[Editor's note: Ren Pengwu, male, 32 years old, was an employee of the Third Power Plant of Haerbing City, Heilongjiang Province. Ren was a righteous person and a hard worker. His employer gave him the "Honorable Employee" award many times. He started practicing Falun Dafa in 1996. On February 16, 2001, he was reported to police by some informers and was arrested while distributing fliers that clarified the truth about Falun Dafa. Ren was brutally beaten and inhumanly tortured by police from the Public Security Bureau of Hulan County. Ren died from this persecution early in the morning of February 21, 2001. This article was extracted from a draft of his incomplete cultivation story, "My Journey of Safeguarding Falun Dafa," which has been widely circulated in Hulan County.]

First Appeal in Beijing

The first time that I went to Beijing to appeal, I wanted to restore the reputation of my Teacher and seek justice for Falun Dafa. In February of 2000, my employer detained me in the Employee's Sanatorium to prevent me from going to Beijing to appeal. During the detention period, I was under a lot of pressure, as my boss was trying to coerce and bribe me, and my family members misunderstood me and complained. I was able to clarify the true facts about Falun Dafa to them by relaying my personal experiences, and by revealing the truth of the evil persecution of Falun Dafa. I spoke with compassion to my family members and tried to awaken each of their consciences. At that time, I figured that no external pressure should restrict my determination to seek justice for Falun Dafa, so I began trying to escape.

On the seventh day in detention, I was presented with an opportunity to get out. It was snowing and the cold wind chilled me to the bone. Wearing light shoes, I crossed the Songhuajiang River, which has a temperature that is typically well below zero in the winter, walked over 20 kilometers (12.4 miles), and arrived at the railway station of Haerbin City. While I sat on the train to Beijing, I had a feeling in my heart that I could not express in words. My heart was calling out loudly, "Teacher, here I come!" After I arrived in Beijing, I could not find the Central Appealing Office, since the sign on the Appealing Office had been moved. So, I went directly to Tiananmen Square. As soon as I reached Tiananmen Square, I was interrogated by a police officer. After they found out I was a Falun Dafa practitioner and that I wanted to appeal, the police forcibly threw me into a police van and did not allow me to speak. I was taken to an alley and pushed into a big iron cage, where I met Falun Dafa practitioners from all over the country. We pressed our hands together.

The police recorded our names and addresses, and soon after, they sent me to the Heilongjiang Province Office in Beijing. After being detained in Beijing for three days, I was sent back to Haerbin and detained in the Daowai District Detention Center for fifteen days. When I was released, my employer punished me by expelling me from the power plant, but kept my name in the ledger so I could work for them again after two years.

Validating Falun Dafa in Beijing for the Second Time

On November 11 of 2000, I went to Beijing again to validate Dafa and clarify the truth to the people. I headed for Tiananmen directly and arrived at around eleven o'clock in the morning. Facing the Monument to the People's Heroes, I unfurled a banner stating, "Falun Dafa is the Truth of the Universe. Restore the Reputation of My Teacher." At that moment my mind was empty of thoughts. Two people (a policeman and a plainclothes officer) raced up to me as I started shouting, "Falun Dafa is good!" Two female practitioners unfurled their banners about forty feet away from me, and they were followed by some other Dafa practitioners holding up banners.

I will never forget that scene, which shook the heavens and the earth with awe-inspiring righteousness. The police rushed here and there to arrest and beat the practitioners. I was pushed into a police van that already held more than ten practitioners. This time, I was again detained in an iron cage. This iron cage had two levels. Practitioners who had told their names and addresses were detained in the upper level that was above the ground, while those who had refused to speak were detained underground. It was noontime and the cage was full of Dafa practitioners. Practitioners greeted me with applause when I entered. I was not frightened, because I could see their kind faces and feel the atmosphere of benevolence. We recited "Lun Yu" and Teacher's "Grand Poem," studied the Fa, and shared experiences. The police attempted to interfere with us but failed to do so in the face of our awe-inspiring righteousness. The small basement became the venue for over one hundred practitioners who were rectifying the Fa.

Around 9 o'clock that evening, some practitioners and I were sent to the Detention Center of Miyun County. The police assigned us each a number and took our photos. A female practitioner and I were taken to the Public Security Bureau of Miyun County. A policeman there asked, "What's your name? Where are you from?" I gently told him, "I can't tell you because it will cause my employer and some of your colleagues a lot of trouble. You should be very clear about that." But the policeman kept forcing me to talk. I said, "My teacher taught us to cultivate 'the righteous enlightenment of selflessness and altruism,' so I must think of others." ("Non-Omission in Buddha-Nature", in Essentials for Further Advancement, English version). "I just wanted to ask for justice for Falun Dafa. There is nothing wrong with that!"

They then yelled at me and told me to stand up. One policeman picked up an electric baton and said, "Are you asking for a shock?" I looked at the baton with a smile. Suddenly, three policemen rushed up to me. One twisted my arms, one pressed my head down, and the other kicked and beat me. They just kept kicking and beating me until all of them got exhausted. I did not yield. I told them, "I am a Falun Dafa practitioner and there is nothing wrong with my protecting Falun Dafa! What I did was all in the open and aboveboard! You beat people at will, and that is illegal!" At the same time I thought, "I'm the guardian god of the Fa in the human world! A deity would never bow to the evil forces!" I held my head high and stuck my chest out while facing all of these tribulations calmly.

The righteous and the evil forces fought like this for five hours, from 9pm to 2am the next morning. They finally were exhausted, and so I was dragged to a cell that was full of Dafa practitioners.

Since we didn't cooperate with them, the policemen were so mad that they asked the criminals detained there to torture us. We held a hunger strike to protest the fact that we were being persecuted. We also took the opportunity to study the Fa and share experiences in order to improve ourselves. Each time different police officers came to interrogate us, it provided a new opportunity for us to promote Dafa and clarify the true facts about Falun Dafa. We didn't obey their rules to sit like criminals in the cell, so the police started beating two practitioners nearby. We practitioners in the cell shouted loudly, "Don't beat people! It's illegal!" Then the police told other prisoners to get some ox-hide belts and police batons. When they saw that we could not be moved, they ordered the prisoners to brutally beat us. The blows of the belts and batons fell upon us like raindrops. We still sat in full lotus position and conjoined our hands, while reciting loudly the "Non-existence" in the "Grand Poem" of Teacher: "To live with no pursuits, to die with no regrets, extinguish all illusory thoughts, cultivating Buddhahood is not difficult (Draft translation subject to further improvement)." Our sonorous voices drowned out the sounds of belts and batons. At first, they used a belt to beat me; I felt bloated but without pain. The practitioner who had been designated "Number 4" had the clothes stripped off his back and was beaten with belts and batons. Another practitioner's forehead was wounded. A practitioner from Gansu Province lost his hair because of the beatings. At some point, the belt that was being used to beat me was replaced with a baton. Afterwards, a practitioner from Chongqing City told me that the belt had been broken into pieces, so they changed to the baton. We sat in lotus position with compassion in our minds. We stared into their eyes and nobody trembled, even a little bit! Then the hands of the thugs began to shake. Suddenly, their voices became soft, as though to entreat us to save face for them. They seemed to have seen some frightening scenes and wanted to escape in a hurry.

The following several days, we continued the hunger strike, and so the police kept beating and force-feeding us. I clenched my teeth and refused the force-feeding. Some prisoners pushed outwards against both sides of my thighs with their knees and twisted my arms. I don't know how long we were in this position, but finally one prisoner said, "Don't beat him any more. If we beat him to death we'll be detained longer." One time they poured more than fifty basins of chilled water on the top of my head. The freezing water in the winter made me unbelievably cold. I shook badly and gooseflesh showed up on my whole body. I clenched my teeth and withstood the cold thinking, " Teacher, I don't know if I can stand this any longer." But after a while, the water was somehow cut off. Afterwards, I really felt bad about that. At that time, why didn't I think of what Teacher has told us, 'When it's difficult to endure, you can endure it. When it's impossible to do, you can do it.' (Zhuan Falun, English version)?" In the next ten days, they used a cruel instrument to torture me. They pressed me onto a big board and fixed all my joints to the board with ropes. I could not move nor was I allowed to go to the restroom. They forcibly fed me because I was on a hunger strike. All my urine and stool were excreted into my pants. The skin on my mouth peeled off layer by layer due to lack of water. Then they said to me, "Tell me your name, then we'll give you water." I shook my head and didn't say anything. It was said that an everyday person would become paralyzed if tied to this instrument for four days. The police tied me to it for ten days because they wanted to see if I could stand it. Then they released me from the board. Since I was holding righteous thoughts and resisting the evil forces at all times, I managed to stand up and walk along the wall with my hands supporting me. I also practiced the "Buddha Showing a Thousand Hands" exercise one time. The policemen admitted their defeat, and even the prisoners gave me a "thumbs up" behind the policemen's backs. In the end, the police saw it was not possible to get anything they wanted, so they released me. Falun Dafa gave me the strength, and justice defeated the evil forces after all!

I have another three things that I learned during my detention that I would like to share with you:

1. There aren't that many really vicious policemen. From the actions of some policemen, we could see that because of the inspiration of Falun Dafa they have a certain understanding of practitioners' behavior in validating Falun Dafa. Their attitudes were relatively polite. When we pointed out that it was illegal for police to beat people, some police officers would say, "I did beat people, but I never beat good people. I only beat criminals." They also admitted that Falun Gong practitioners are all good people.
2. One day at noon, a practitioner went to the sink to wash a piece of cloth used to clean the floor. Suddenly the practitioner found that the words "Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance" were clearly printed on the front of the cloth, while the words "Falun Dafa is Good" were printed on the back. It used to be a T-shirt, but now was covered with bloodstains. Each bloodstain was full of tiny holes that were made by beating people with a special baton fully covered with spikes! This is irrefutable evidence of the crime of the persecution against Falun Dafa practitioners by the evil forces. I felt that the practitioners that went before us had paid too much--much too much!

3. Three policemen from the Miyun Detention Center all suddenly died within one month.

One time, a practitioner learned from a policeman while being interrogated that three different policemen from the Miyun Detention Center had suddenly died within one month. The oldest was about fifty years old, while the youngest was only about thirty. The thirty-year-old policeman had just been promoted to become the section chief. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage the very night I was sent to the Miyun Detention Center. It was said that his brain looked like tofu residue. These three policemen were all criminals, guilty of cruelly persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners. Therefore, they got such retribution for their evildoings!

Mr. Ren Pengwu was beaten to death. To cover up their crimes, the police fabricated a story that he had died of heart attack. They attempted to hide the truth about their murder in order to escape the condemnation of justice and punishment by law.

All the relatives and friends of Ren Pengwu knew that he was very healthy and didn't have any diseases. Actually, a police insider revealed that during the autopsy, they found evidence of a massive hemorrhage around Ren's heart. This proves that Falun Dafa practitioner Ren Pengwu died of violent and cruel beatings.

Lies are always lies and truth will prevail! The Public Security Bureau of Hulan County blocked the only road to the crematorium on the day that they cremated Ren's body. No vehicles or pedestrians could pass through. The people on the road all asked, "What kind of high-ranking official died? The police are escorting him along the road?" Some people who knew the truth explained, "It's the young man from the Power Plant. He was beaten to death by the people of the Public Security Bureau of Hulan County..."

Mr. Ren Pengwu, you are extraordinary. You are magnificent! You established a great and mighty virtue for Falun Dafa and Falun Dafa practitioners which will never end! Your awe-inspiring righteousness made the evil beings that persecuted you tremble with fear! The people in the future will remember you forever for safeguarding the truth of the Universe!

Compiled by practitioners in China

April 25, 2001