(Clearwisdom.net)
News from China
I attained Falun Dafa on July 20th, 1999. I started practicing Falun Gong after I saw my wife recovering from illness due to practicing Falun Dafa. I was caught by the policemen because of clarifying the truth of Dafa in Beijing. First I was held at a detention center for a month. Then I was locked in another detention center for 15 days and finally sent to the brainwashing center of the Party School for 45 days. The police had extorted 2,500 Yuan [Chinese currency, the monthly salary for an average Chinese urban worker is about 500 Yuan] from my family during this period of time. In May 2002, the police arrested my wife and I, and took us to the police station. Later they sent us to the "610 brainwashing center" and extorted 490 Yuan from us. ["610" refers to the "610 office", a bureau specifically created by the Chinese government to persecute Falun Gong. It has absolute power over each level of administration in the Party, as well as over the political and judiciary branches.]
Reference Information
Harbin city, Heilongjiang province is currently suffering an unprecedented drought. Out of 132 medium and small rivers, 127 of them have dried up completely, and the remaining five rivers have nearly dried up over the course of this year. In addition, there are 19 large and middle size reservoirs in the city with a total water volume of up to 840 million cubic meters, but now only 580 million cubic meters remain in these reservoirs. Harbin is suffering an unprecedented drought: the dry farmland amounts to about 10,070,000 Mu [a Chinese unit of land measurement. 1 Mu = 0.165 Acre], of which about 2,000,000 Mu are a total loss. Additionally, only 27.7 percent of the paddy field area are under water in the whole city. The drought area is the largest on record.