(Clearwisdom.net) A practitioner from Yushu City, Jilin Province has been detained many times because of her belief in Falun Dafa. After the police beat her on Tiananmen Square, she has lost her memory for more than one year. When her arm broke after a guard from a detention center tortured her with the "Big Hang Up" (1), they gave her no medical attention. She tells her story below.
I started practicing Falun Dafa in September 1998. Before then, I used to be very weak with many physical problems, and I had a bad temper. After learning Falun Dafa, I became healthy and developed an open mind. My family life became more harmonious.
Unfortunately, this peaceful life did not last long. Jiang ordered the persecution of Falun Dafa and started arresting practitioners on July 20, 1999. I went to Beijing to appeal. There were lots of plain-clothes policemen on Tiananmen Square arresting Falun Dafa practitioners. I was about to unfurl a banner, when something hit me from behind, and I passed out. When I gradually regained consciousness, I think I was in a vehicle, but I lost consciousness again. When I finally awoke, I noticed that my overcoat was gone. Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Guan was near me, put me on a train, and took care of me. I finally woke up when the train was approaching Changchun City. When I woke up I did not feel hungry or thirsty. When I got home, I could not eat anything, as my lips were swollen. I didn't realize how hard they had hit me. It took me more than one year of studying the Fa and doing the Falun Dafa exercises before my memory returned and my swollen lips were healed.
One evening in the summer of 2001, my husband told me, "I saw someone looking at us through our window." I did not pay much attention.
The next morning, I was having breakfast with my child. Suddenly, policeman Wang Haishun and others from the Zhengyang Substation stormed into our home, ransacked the place, and took away all of my Falun Dafa books. They forced me to sit on my bed, and tried to videotape me while two policemen twisted my arms behind me. I refused to cooperate with them, so they pulled my hair and slapped my face. I told my child to take my Falun Dafa books away. They threatened my child, causing my child to cry loudly. When they arrested me, Wang Haishun lied to my child, saying that they would send me back home in the afternoon. State Security Agent Zhang Deqing was there as well. I asked if I could put some clothes on. They refused, and would not even allow me put on my shoes.
They detained me for sixty-seven days in the detention center. I did not see the sun at all when I was there. I became very weak. They interrogated me, asking if I still wanted to practice. I answered, "Yes." They then sent me to another detention center. I later learned that my family gave Wang Haishun five thousand yuan, begging him to release me.
Upon reaching the new detention center, I went on a hunger strike to protest the illegal detention. I became very thin and weak. They force-fed me very salty food. After my fellow practitioners strongly protested, they sent me to a Hospital of Traditional Medicine. They did not pay for any medication, charging my family six hundred yuan instead. My husband went to the Political Security Office and requested that I be released. They said that we would have to pay another one thousand yuan. My husband told them that we did not have that much money. They answered, "Her sister has money-- we saw her wearing a golden necklace!" They then released me after extorting another one thousand yuan from us. My poor family borrowed nine thousand yuan so that they could get me out of the detention center. Even though I was tortured and almost died, Wang Haishun still repeatedly came to our home to harass me. He forced me to sign a guarantee statement to stop practicing, ordered me to submit to photos, and took my fingerprints.
On February 8, 2002, four days before the 2002 Chinese New Year, I went to visit my youngest uncle. Wang Haishun, Tan Minghui (male) and five to six policemen from the Zhengyang Substation ransacked his home, taking away a Falun Dafa book and a sitting mat for meditation. I tried to go back home, but they chased after me, arrested me and brought me to the Substation. My family had to bribe people and sign a guarantee statement on my behalf in order to have me released. In order to avoid being captured and persecuted again, I had to become destitute and homeless so they could not find me.
On August 30, 2002, they found me in an apartment building and arrested me again. Six or seven policemen broke through the deadbolt, stormed in to ransack the place and beat me. For the doors in the apartment that they could not open, they just kicked them to break the glass. They stuffed my mouth with bags to prevent me from talking. They brought me to an unknown place, tied me up from behind, and put me in a very small room only the size of a cage. About two hours later, they sent me to the detention center, where I saw Wang Haishun, the officer from the Zhengyang Police Station.
In the detention center, they put me in an Iron Chair (2), and I could not move at all. A guard from the State Security Division stamped on my toes with his leather boots. My toes swelled up very badly and were covered with purple bruises. They poured cold water on my head and threatened to arrest my child. They interrogated me, but could not reach their goal. Their electric batons failed when they tried to shock me. At that time, State Security Agents Sun Tiejun, Chai Wenge, Zhou Xianguo (all men), and others tortured me with the "Big hang up." They pulled my right hand from my shoulder top down, pulled my left hand from my lower back up, cuffed both my hands behind my back, and then hung me up with ropes tied to the handcuffs. My whole body was hanging in the air, and my right arm broke. I fell down to the floor, where Sun Tiejun whipped my back even though my arm had broken. They returned me to the detention center wounded and punished me as a prisoner. Then they tortured me with the Sitting Board (3) and forced me to recite the Prison Rules. They did not give me any treatment for my broken arm. It was only after three to four days, when my family learned of my situation that they bribed people to let me go to the Hospital of Traditional Medicine with my ankle shackles still on.
I did not violate the law. Just because I firmly believe in "Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance," and refuse to give up practicing Falun Dafa, they tortured me until I was disabled, making me so thin and weak. They did not allow my family to visit me during the first month. I went on hunger strike; then they force-fed me. They used four to five young men to hold down my legs, arms, and head, and they pinched my nose while they poured milk, which was saturated with salt, down my throat. They never cared whether my life was in danger or not.
My husband is also a practitioner. All his sicknesses were cured after he started practicing Falun Dafa. People who know him all say he is a nice man. But a State Security Agent arrested him, took his vehicle worth eight hundred yuan, and sentenced him to four years in prison. He is jailed in the Shiling Prison in Siping City.
My family members have been implicated by this persecution as well. Whenever the doorbell rings, they think it's the police coming to arrest people, and their hearts beat faster. Saddened by the arrests of my husband and me, our child cannot concentrate on studies and has received poor grades. My father died without being able to see his daughter and son-in-law for the last time. My mother can't sleep when TV programs mention Falun Gong; she misses me terribly. My mother-in-law misses her son so badly that she lost her eyesight. Jiang and his scoundrel regime can never pay enough for what my family has lost during this persecution.
(1) There are two forms in this torture: (1) With both hands cuffed behind the back and only the toes touching the ground (in this instance, the practitioner is entirely off of the ground), the practitioner is hung by a rope that is tied to the metal window frames. (2) One hand of a practitioner is cuffed to one bunk bed and the other hand to another bed, and the two beds are pulled in the opposite directions. One feels extreme pain as the body is pulled.
(2) The iron chair is made of iron pipes. Victims are restrained on the iron chairs with both arms and legs tied for a long period of time. (See illustration, http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/1/9/17577.html.)
(3) Every day, practitioners are forced to put their hands on their laps, with their backs straight and sit on a bench 18 hours per day. In some cases, this has continued for over fifty days. The authorities even limit practitioners' restroom use time. Because of the long time spent sitting on hard benches, practitioners' buttocks form sores that hurt badly. Practitioners cannot even urinate normally because of the pain. (See http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/7/29/24631.html for torture cases.)