On April 24, 2001, after nineteen days of illegal detention, Cheng Zixiu's daughter, Zhang Xueling, was sent to Wangcun Female Labor Camp of Jinan City in Shandong province. During her detention, Zhang Xueling protested by means of a hunger strike. What awaited her was an even more severe persecution -- three years of forced labor re-education.
[Beijing] Belated Report: Two Falun Dafa Practitioners in the Army Are Illegally Sentenced to Prison
Li Chaoran, a 74-year-old female, joined the army in 1949. As a medical officer, she receives the retirement benefits of high-ranking officials. A Falun Dafa practitioner since 1992, she was the contact person for the Falun Gong practice site inside the Logistics Commanding Institute of the Army in Beijing. After July 22, 1999, she was forced to leave home since she refused to attend the illegal "study classes." As a result, she received a serious disciplinary warning from the Party. She was taken from home illegally on October 13, 2000 and near the end of February 2001, she was illegally sentenced to four years of imprisonment by a military tribunal and expelled from the Party.
Liu Xizhen, a 66-year-old female, joined the army in 1961. She is an associate professor of the Logistics Command Institute of the Army. She started practicing Falun Dafa in 1993. The perverse forces expelled her from the Party after July 22, 1999, and her administrative ranking was also lowered. She was taken away from home on October 3, 2000 for persevering in her practice of Falun Dafa. Near the end of February 2001, she was illegally sentenced to five and a half years of imprisonment by a military tribunal and expelled from the Army.
According to insiders, both of them were given stiff sentences because Jiang Zemin himself specifically named them.
[Changchun, Jilin Province] Changchun Practitioner Wang Juncheng Disemboweled by Torture
On April 3, Minghui Net reported that Changchun practitioner Wang Juncheng suffered from severe torture in the Public Security Bureau of Changchun city. He was beaten so severely that his intestines came out of his body. According to sources inside the Public Security Bureau, he had a hole in his abdomen as the result of the beating, and his internal organs were unable to be contained.
[Yantai, Shangdong Province] The 14th Day of Falun Dafa Practitioners' Hunger Strike in Yantai Economic Development Zone
The police station of Yantai Economic Development Zone has illegally assembled Falun Dafa practitioners to attend a so-called "reform class." In order to resist this illegal act, some practitioners went on a hunger strike. As of May 7, Zhu Yuanming, Dong Chunying, Cui Yanqiu, and others have been on a hunger strike for fourteen days. Their lives are in imminent danger. We appeal to kind-hearted people to pay attention to this!
[Heilongjiang Province] Falun Dafa Practitioners Are Illegally Held in Drug Treatment Center
Starting in late February 2001, the work committee of directly affiliated organizations of the Heilongjiang Provincial Party Committee forcibly detained around twenty Falun Dafa practitioners in a drug treatment center on the excuse of conducting a so-called "reform class." Using pressure, threats, and deceit, they forcibly brainwashed practitioners. Practitioners were threatened with forced labor and prison terms. One month later, three practitioners had already been sent to labor camps for further persecution in the absence of legal proceedings. So far, the crime of the committee's forcible brainwashing through this "reform class" is still going on.
The drug treatment center persecutes practitioners as follows: at first, they use harsh torture. Soon they find out that this only works on criminals, but not on Falun Gong practitioners. Then they target practitioners' attachments by applying psychological torture. Practitioners who have just been sent in are assigned to a room full of voluntarily "reformed" people who have been "enlightened" in the evil way. These newcomers are placed under 24-hour surveillance, and they are not allowed to leave the room. They have to eat and relieve themselves in the same room. A designated person disposes of all waste. Everyday, practitioners are forced to sit on wooden stools. Over a dozen special agents, with the help of people from psychiatric wards, speak false principles to the practitioners. Being unable to study Dafa and let go of some attachments, many practitioners passively succumb to this kind of pressure, and over a long period of time, gradually lose control of their main consciousness. They are then forced to sign the "three statements" (to give up practicing Falun Gong, etc.) for fear of being sent to labor camps and tortured.
After these practitioners are released, they are awakened with the help of fellow practitioners. They deeply regret what they have done. One after another, they make solemn statements to declare that, whatever they have written down is invalid and not in compliance with Dafa, because they were not in a clear frame of mind when they wrote these statements.
[Zhaodong, Heilongjiang Province] Falun Dafa Practitioner Chen Jinlan Faces Illegal Public Trial
According to reliable sources, Zhaodong municipal, judicial and public security departments intend to hold a "public trial" to sentence Falun Dafa practitioner Chen Jinlan to three years in prison. The court informed Chen's family members that they were required to enter a guilty plea. They were forbidden to plead innocent, nor were they allowed to hire attorneys. Since the beginning of February 2000, Chen Jinlan has been illegally detained many times and the local authorities have submitted applications to higher authorities in order to sentence her to forced labor many times. Even though the higher authorities have not approved the application, the police still refuse to release her.
[Shuangcheng, Heilongjiang Province] Criminal Offenses in Nongfeng Town
From July 1999 to April 2001, while Jiang Zemin and his accomplices have been carrying out their persecution against Falun Dafa and Falun Dafa practitioners, several vicious people in Nongfeng Town, Shuangcheng City, Heilongjiang Province followed Jiang Zemin's orders to the letter. Among them, the main criminals are the Township Party Committee Secretary, Bai Rendong; Party and Public Relations Secretary, Ma Guangru; Secretary of XX Village, Zhang Qing; temporary worker of the local police station, Fu Zhaoyang; the director of the Education Office, Li Chengguang, and so on. At present four Falun Dafa practitioners from Nongfeng town have been illegally sentenced to forced labor reeducation. They are: Liu Yanqing, male, imprisoned in Suihua; three female practitioners, Pan Honglan, Wang Liping and Wang Yongqin, imprisoned at the Wanjia Labor Camp in Harbin.
Moreover, practitioner Wang Jinguo (male) was crippled from tortures in the Detention Center of Shuangcheng City. He is presently bedridden and on the verge of death. Sui Shulin, a teacher, is detained in the town central middle school, and not allowed to go home. On the 24th day of the twelfth lunar month (December 24 2000 to January 23) 2001, over 10 Falun Gong practitioners, including Geng Yafen, Chen Yunxia, Zhao Shijun, were detained in the Nongfeng Village office for "transformation." They were not allowed to go home for about 70 days.
[Harbin, Heilongjiang Province] Police Beat Falun Dafa Practitioners Mercilessly at Daowai Penitentiary
I went to Beijing to validate Falun Dafa on December 28, 2000 and was intercepted by the police at the railway station. I was detained at the police substation of Harbin Railway Station for 24 hours with no food or water. The cell was only 5 ~ 6 square meters and without any window for ventilation, yet a total of 28 Falun Dafa practitioners were locked in it. On the evening of December 29, we were transferred by the provincial public security department to Daowai Penitentiary of Harbin City. On the afternoon of December 30 the policemen started to interrogate us, forcing us to reveal our names and addresses. Those who refused to tell were suspended a half meter above the ground from the heating pipe over the doorframe, with both hands tied behind their backs.
The police would not spare even a 60-year-old practitioner. After hanging a practitioner up, they would start to beat him mercilessly. The miserable crying of a fellow practitioner would become weaker and weaker, for very soon the practitioner would lose consciousness. The police continuously beat the practitioners from 3 p.m. in the afternoon until 1:30 a.m. the next day. Some fellow practitioners were beaten so severely that their hands and feet convulsed, their mouths foamed, and their whole bodies felt cold. Some other fellow practitioners were beaten to such a degree that both hands were numb and could not be raised. They could not take care of themselves and needed others' help to eat and relieve themselves. Their whole bodies were covered with wounds; it was too horrible to look at.
Recorded by Falun Dafa practitioners
April 19th, 2001
[Huairou County, Beijing] Physical and Mental Torture at Huairou County's Transformation Classes
To force practitioners to give up their cultivation, Jiang Zemin and his underlings staged the inhumane "Self-immolation Incident" in Tiananmen Square and shifted the responsibility to Falun Dafa in order to deceive people who don't know the truth. This incident provided the excuse to hold many "transformation classes." The "reform" class of Huairou County in Beijing is one of them.
The means to "transform" practitioners has used both brutal physical torture and mental torture as well. The authorities spent millions of Yuan, gathered many wicked criminals, and formed a "610" special case team whose sole purpose was to punish and torture the practitioners so as to "reform" them. They took both harsh and seemingly kind approaches to "transform" practitioners. In sum, they have sentenced over 50 practitioners to forced labor, detained over 2000, and sent over 10 practitioners to mental hospitals. As of now, over 60 practitioners have been "reformed" forcibly. The persecution is even crueler than that of "Zhazidong" where communists were persecuted before the XX Party took over Mainland China.
For physical torture, the police forced practitioners to stand in the snow all night long. Many practitioners' feet were frostbitten. They also ordered other criminal inmates to pour freezing water on the practitioners. They poured over ten basins of water on some practitioners, and a few hundred on others. They used electric batons to shock practitioners' necks, chests, and the inside of their legs. The repeated shocks caused the practitioners' mouths and chins to ulcerate. They also used tongs to crush practitioners' fingers. They put iron shackles on their feet. The guards would force-feed those practitioners who were on hunger strike to protest the maltreatment. The practitioners have been given only rotten corn buns to eat.
After the Spring Festival, the vicious police realized that physical torture couldn't change Falun Dafa practitioners' hearts where "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance" is deeply rooted, so they changed to mental torture to "reform" them. The mental torture is crueler than the physical tortures. They used TV, radio, and newspapers to boast how much they care about practitioners to deceive both practitioners and many kind-hearted people. On the one hand, the police would drive practitioners to the woods to collect weeds to eat, break up their families, and force them to leave their homes; on the other hand, they pretend to treat them kindly in the "transformation classes" and provide plenty of food and good living conditions. If people don't know the truth, they might feel gratitude toward the police and think the steadfast practitioners are wrong. The fact is, as soon as a visitor would leave, the policemen would pull off their masks. They would take turns interrogating a practitioner from 8am to midnight until he or she could no longer think clearly. Then they will take advantage of this to force the practitioner to sign the repentance letter, which they could use to further control the practitioner. The policemen also brought in some "Judas's" to put on shows for the media in order to defame Falun Dafa. They plagiarize and distort the contents of Falun Dafa and alter the meaning of Dafa as they see fit.
Some practitioners couldn't endure the mental torture and wrote the "repentance" letters. The guards separated them individually so they could torture the practitioners at will without any witnesses or evidence. The policemen have instituted all kinds of wicked torture such as forcing the practitioners to stand for a long period of time, sitting on "tiger benches" [a cruel torture which sometimes can break the knees], grabbing a practitioner's hair in order to throw the practitioner to the ground.
[Dehui City, Jilin Province] A List of Practitioners Sentenced to Forced Labor
Zhao Jinming, Qu Zhonghe, Qu Rongying, Zhang Wenfeng, Zhang Shufan, Zhang Fengqiu, Zhao Changmei, Zhang Guiyun, Zhao Xishun, Zhao Yuqin, Wang, Xiuxiang, Wang Hongtian, Wang Shouqi, Wang Xiuqin, Xue Yabin, Piao Yingjie, Piao Xiangji, Lu Shouhua, Li Ruifeng, Li Fengrui, Li Ruixiang, Li Xiuzhang, Wang Shicai, Li Hongxiang, Li Hongzhen, Zheng Sixiang, Jia Yunxia, Wu Shouxia, Sun Yue, Yu Xue, Li Fengge, Ma Weikuan, Li Baicheng, Li Ji, Chen Zengxi, Liu Tiancheng, Hui Xuan, Sun Dawei, Qiu Liping, Song Guanping, Jiang Lide, Bai Yansong, Yu Wenzhen, Yan Yulan, Xu Shaoqing, Yang Jinyu, Yang Suhua, Yang Yilin, Song Qingfeng, Ying Yaoling.
[Jiutai City, Jilin Province] A List of Practitioners Sentenced to Forced Labor
Hao Yuhuan, Sun Shiwen (who was beaten to death in custody) and his wife (name unknown), Han Feng, Liu Shu, Wang Yanbo, Lu Huifang, Wang Guiling, Liu Yufen, Zhao Yanling, Wang Yanqin, Zhu Xiuzhi, Yu Shuchun, Yu Haixia, Su Hong, Han Xiaolian, Xue Shuyi, Zhu Dexiang, Zhu Xiuzhen, Zhang Huiping, Shi Wenzhuo, Bai Meigang, Jiang [missing 1 Chinese character in given name] Yu.
[Pingliang City, Gansu Province] Sudden Retribution
One day near the end of March 2001, a cinema in Pingliang City Gansu Province was showing a movie defaming Falun Dafa. Suddenly, the ceiling fell down. Luckily no one was hurt. People said, " They [the authorities] stepped over the line in persecuting Falun Gong. This is retribution."