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A Personal Experience of Torture and Illegal Imprisonment While Detained at the Huadian Police Station

Dec. 29, 2002 |   By Ban Huijuan

(Clearwisdom.net) My name is Ban Huijuan and I am a Falun Dafa practitioner. On June 3, 2002, I was arrested by the local police department and detained in the Political & Security Team Section of the Huandian Police Station, where I was brutally tortured.

At around midnight of June 3, Police Chief Wang held a meeting with those who had been taking turns beating me. By 3 o'clock, seeing that I still refused to say anything, the three policemen angrily bound me onto a bed with my hands cuffed and feet tied together. I was stretched out as far as my limbs would go. At this point I was covered with bruises and in a great deal of pain. I remained silent, sending forth righteous thoughts from my heart. Seeing that I was unmoved, they shouted, "What if we call in two criminals from the detention center to rape you?" Then they used different objects to stab at my body. Before they started to abuse me on my genitals, I shouted out. It took them by surprise, so they stopped their activities and switched to a different tactic. They soaked napkins with water and put them on my face one by one, so that I slowly lost the ability to breathe. After 5 layers of napkins, I started to lose consciousness, and I don't know how long it was before they removed the napkins to keep me from suffocating to death. They repeated this suffocation routine several times, but I still didn't say a word. They then came up with another dirty trick. They would blow cigarette smoke into a plastic bag and place it over my face. The thick smoke in the bag choked me terribly. After a while, one of the police officers said: "Let's change to something different, let's give her a 'foot massage'." They used something to tickle my feet and said wickedly, "This is so easy, you don't even need to pay us for this treatment."

So they went from one form of torture to another through out the night. At 9 o'clock the next morning, the deputy team leader named Jin came in and took away my key chain. He said to the others, "We've found it." I guess they must have found some receipts in my home. An hour later, they came back and said, "We have found your husband Xu Guijun, your printer, and everything else. Now you must confess." Then two to three policemen came in and beat me savagely. I was soaked with sweat and lost consciousness. They poured cold water in my face and put a dirty sock into my mouth, saying, "Don't let her shout out."

They acted completely without human nature. They tried to force me to sign some sort of document, but I could not read the document. One of them said, "First sign and give your fingerprint, and then we will read it for you." I was deceived, they never read it to me.

On October 8, 2002, I was tried in court. The so-called confession and pleas read by the prosecutor were not my words. I told them that the police didn't record what I actually said, and it was not my confession at all. I was deceived and coerced by severe torture. I told them that the police officers are the real criminals.

I was sent to another detention center in the evening of June 4. A prison warden declared he had been ordered by Police Chief Wang to imprison the three of us practitioners in the No. 1 confinement room. Although they initially promised to move us to another cell the next day, we were imprisoned in the room for over three months. The room was damp and dirty, and we all got scabies. The sewage drain was blocked, and eventually our cell was knee-deep with putrid water. They were forced to move us to No.5 cell. After 3 days there, Liu Bo, the head of the detention center, ordered us back to the confinement room, claiming the sewage had been drained. I thought, "Why we should go back to the confinement room to suffer more?" That place was filthy, and it was full of sewage water. I told fellow practitioner Yu Cuifan that we should refuse to move. Liu Bo ordered some criminals to carry our belongings and clothes to the confinement room, but we refused to follow. It was nearing the end of autumn and we soon faced the cold. A week later, because the No. 4 cell's sewage was blocked up, those criminals were ordered to move to our cell, so we were again forced to return to the confinement room. Liu Bo then moved some violent criminals into our room. We looked inward whenever there was a conflict and exposed the persecution by Liu Bo and other prison officials to the criminals.

One day, when we were sending forth righteous thoughts together, a warden named Sun poured buckets of cold water on us. I immediately denounced her and told her that this was an immoral action not befitting a police officer.

On October 15, Yu Wenyan and I refused to wear the prison uniforms, so Liu Bo refused to give us our blankets, saying that we violated the rules. I demanded to know why he was denying our most basic human rights, to which he had no answer.

In anger, Liu ordered his police officers to put an 18-pound shackle on me. I immediately removed it, which shocked and angered them. On October 17, they used a 38-pound shackle on me. The shackle was so big that it made a lot of noise whenever I moved. They claimed that I made the noises on purpose, so they forcibly bound me with the shackle to a bed. When I denounced their persecution, Liu Bo just laughed and mocked me. To protest the persecution, I refused to eat or drink. By the eighth day of hunger strike, Liu Bo released me from the bed because he was afraid that he would be held accountable if I died. The fetter was left on my feet until the evening of November 4. I wore it for a total of 20 days. On November 4 the heavy shackle was briefly removed, as the city government intended to publicly try Falun Dafa practitioners on November 5. My feet were terribly swollen from wearing the shackles for so long.

I believe in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance," and I have never committed a crime. What I did was to let people understand the truth about Falun Dafa, and let them see through the evil nature of Jiang's persecution. Falun Dafa teaches people to be truly good, and it is beneficial to society. Heavenly principles, not human beings, will be the true judge of right and wrong.

I strongly call for the release all detained Dafa practitioners immediately, so that they may be returned to their families.

[Editors' note: this practitioner has been illegally sentenced to 12 years in prison.]