B.34 A Practitioner's Experience of Defending Falun Dafa on Chinese National Day
At 9:00AM on October 1st, 2000, I was in Tiananmen Square together with many other practitioners to speak out for Falun Dafa. From the square, buses full of arrested practitioners were slowly driven out one after another. From inside the buses, the sound of the practitioners' voices: "Falun Dafa is good," "Falun Dafa is righteous," and "restore the innocence of our teacher" resonated throughout the square. Practitioners stuck out their heads, eyes filled with tears, waved to people outside, telling them that Falun Gong is righteous.
I was dragged onto a bus by a couple of policemen. They were trying to close the windows on the bus while cursing: "We'll smash you!" because practitioners were sticking out their heads or arms while talking to people. As we drove, practitioners opened up the windows and shouted to the people along the street: "Falun Dafa is good, Falun Dafa is righteous!" The armed police on the bus got very nervous and started pushing very hard on the windows, trying to close them. Practitioners, on the other hand, were pushing hard from the other side to keep them open, and at the same time, other practitioners started introducing Falun Dafa to the armed police. Telling them the true facts about Falun Gong. Telling them that more than 50 practitioners had already died in the suppression being directed by Jiang Zemin. That tens of thousands of practitioners have been illegally sentenced to prison terms, sent to labor camps, detained, beaten, their homes raided and belongings confiscated, fined and fired from their jobs or expelled from school. The armed police listened, and slowly, they loosened their hands. In this way, our chanting never stopped. The public along the road learned that we were arrested because of practicing Falun Gong, all the way until we arrived at the branch office of the police in Qianmen.
We entered the yard of the branch office with our heads held high. Immediately we heard "The Buddha's light shines through everywhere and illuminates and harmonizes everything" and some loud applause. It was all a haze before my eyes. I waved to the fellow practitioners who had arrived earlier. When the police came with video cameras, practitioners held up pictures of teacher in the books, long banners saying "Falun Dafa is Good," and big yellow T-shirts with "Zhen-Shan-Ren" (Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance) characters, and shouted together "Falun Dafa is good," and "Peacefully resolve the Falun Gong issue." Some practitioners had tears streaming down their faces. The scene was incredibly moving.
A woman in her thirties suddenly came forward and said, "We want to see General Secretary Jiang." I felt that something was wrong when I heard this. Later, the police wanted to send us somewhere else and the practitioners wouldn't go, so they started to drag us violently. We practitioners then had our arms locked together so as not to be dragged away. At this point, a tall man in a suit behind us started yelling, "Push forward!" and pushed forward really hard. The group followed and pushed forward together, and the police took this chance to record it on videotape. I felt that something wasn't right, and turned back and looked at the man. In his eyes I saw fear and guilt. I immediately shouted toward the back: "Let's calm down, use reason." The practitioners all calmed down. We began to suspect these two people. To no one's surprise, when we were escorted to the yard of the detention center in Miyun county of Beijing, these two had disappeared. Later on, other practitioners told us that they had left through the back door. No wonder -- they were two spies who were mingling with the practitioners and waiting for opportunities to make trouble and to frame practitioners. When we were deeply moved a while ago, it was really easy to be led by sentiment, and we were almost tricked by the spies. From this we understood: as practitioners we should always set higher standards for ourselves. Even when doing the most sacred things, we cannot mix them up with any human sentiments, and should always maintain compassion and reason.
The practitioners who were assigned numbers were gradually sent to different police offices to be cross-examined. Those who refused to give their names were beaten badly. The policeman cross-examining me concentrated on reading the article I gave him on exposing Jiang Zemin's crimes. I took the chance to tell him the facts of how Jiang had been persecuting practitioners. He was shocked, because he had no idea that about 52 practitioners had been beaten to death.
In the evening we were again sent back to the detention center of Miyun county, and we shared our experiences with each other. In the prison there was an old lady in her sixties. She had been badly kicked by the police on her left arm while holding a banner on Tiananmen Square, and was left immobile. But she was still smiling, and told us how wonderful it was for her to completely get rid of selfishness when unfolding the banner. Another practitioner went on a hunger strike in a detention center to protest the injustice against Falun Dafa. On the ninth day of his hunger strike, the chief of the detention center lost his patience. He was surprised by the fact that this practitioner was still alive after 9 days with no food, so he asked, "Why don't you eat any food? Are you eating some high-energy substance?" Through various tribulations that these practitioners endured, they were enlightened to the principle of selflessness and fearlessness: only when one has cultivated to the state of no selfishness can he stand up fearlessly for the Truth.
At night we heard the yelling of the policemen next door and practitioners' agonized screams. Later we learned that practitioners were being savagely beaten for practicing Falun Gong exercises. One of the evil policemen kicked a female practitioner in the head, her body fell and her head banged against the wall. She lost consciousness instantly.
The second day, I was sent to the Beijing Liaison Office of the city where I came from. There I told the police who escorted me how practitioners have been persecuted. He listened attentively.
Later on I gained a deeper understanding of what Teacher says in one of his articles: "to be detained is not the purpose" ("Rationality"), to validate Falun Dafa is the most important thing at present. Therefore in the afternoon of October 2nd, I walked out of the Liaison Office building under the surveillance of a dozen plain-clothed policemen, and came back to Tiananmen Square to tell the world the injustice against Falun Dafa.