My "Vacation" in China

First of all, I would like to thank you for giving me the chance to tell my experience as a Falun Gong practitioner in China.

On November 22, 1999, I returned to China for two weeks of vacation. Two days later, I arrived at Guang-Zhou, a city in southern China. While I was meeting with some Falun Gong practitioners in a friend's apartment at around midnight, policemen burst in. They had no warrant at all. They hit us about the head and on the body with their fists. One practitioner was beaten to the floor. His body rolled up and he was sweating from the pain. Another practitioner was beaten by 4 or 5 policemen at the same time. They put hand-cuffs on us, and took us to Tian-He detention center.

We were interrogated one by one for a whole night. I could hear some practitioners being beaten during the interrogations. We then were locked up in three empty rooms. We started a hunger strike to protest our illegal detention and get back our freedom. Two days later, after a thorough body search, we practitioners were separated from one another and locked in with common criminals in different cells. A director of the detention center came into the cell and asked whether I still refused to eat. I asked him why I had been arrested. I had not committed any crime and up until then I had not seen any arrest warrant. He became extremely angry and kicked my chest heavily, yelling "Who do you think you are!" Then he gave the order to fill me with salt water.

Several male criminals came in and dragged me on the ground to the door, and put shackles on my feet. They squeezed my nose and did not allow me to breathe. My hands and legs were forcefully held against the ground so that I could not move. Then a large tube was inserted into my mouth. My mouth was immediately full of salt water. Since I could not breathe, I had to swallow it. This high-density salt water was actually grains of salt with only a little water added. I was almost suffocated to death. After a long time, I could still hear the director say "Fill her more!" I thought I was dying. They did not allow me to breathe until they had forced all the salt into my stomach.

It took me a long time to restore my normal breathing afterwards. My stomach hurt so much that I vomited constantly for a few hours. My throat hurt so badly that I lost my voice for a few days.

The next day, I was forced to work in a cell making plastic flowers from morning until evening without resting while wearing heavy shackles on my feet. Everyone in the cell had to finish a large amount of flowers each day before she could rest. It normally took 14 hours to finish the work. At the end of the day, my fingers felt so sore that I could not even bend them. Very long hours of labor are enforced at every detention center.

Three days later, I was transferred to Yue-Xiu detention center. I was detained for a total of 15 days. The living conditions in the detention centers are terrible. They served us rotten rice, which tasted so bad that it was hard to swallow, and vegetables boiled with only salt added. The cells were filthy, with many rats, which sometimes jumped on our bodies. In addition, the strong December winds blew right through the broken windows all day and night. I only had a skirt to cover my legs and I was not allowed to get any other clothes. Inmates were not allowed to keep any thing except for a bowl and a cup for food and water. Every morning two persons from one cell were allowed to step out and get some water for everyone to drink. When it was my turn, that was the only time that I could go out and see the sky even for a few minutes.

I was released with the help of many kind-hearted people in the United States, including Senator Allard in Colorado. Some of my friends arrested at the same time were sentenced to jail for 3 or 4 years and some were sent to labor camps. They are experiencing tremendous suffering every day.

One Falun Gong practitioner, Zhang Dong, who was locked in the cell next to me, was released after four months detention. But his family was often disturbed by policemen. One month ago policemen broke into his apartment again and he was forced to jump from the apartment, which is on the fourth floor. He ended up in the hospital in intensive care. He had a fractured pelvis, his legs were broken in several places, and the bones in his left arm were shattered so badly that nothing could be done to save it. The arm had to be amputated. The family's nineteen year-old babysitter, who is also a Falun Gong practitioner, also went out the window. Her legs were broken, and I don't know what has become of her. His wife, who is also a Falun Gong practitioner, was forcibly taken to a labor camp, leaving their two month old baby with no one to care for it. Another Falun Gong practitioner named Gao Xian-min was arrested while having a picnic in a park with his friends two weeks after I was released, and was detained in the detention center in the same district that I was. After a few days hunger strike, he was force-fed salt water in the same way that I had been. He died from this torture. There are so many sad stories in today's China.

I hope all good people throughout the world can give help to the Falun Gong practitioners in China. I hope that all kind-hearted people speak up and help to stop Jiang Zemin's Nazi-style brutality and murder in China.