of himself and died in Oct. 2000. A male practitioner from Shengli Transportation Company was imprisoned in an infamous labor camp. He went through various tortures, ranging from twisting the flesh with pliers, the Tiger Bench, high-voltage electric batons, sleep deprivation, and having burning cigarettes inserted into his nose. The damage to his body was so appalling that one could hardly bear the sight of it.