(Minghui.org) As I was leaving a fellow Falun Dafa practitioner's home in 2006, two plainclothes police grabbed me and shoved me into a van. One of them stepped on my back.
They took me to a police station first and then transferred me to a detention center early the following morning. I was held there for more than three months before being taken to a forced labor camp, where I was incarcerated for 18 months.
I was put in the “group training team” as soon as I arrived in the labor camp. A series of tortures began.
First, they told me to write a guarantee statement promising to give up my belief. I refused. A female guard slapped me in the face. I was then tied up, hoisted up and beaten. The guard shocked my head, face, and neck with an electric baton. The electric baton was then rammed into my mouth and left there while she shocked me repeatedly.
The pain was indescribable. I thus succumbed to their demands and wrote the guarantee statement, committing an act that a Dafa disciple should never do, to say that I would give up my faith. I felt ashamed to face Teacher and Dafa. I cried bitterly with remorse.
I was persecuted severely, and the guards were worried that my arms would be paralyzed from the torture. So they made me have a Tuina massage (a Traditional Chinese Medicine therapy) every day and do some arm exercises.
The muscles and bones in my arms had been badly damaged and I couldn't straighten them. I cried bitterly when doing the exercises. The guard tormented me, saying that I was like a child who cried in pain. In fact, I wasn't crying because of the pain, but rather because I let myself down and brought shame to Dafa. I stained my cultivation path. I was crying in desperation. All of this was brought about by the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Falun Dafa.
After the group training, I was forced to do hard labor. The tasks were relentless and arduous every day. If I didn't finish what I was assigned I had to continue working when I returned to my cell, sometimes not stopping until midnight.
The next day I still had to follow the work schedule. We labored for more than 14 hours every day, and sometimes longer. Our health deteriorated, and all of the practitioners wanted to leave that dark place. The officers knew it too, and thus made up a new policy whereby inmates could reduce their time in the labor camp.
This was how it worked: if a practitioner paid 300 yuan, her sentence could be reduced by ten days, and she would also get a certificate for doing something less strenuous, like cooking. Practitioners who were not firm in their belief paid the money, but that was only a handful of people.
Because so few bought into this new policy, they then said that if someone paid 200 yuan, their time would be reduced by ten days. A few more practitioners then agreed to pay.
I thought: Is this legal? Immediately, Teacher Li Hongzhi's Fa teachings came to mind,
“His goal is that once you study his practice, you become one of his people. You must attend his classes to study his things. The goal is to make money off you. He will not make any money if no one studies his practice.” (Zhuan Falun)
I now understood. Not only do they get money, but they also give people fake certificates. They were trying to lure practitioners with the idea of reducing our time, as a disguised method to have us accord with them – to trick us to fall into their trap.
We hadn't committed any crime and did not deserve to be incarcerated. This was another form of persecution! Through discussions with a few practitioners we came to the agreement that we should not pay any money to buy shorter sentences.
The ongoing barbaric torture scared me. When I lacked righteous thoughts and didn't know how to negate the persecution, I did the things they asked. I did things that a Dafa practitioner should not do.
Although on the surface I remained calm and said the right things to the guards, in my heart I knew that I was walking the path that the old forces had arranged for me. I felt perplexed and anxious.
Teacher knew that I wanted to negate the persecution, so I was made to manifest sickness karma. I had high blood pressure and my heartbeat was exceptionally fast. At the beginning I felt quite timid, but I was able to negate one small thing after another. I refused to write the “weekly record” and did not participate in any of their “exams.” It was only a small step at a time, but I gradually became more and more confident as my attachment of fear reduced.
All Dafa disciples were made to take an exam prior to their release. I told the officer who was on duty that I wouldn't take the exam. A few days later, she was on duty again. She took me to a place where they stored old materials and said, “You are elderly now. I really don't want you to suffer here. So I wrote the exam for you, and you must thank me.” I knew that if I thanked her I would be acknowledging the old forces, and it was just another form of deception.
I solemnly told her, “I thank you for not wanting to see me suffer, but I don't recognize what you wrote for me.”
She was furious, and said, “You don't recognize it? Okay, you'll see.”
I maintained my righteous thoughts. It felt like a big battle between good and evil was taking place. If I slacked off, I'd be trapped.
I often thought about why I was still being persecuted. One day, this Fa teaching came to my mind,
“When I was teaching a class in Wuhan, there was a thirty-year-old young man there. Right after I gave this lecture, he went home and sat in meditation. He achieved the state of ding right away. After that, he suddenly saw Buddha Amitabha appearing on one side and Lao Zi on the other. This is what he said in his experience report. After showing up, both looked at him without saying a word and then disappeared. Later, Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara showed up, carrying a vase in her hand from which a white smoke emerged. As he sat there and saw everything very vividly, he became quite pleased. Suddenly, the smoke transformed into a few beauties; beauties are those flying heavenly girls who are very attractive. They danced for him with very graceful movements. He thought to himself: "Because I’m practicing here, Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara is rewarding me by transforming a few beauties for me to watch and is sending the flying heavenly girls to dance for me." As he was becoming delighted by this thought, these beauties suddenly became naked and made different moves towards him, coming to hug his neck and caress his waist. This practitioner’s xinxing had improved very quickly. At that point, he became alarmed right away. The first thought that came to his mind was: "I’m not an ordinary person. I’m a practitioner. You shouldn’t treat me this way, for I’m a Falun Dafa practitioner." Once this thought emerged, everything suddenly disappeared since they were all transformed anyway.” (Zhuan Falun)
From this passage of Fa I suddenly understood another meaning. The labor camp was also a false image conjured up to deceive us, and all the things they ask us to do are false and have been transformed to test us. The so-called guarantee statements that practitioners submitted to the 610 Office to get an early release were also conjured up to deceive us. I saw some practitioners who had just written guarantee statements crying bitterly. If the forced labor camp was a false image conjured up to deceive us, I definitely should not write a guarantee statement.
It was around the Chinese New Year when I was about to be released. So again, the officer anxiously pushed us to write the guarantee statements. A guard called one person at a time to her office to complete it, and one practitioner after another signed the guarantee statement.
I was the last one to be called into her office. She said that the guarantee statement was a directive from the 610 Office, and if I didn't sign it I couldn't go home.
Teacher's Fa came to my mind. I said to her, “Don't treat me like this. I practice Falun Dafa.”
She said, “It's useless to tell me this.” But I was quick to tell her that it was useful. “Then tell me, when do you think this [persecution of Falun Dafa] will end?” she asked.
“There is a beginning and an end to everything,” I replied. “I don't know when it will end, only my Teacher knows.”
She said, “If you continue to behave this way, even after I'm retired you will still be here.” I told her that I wouldn't, that I would leave.
I was not afraid throughout the conversation, because I had the Fa in my mind.
Meanwhile, another guard came in and told me to write the statement. This guard had previously looked after me. I told her that I wouldn't write it. The two guards then started chatting away and ignored me. So I told them that I'd be leaving.
“Sure, go,” one of them replied. Passing this test had looked very hard at first, but with Teacher's help the tribulation soon dissolved.
During my last days in the labor camp, I didn't follow the rules set for hard labor.
For example, if they set the requirement to complete ten tasks per day, I only did two. I knew that they would penalize me by torturing me or locking me up in solitary confinement. But I was just carefree.
Because I only did a little work I had lots of time to recite the Fa and send righteous thoughts. This lasted for around ten days.
In fact, I later found out that the ringleader of those who had renounced their belief in Falun Dafa had reported me to the section head some time ago, and had been monitoring me for a long time in the sweatshop. Nobody mentioned anything to me, because they wanted to catch me at the right time.
I was in the middle of doing hard labor one day when the section head told me to come see him. He asked, “Who told you to do so little work each day?”
“There's only so much I can do each day,” I replied.
When he asked why I had been able to do more in the past, I told him that I had been in better health before.
Without saying anything else, he walked away. This incident occurred about ten days before my scheduled release.
A meeting was suddenly called in the afternoon, to pass on a new plan for assembling toothpicks in boxes.
The plan worked like this: elderly people had to assemble ten large boxes, with ten small boxes inside each large box. The middle-aged people had to do 12 large boxes each day, and younger ones had to do 14 large boxes.
I knew that I was their main target, as I was the only elderly practitioner there, and they also wanted to take this opportunity to apply more pressure on the other practitioners.
If I, someone who was in a state of poor health, could complete the task, the younger ones should of course be able to complete theirs too. So after the team leader was gone, I told the guard on duty that I didn't feel well. She told me to wait until another guard came.
The guard arrived and led me to the clinic, but there was no doctor on duty. She told me to return to my cell to rest. The doctor then came to see me. She checked my heart and then my blood pressure.
The doctor told me that I had to take some medicine, or my blood vessels would swell. She then said that I needed to wait until the following day for two doctors to give me a diagnosis slip to certify that I needed some rest. She said they would give me a week of sick leave.
The week went by quickly and there were then only five more days until I would be released. I didn't really want to do any more hard labor for them and was determined to stay inactive for five more days.
Then one day, I heard an assistant head hollering in the hallway, asking if so-and-so was faking it. My heart wasn't moved. Five days later, I was released.
Nine years have passed, and even now, when I recall the torture I can still feel Teacher's compassion and support.
While writing this sharing, tears fill my eyes. I want to say to Teacher, “Thank you wholeheartedly, Teacher! It was you who helped me get through all those ordeals.” These words come from the bottom of my heart.
This Fa teaching confirms exactly how I feel:
“Its broad and immense, profound inner meaning can only manifest itself to, and be experienced and understood by, practitioners who are at different levels of true cultivation. Only then can one truly see what the Fa is.” (“Broad and Immense” from Essential for Further Advancement)