[Northeastern China] The voice of Falun Dafa echoed in the skies above northwestern China
Practitioners at a certain northwestern Chinese city were inspired after reading a report on Minghui. After several days of hard work, in the evening of December 30th, 2000, the practitioners managed to play a Falun Gong radio program right next to the female labor station of the city. The sounds of the radio program shook the night sky, scared the evil people witless, and greatly encouraged local practitioners. Right after that, in the early morning hours of January 1st, practitioners hung over 300 banners, big and small, on the trees next to three major roads of the city, and they also spray painted the words "Falun Dafa is good" on the walls.
[Beijing] Heartless police in the Beijing suburb of Yanqi
According to practitioners who managed to escape, many practitioners who were arrested in Tiananmen Square on January 1st were sent to a newly constructed labor station in the Beijing suburb of Yanqi, where they were brutalized. Several male police officers stripped several female practitioners naked, beat them with electric batons, and sexually abused them. They truly have completely lost their sense of humanity.
[Beijing] Police make a fortune from beating practitioners on Tiananmen Square
In the afternoon of December 31st, 2000, one Beijing practitioner went to Tiananmen Square. As soon as he got there, before he did or said anything, the police came over and asked him point blank if he was going to continue to practice Falun Gong. The practitioner said yes. As soon as he said that, the police immediately hit the head of the practitioner with an electric baton, causing a huge knot. They then pushed the practitioner into a police car and drove to the front gate of the Tiananmen Police Station. A policeman came out and gave 400 Yuan (easily 2 weeks pay for an average policeman) to each of the 6 or 7 policemen in the car, and said, "Here is your reward for arresting Falun Gong practitioners. You guys worked really hard." After receiving the reward money, the police then drove the practitioner to another police station in the Beijing district of Haidian.
[Beijing] Beijing practitioners placed under 48-hour surveillance around the New Year
According to insiders, the Beijing police department placed many practitioners under 48-hour surveillance around the New Year. Qiang Wei, the head of the Ministry of Public Security, sent out a decree stating that the police could directly arrest the so-called "key" practitioners without cause. All the local police stations were assigned responsibility to watch practitioners living in their jurisdictions. If any practitioner caused any "problem" around the New Year, the local police officers would be punished. This pressure was applied from top to bottom. The authorities also applied heavy pressure to the local residential neighborhood commissions where the practitioners live, the family members of practitioners, and their workplaces. The victims of the decree not only included millions of practitioners themselves, but numerous other families who were associated with them in one way or another, no matter how distant that association was. Some practitioners were arrested and taken from their homes without cause, some were forced to stay at work over the holidays, and some were watched by the clerks from their local residential neighborhood commissions and not allowed to leave their homes. One practitioner was arrested on his way to his hometown to visit his elderly mother over the holidays and is being detained in Beijing.
[Harbin, Helongjiang Province] Harbin police set up a Falun Gong surveillance center
The police department in Harbin has set up a surveillance center in the Taiping district, targeting cell phones, home phones, and pagers. We hope that practitioners in that area pay special attention to this development and not expose themselves to unnecessary risks.
On January 2nd, the Taiping district police arrested a group of Falun Gong practitioners, who have not been heard from since. The police in the city have been especially vicious recently, illegally ransacking homes, arresting practitioners, and trying to coerce confessions through torture. Before this wave of police brutality, Luo Gan (one of Jiang Zemin's main followers behind the persecution of Falun Gong) personally came to Harbin to hold a secret meeting, issuing strict orders to the local departments to intensify their persecution of Falun Gong. This is because in the recent months, there has been a sharp increase in the number of practitioners from Helongjiang province going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. It is also rumored that Jiang Zemin plans to attend the annual Ice Festival in Harbin. All the Falun Gong practitioners would like to take this opportunity to declare: It will not be long before the name of Falun Gong is cleared. At this critical moment in history, we hope that the evil people involved will discontinue your inhumane, unjust acts. We have recorded all your evil deeds and will gradually expose them to the international community.
[Beijing] The police arrest another group of practitioners from the famed Qinghua University
On the New Year's Day around 1 a.m., another group of Qinghua practitioners were arrested in their homes. Among them were Liu Wenyu, Yao Yue, Meng Jun. It is not clear how many others were arrested. After being sent to the police station, they were brutally beaten. At this point, most of the student practitioners at Qinghua have been arrested without cause and brutally tortured. We hope that Qinghua alumni and friends in China and abroad, as well as kind people of the world, can lend a hand to help them.
[Mainland China] Party advanced education center turned into jail
A group of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in the dormitory of a district party advanced education center. Before New Year's Day, special task force "610", in order to "defend" against the unarmed and completely harmless practitioners, reinforced the dormitory's hallways with steel beams. It is rumored that the education center is preparing to accept more practitioners.
[Xinyang City, Hubei Province] The local authorities step up persecution of Falun Gong practitioners
After many flyers that exposed Jiang Zemin's brutal persecution of Falun Gong appeared in the city of Xinyang last November, the city government has mobilized a large number of police officers and other city workers to conduct a full-scale suppression of Falun Gong practitioners. Since then, the police have arrested a large number of local practitioners without cause, and it appears as if the situation is only getting worse. More than 38 local practitioners have been arrested since November, and the police are conducting manhunts for other practitioners. The police have abused and tortured those practitioners that they arrested, and attempted to coerce them into signing false confessions. Sleep deprivation of up to 70 hours was not uncommon. Some practitioners had their clothes stripped off and were left outside to freeze. After being tortured, some practitioners could hardly be recognized and could no longer walk on their own. The authorities used young police officers from the detective squad to torture practitioners in the middle of the night. At present, except a few cases where their families were able to secure their release after posting hefty bails ranging from 2,000 Yuan to 10,000 Yuan, most of the practitioners who were arrested are still being detained. At least six of them have been sentenced to terms in prison, and at least three other practitioners have been sent to the labor camps. A number of practitioners are awaiting "trials." Many practitioners have had their salaries or pensions suspended for long periods of time and are struggling desperately to make ends meet. All the local practitioners are living under grave danger, and we ask the kind-hearted people everywhere, human rights organizations, and the anti-torture committee of the United Nations to look into this matter, and urge the Chinese government to stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners.
[Mainland China] Please be on high alert for secret agents pretending to be practitioners
A few secret agents from the Chinese Security Bureau told Beijing practitioners that they had been asked by practitioners from another location to deliver Falun Gong truth-clarifying material to them. They claimed that the police had placed them on the wanted list, that they could no longer stay in their own homes, and that they had decided to devote themselves to doing things for the Dafa. They claimed that knowing more practitioners would help them do a better job of spreading the Fa, and they asked practitioners to introduce them to practitioners from outside of Beijing. Once they met the practitioners, they shared good technical solutions on how to do a better job at printing and copying Dafa material, and how to bypass firewalls to visit the Dafa web sites. That way, they quickly gained the trust of kind-hearted practitioners. In the end, in all the places that they visited, the practitioners who met them all ended up getting arrested one by one. Practitioners are asked to watch out for this kind of agents. Do not easily trust people that you do not know from before.
[Shantou, Guangdong Province] The story of how the police deceived a practitioner after arresting him
Zhang Qiaodong (a pseudo name), a Shantou practitioner in his early 20s, was arrested for holding up a Falun Gong banner in Tiananmen Square on December 23rd. He was first locked up in the Tiananmen Police Station and then transferred to a detention center in the neighboring province of Hebei. There, the local police played a trick on the kind-hearted practitioner. They suggested that the practitioner use the police's cell phone to call a friend to bring his ID card. The police said that once they had his ID card, they would release him with no strings attached. The practitioner believed what the police told him and used the cell phone to call home. Before he said a word, he realized that he had made a mistake, but it was too late. The police obtained the home number of the practitioner through the cell phone call log. A short while later, they called the practitioner's home and asked his mother if she knew the practitioner. His mother said no, but it was useless. The Shantou police confiscated the family homes both in the city and in the suburb, closed their privately-owned factory, and forced them to pay a 10,000 Yuan fine. This episode caused quite a stir among the Shantou police, as the local regulation stated that a practitioner would be directly sent to the labor camps if he had gone to Beijing twice, and the local officials in charge would be fired from their jobs as well.
[Xinyu County, Guangxi Province] A report on the suffering of some Guangxi practitioners
In the evening of June 22nd, 2000, more than 100 practitioners from the Guangxi counties of Biliu, Yulin, Luchuan, and Bobai gathered in Xinyu to hold an experience sharing conference. The police discovered them, tied them up one by one, and took them away. Some practitioners were tied up too tightly and lost consciousness. Many practitioners were beaten, kicked, locked up in the local police stations or detention centers for several days and then forced to attend a "transformation class." They were locked up or forced to run outdoors, when the temperature hovered at around 100 deg F (36-37 deg C), beaten, verbally abused, or forced to take medicine even though they were perfectly healthy. Everyday they were only given just two meals, which consisted a bowl of rice soup and a stick of preserved carrot.
The following describes the suffering of a few practitioners:
Chen Huihong: at the beginning of March 2000, the police asked her to come to the police station for a talk, and proceeded to lock her up for 2 days without cause. She was then moved to the Beiliu Detention Center, where she was detained for 25 days, including 2 days of solitary confinement for refusing to sign (a pledge promising to give up Falun Gong). After she was released, she attended a group practice session and was arrested again. She was thrown into solitary confinement again, during which time she was not given any water for an entire week.
Su Yujuan: she was arrested for performing the Falun Gong exercises at a public square on March 14th, 2000 and detained for 24 days. On June 22nd, she was arrested again for attending the Xiyu experience sharing conference. The police tied her up and hung her on top of a window, and they did not let her down until the next day. She was then transferred to a local detention center, where she was held for 15 days. She had to carry 40 cartloads of muddy dirt on her shoulders every single day. After that, she was sent to a "transformation class" for 14 days.
Li Chengzhen: she was arrested for performing the Falun Gong exercises at a public square on March 14th, 2000, and was detained for 27 days. She went back to practice Falun Gong exercises at the same square on May 10th, and was detained for another 15 days. On June 22nd, she was arrested a third time for attending the Xiyu experience sharing conference, and sent to a local detention center. She was verbally and physically assaulted, and forced to wear shackles around her feet for refusing to memorize the bylaws of the detention center. The head of the detention center hit her head and face with a broomstick, and locked her outdoors under the extreme heat after she refused to work alongside the prisoners. After serving a 15-day sentence, she was sent to a "transformation class" for 17 days. Practitioners Lu Shian and Xie Jianglan were also punished along with her.
In the Guangxi region of Guipin, 13 practitioners went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in August of 2000. Ten of them were sent to a labor camp in the city of Nanning, and three of them were released.
In the Guangxi region of Bobai, a practitioner with the surname of Lin was sent to the Nanning labor camp. At the beginning of December 2000, two practitioners were arrested without cause. A group of practitioners went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in mid-December, and more than a dozen practitioners were arrested and are being detained to this day.
The suffering of local practitioners in the Guangxi region of Yulin:
Lu Dingye: male, he was arrested at his home in November 1999 without cause, and detained for more than two months. The police confiscated his cell phone and pager, and forced him to pay a fine of 5000 Yuan (5 months' average salary). His employer refuses to let him go back to work, and is only paying him a small living allowance every month.
He Aiping: female, the police took her to the police station to interrogate her several times from July 1999 to September 1999. Her employer demoted her to work in the factory, and she was also forced to attend a "transformation class." Left with no other choice, she went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on September 30th of 1999. She was arrested, brought back to Yulin on October 29th, 1999, and sentenced to three years in prison. She filed two appeals, both denied by the high court. Her "trial" was conducted in March 2000, and some practitioners who attended the trial were arrested on the spot.
Wei Lianfang, Chen Guojing, Li Xiaomei and Huang Leguan worked for the local pharmaceutical company. They were all demoted to work in the factory and forced to attend a "transformation class" simply for being Falun Gong practitioners. Their monthly bonuses of 1000 Yuan were suspended as well. They went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and were arrested. They were only released after their families paid hefty fines. Their employer fired them, and then attempted to take away their apartments, which they had already bought and paid for. They were only able to keep their apartments after a person in the city government in charge of housing intervened on their behalves.
Li Jinlin, Lin Shangyun: they were arrested for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in October of 2000, and were forced to pay a fine of 2000 Yuan each. On July 9th, 2000, they were arrested again without cause and released on August 23rd. They were arrested a third time for telling people the truth about Falun Gong, and are being detained to this day. They are conducting hunger strikes in prison.
Yao Nanping, Wen Chongguang, Wen Dihua, Yang Wei, Zhang Jianjun, and Ai Jinli were all sent to the Nanning Labor Station.
Chen Zhi: male, he was arrested twice for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and was forced to pay hefty fines. On July 9th, 2000, the local police station asked him and several other practitioners to attend a meeting, and then proceeded to detain him to this day.
In the Yulin region, more than 20 people went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in the year of 1999. They were all arrested and detained, and all the male practitioners had their heads shaved. After they were released, their employers refused to let them go back to work. In the year of 2000, more than 10 practitioners went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and many of them are being detained to this day. One person was released after paying a fine of 18,000 Yuan (18 months' average salary).
