May 2, 2006

Gang Chen says he knows for a fact Falun Gong practitioners are persecuted in China. He says he knows that they are kidnapped and held against their will in labor camps where they are threatened, brainwashed, beaten, and killed.

He says he knows because he was detained in a camp in Beijing, the capital of China, for 18 months as a result refusing to give up his practice of Falun Gong.

Chen, 34, now of Sicklerville, N.J., started practicing Falun Gong in 1995 and he said he noticed right away that it uplifted him and made him feel good both physically and mentally. The practice, he said, enlightened him as to why people should work to improve their character and do good deeds. He believed in the emphasis on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

In 1995, the practice wasn't persecuted in China. In fact, it received government support. Chen had family, friends, and co-workers that also practiced Falun Gong. Everything changed in July of 1999 when the government banned the practice. Chen said he refused to give up his beliefs, and as a result he was put under surveillance by the local officials.

Chen said he went to an appeals bureau, the only legal channel in China, to advocate for Falun Gong in the hopes the ban might be lifted. This decision led to Chen being held in a detention center for 30 days.

"They just didn't want to listen," Chen said. Chen was released from the center in December of 1999. Still refusing to give up his practice, Chen said was sent to what he described as a "brainwashing sessions" in an office building in his neighborhood. Forced to go to these sessions instead of work - he was the logistics manager for a beer company - Chen was forced to read books full of propaganda and listen to lies about Falun Gong for hours. This lasted for about 20 days or so, but still Chen said he wouldn't change his mind. At midnight on June 25, 2000, he said about 12 local police officials broke into his home and kidnapped him and his mother, Ningfang, who also practiced Falun Gong. Chen's wife, Pin Bai, and his father, Rutang, went to the police to ask what happened, but for an entire week the police would say nothing, stating they didn't know. Chen said they knew all along.

Finally, the police explained what happened - they had been taken to a detention center. Chen and his mother were kept at the center for a month. At that point, Chen's mother was released. Chen was sent to a labor camp. The camp, Chen estimated, held between 600 and 1000 people. The detainees weren't just Falun Gong practitioners, there were also thieves, drug addicts, and other dissidents. They were the normal prisoners, forced to do various types labor such as paving road and production of goods. The Falun Gong practitioners were treated differently. Chen said the goal of the camp was to change the practitioners' mind - the police and the guards would get a bonus for forcing people to renounce their beliefs, and no matter the methods they used, the guards were protected by the higher authorities.

"I was tortured day in and day out," Chen said. In the months that followed, Chen said he would come close to death as the result of frequent beatings and physical abuse. He said practitioners were deprived of sleep, allowed only two to four hours a day. At times, they were forced to squat and remain stationary for hours at a time. If they moved or shifted their weight, they would be shocked by an electric baton. Sometimes, they would be shocked for no reason at all.

Chen said other practitioners did die from being tortured. Others were permanently paralyzed. He said he was unable to walk on his own for two weeks at one point. There was the time, Chen said, the guards ordered more than 10 inmates to beat him. Wounds and bruises covered his body, even his face. He was also tied up with his hands behind his back, his feet and legs tied together, and his neck tied to his legs, and then stuffed under a low-sitting bed. Guards then ordered inmates to jump on the bed, repeatedly jamming the plank of wood into his back and side, Chen said.

Medical care was non-existent and Chen said the food was terrible, used only as a way to keep practitioners alive so that they could be subjected to more torture. The regular inmates were allowed rice a couple of times a week, but Chen Falun Gong practitioners didn't even get that, being forced to eat something Chen described as poorly cooked grain. Chen was originally sentenced to a year in the labor camp, but the guards kept extending his stay because he wouldn't give up his beliefs. By August 2001, Chen said he didn't have the strength to carry on and, having given up all hope, he renounced Falun Gong. His time in the camp wasn't over, however. Under video surveillance at all times, several times a week Chen was required to write down his thoughts about Falun Gong, forced to fabricate negative feelings towards the practice so as to make his captors believe he was truly convinced. Chen described it as being made to brainwash himself.

Then, in December 2001, Chen was released from the camp. That same day, the police took him into custody again. He was kept isolated at a small hotel, forced again to renounce Falun Gong. After 10 days, Chen was allowed to return home.

The worst torture Chen said, wasn't the physical abuse, but being forced to renounce Falun Gong. Even after the physical pain was gone, the psychological damage wouldn't heal, something Chen said led him to think about suicide for months after being released. It didn't help that he was still being monitored and had to report to government officials once a week.

"I felt hopeless, helpless," Chen said. "I was living in Hell."

In February of 2003, Chen came to the U.S. on a work visa. His parents and sister had already moved here. Having resumed his practice of Falun Gong, Chen said he doesn't ever intend to go back to China under its present regime, because he knows if he did he would face the same thing.

Chen said he wants people to know three things about China and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. The first is that it is incredibly easy to get lost over there in the sense that, if you are taken away by authorities, there is a possibility no one will ever know. The second is that the police and guards were allowed to do whatever they wished to the prisoners with impunity - no matter what they did, they were protected by higher officials.

The third and most important thing people need to know, Chen said, is that the Chinese government is extremely adept at covering things up, and as a result investigations into camps and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners frequently turn up nothing.

"They can make a lie perfect, "Chen said. "Many western countries are negotiating with China. They say the country is making progress," Chen said. "Chinese officials are laughing at them (the western countries) because they're so easily fooled."

Chen said the persecution is still going on, and he has several friends in China - also practitioners of Falun Gong - who are missing. While he wasn't aware of the harvesting of the organs of practitioners while he was in the camp, he said he believes it is happening and worries his friends might be used for such a purpose.

Chen said he feels people have been cheated by the Communist Party for too long, and that the American people and government need to support the investigations into the persecution of the practitioners. That's why he went to the press conference in Rodney Square Thursday - because people need to know what is happening in China and just how bad the Communist Party is, and because something needs to be done.

"I don't want more people to die," Chen said. Telephone calls to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. requesting an interview were not returned.