I am a female Falun Dafa practitioner in China. In March 2000 my local Public Security Bureau asked me whether, if Teacher Li were to be extradited from abroad, I would go appeal in Beijing. Then just for answering "yes" to that I was detained for 15 days and forced to pay a fine of 500 Yuan RMB (as much as two-months' salary of the average worker in urban China). Later on, in April, I realized that it' about time for me to go to Beijing and do something anyway. So without hesitation I went to Tiananmen Square to validate Dafa. Then I was arrested for that and jailed there for 4 months. During my detention I was tortured mentally and physically. Both my body and mind were badly harmed. I used to be overweight but became so skinny in the jail. If it were not for my firm belief in Master and Dafa, I could have been suppressed to the point of going insane. I am hereby writing about my experience in order to expose to the kindhearted people in the world the criminal acts of Jiang Zemin and his followers--how they persecute Falun Gong in China and how much they are physically, mentally, and financially harming practitioners. 1. Jail Guards Coerced Prisoners to Threaten and Torture Me Because of my firmness in not giving up Falun Dafa cultivation practice and refusing to write a "repentance statement," I was sent to a labor camp after two months of imprisonment. But due to the poor state of my health, they transferred me out of the camp and threw me back into the jail in my hometown. Then the jail guards started to have other prisoners torture me mentally in an inhuman way. At that time, all other practitioners who had been previously in the jail were moved to the labor camp, so only two other prisoners remained in my cell. At the hint of the head guard, these two former prostitutes threatened to murder me by suffocating me with a blanket. Although I was feeble, I still kept doing the Falun Gong exercises with my firm belief and a strong will. So they didn' scare me and their plot did not materialize. During one quite night, I overheard a male prisoner talking through the windows to the two female prisoners telling them to murder me in the bathroom and put human feces in my mouth so as to make it appear like I died due to cultivation insanity. On another occasion, as it was lightening, thundering, and raining heavily, somehow I could hear vaguely a conversation between this prisoner and the head guard. They were planning to bring me out in a car and then torture me to death somewhere outside the jail. I thought that before my death I still needed to stay committed to Falun Gong. So I meditated for more than an hour and sensed unusual tranquility amid the noisy environment, and without the interference having any effect. All of a sudden, the thunder boomed loudly and cracked the windowpane into pieces in the guards' room. I thought that was a warning from heaven against their wickedness. In order to prevent me from doing the Falun Gong exercises, at night the two female prisoners sang songs loudly and turned up the TV, as well as taking turns to torture me in other ways in order to not let me sleep. But I kept on reciting the Fa and waking up early to do the exercises. 2. They Tried Everything to Make Me Go Mad and Slander Dafa At the end of June, they called in my husband and said that before releasing me they needed to put me through physical examinations in a hospital. At the hospital, I felt some kind of instrument touching my head here and there. For an instant, my brain seemed to be stimulated by something and I felt terrible or even out of control. Meanwhile, the police escort told the doctor to write in his report that I was in seriously ill condition. The doctor was surprised to hear that and asked him, "Are you going into a life-and-death suit?" I sensed something fishy so I told the doctor I was a Falun Gong practitioner. As I lay down for more diagnostic examinations, I overheard the policeman' comment that "She' be gone in a few days since we' going to starve her to death." I therefore asked the doctor what my illness was. After the doctor handed over my medical record to me, I tore it to pieces. This scared the police escort so much that he turned pale. Later I learned that their intention was to prove that I was insane. Then it ended up that I had to pay for both the physical and mental examinations. After the hospital examinations, they did not release me. Back at the jail cell, during a few nights they shot in two bright beams of light, which reflected on the wall like a TV image and then came to shine on me. I shivered and felt like I was being electrically shocked. So I had to hide by covering myself with the blanket on my bed. Then I maintained righteous thoughts and kept reminding myself that I must not cause Dafa' image to be harmed. Later others said that the beams of light were for videotaping me. But even now I still don' know what exactly was happening with this type of torture. For two days I could not move at all but only lie down on the floor. The two other female prisoners tried to pull off my pants but they did not succeed in humiliating me this way. In that jail--a hell in the human world--humiliation and mental torture were with me at every moment. Even so, I was persistent in keeping up my cultivation practice in the cell and being firm enough not to write any "repentance statement" against Falun Dafa. My skin got worn down due to the corporal punishment of "sitting in" (I was forced to sit in an iron chair motionlessly for long periods of time). My body weight dropped more and more and I became bony. Now looking back, I realize that they were trying hard to drive me crazy, so that they could blame Falun Gong for causing "cultivation insanity" in me. Luckily later on more practitioners were put into the jail so they could not continue the mental torture on me, and the other prisoners there got worried about participating in my harassment. Twenty some people were involved in persecuting me and their ugly acts will certainly be made known to the outside world. Since I firmly believe in Dafa and Master, during the critical moments I maintained righteous thoughts and remembered not to cause any damage to Dafa. This way I was able to pass the trial and survive their torture in order to emerge from the demon' den safe and sound. A Dafa Practitioner in China April 12, 2001

All pictures were taken on Tiananmen Square in Beijing on April 25, 2001.

[Editor' note: The following is a speech delivered by a UK practitioner at the UN Conference on Human Rights in Geneva on behalf of the NGO Transnational Radical Party. The Chinese UN delegate interrupted her speech.]

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