(Clearwisdom.net) Before Tangshan Falun Gong practitioner Liu Juhua was arrested, she was the president of a factory trade union in Tangshan City. She is fifty years old and we call her elder sister Liu.
On July 20, 1999, Liu Juhua went to Beijing with her fifth younger sister and the daughter of her second oldest sister. After she was sent back to her hometown from Beijing, she headed to Beijing again after Tangshan City was put under a curfew. She walked from Tianjin to Beijing. On the way, her shoes were worn out as she walked from five o'clock in the morning until evening. She finally arrived in a Beijing suburb and took a taxi to enter the city. After a few days, she was arrested by the Public Security officers, sent back to Tangshan City, and held at a detention center.
There were several dozen Falun Gong practitioners already detained at the center. After several days, Liu Juhua and her niece realized that they must leave that place. They discussed the matter with the others, all of whom agreed with them. One day, Liu Juhua and two others were moved to another room, the back window of which was missing a pane of glass. They discussed what they should do. At midnight, they left the high security prison through the window.
After they escaped, they went to Beijing and were again arrested and sent back to Tangshan City. During this arrest, the police were furious with her: "Are you the Liu Juhua who escaped from prison? Do you know how serious a crime you have committed? Because of your escape, a number of cadres at the prison were severely punished. This time we will not let you escape!" She was detained at the watch house. But due to a moment of carelessness, the police officer that detained Liu Juhua sent her to a custody center across the street from the detention center. While there, she talked with those who had previously talked about escaping with her but had not done so. She encouraged them and said that success depended on having the determination to make something happen. If they had the will to do it, they would succeed. She had been there for only about an hour when the Public Security Office noticed the mistake and brought her back to the watch house. The result was that she inspired 28 of the more than fifty practitioners to get out of the detention center using their righteous thoughts.
In November 1999, Liu Juhua, her younger sister, and her niece were among the first group of Falun Gong practitioners to be unlawfully sentenced to the forced labor camp in Hebei Province. They were sent to the Kaiping Women's Forced Labor Camp, in Tangshan City.
At the same time, one of her nephews, a 29-year-old university graduate, was also sent to a forced labor camp. Her second elder sister, mother of the nephew, went missing after she went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice her beliefs.
There was much suffering at the Kaiping Forced Labor Camp. Besides doing heavy manual labor at a brick kiln, practitioners were savagely beaten whenever they practiced the Falun Gong exercises. Liu and her relatives took the lead in trying to reason with the police officers, and told them the principles of Falun Dafa. They organized the detainees to do the exercises together, and because of that, the sisters were transferred to the Shijiazhuang Forced Labor Camp. Some of the practitioners that the police officers in Shijiazhuang found difficult to deal with were transferred to the Tangshan Forced Labor Camp.
At that time, all the practitioners at the Shijiazhuang Women's Forced Labor Camp obeyed the officers in charge and did everything they were told to do. They worked for over ten hours daily and sometimes fell asleep while hammering nails into shoes, which resulted in injuries to their hands from the hammers. Liu Juhua inspired everyone by saying that China's laws did not include such regulations, what they were experiencing was not normal, and that they must rectify the situation. Hence, the practitioners demanded the usual eight-hour workday. As expected, the guards at the Forced Labor Camp did not agree. All of the practitioners decided they would refuse to work until their request was granted. Upon hearing this, the police officers started to savagely beat them. Some of the practitioners could not stand the beatings and went back to work, but the majority sustained the boycott. Among them were elderly persons in their 60s and a young lady who was only twenty. They endured the taunts and unrestrained abuse of the cruel police officers. The practitioners refused to obey the "arrangements" at the camp. The police really could not make this group obey them. Eventually, they were punished by standing outside, while facing a wall, from 6:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. Except for eating or using the toilet, everyone had to stand perfectly still. They were not allowed to bend or squat down. This went on for 45 days. In the wind and rain, the practitioners persisted until the skin on their faces looked like "a sheet of iron." Most of them could no longer bend their legs. They suffered more than if they had continued to work. Normal people would have fainted if forced to stand in that position for such a long time. In the end, the labor camp had to accept the practitioners' requirements, and the practitioners were no longer forced to do excessive manual labor. The ordinary prisoners at the camp were also only required to work an eight-hour day, for which they were sincerely grateful to the practitioners.
Of course the practitioners should have also refused the eight-hours of work each day, as well as the so-called military training, because they had not committed any crimes. The Falun Gong practitioners should not have accepted the detention or any form of enslavement or humiliation. But in the severe and cruel environment of the labor camp, the bravery of these practitioners certainly earned people's respect and admiration.
However, doing the exercises and studying the Fa [Law and Principles] still resulted in torment for the practitioners. During the morning drill, if one practitioner did a Falun Gong exercise movement, many other practitioners would follow. The police officers could not stop them, even after beating them. Because they didn't have the Falun Dafa books, everyone recited what they remembered while others wrote down the words and then passed them around for all to read. The police officers ordered the thieves, robbers, prostitutes, and drug addicts to supervise the practitioners--even when they used the toilet. If any of the practitioners were found reciting a scripture or practicing the exercises, they would instantly be savagely beaten. This was a widespread and routine situation. Whoever was seen as the "instigator" would be punished with such tortures as being handcuffed, shackled, and then hung up, (some practitioners were hung from the door frame for a week), beaten with clubs, or shocked with electric batons. During the beatings Liu Juhua was seriously injured on one side of her head, and for two years, the wound occasionally flared up. The pain caused her face to be pale and waxen.
Liu Juhua was detained at the Number Four Brigade, Shijiazhuang City Women's Forced Labor Camp. All of the Falun Gong practitioners held there were under duress. They used whatever pen and paper they could find to write appeal letters while hiding under the blankets. The practitioners relied on some of the workers at the camp to smuggle the letters out and mail them to the authorities. Liu Juhua wrote countless letters. After discussions with the other detainees, she decided that the group must file a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin. Liu Juhua wrote the letter to begin proceedings. Fan Lain and Zhu Hong made several copies of the letter so that practitioners who wished to participate in the lawsuit could attach their signatures. It was certainly a miracle that they were able to accomplish this despite being supervised very closely and not even allowed to talk to each other. They were even supervised when they used the toilet.
When using the bathroom, washing their faces, or washing dishes, the practitioners were not supervised so strictly. By signaling with their eyes or speaking in short sentences, they could understand each other and everyone put their signatures on the many strips of paper prepared for the purpose. After Liu Juhua received all of the signed pieces of paper, she glued them to the back of the lawsuit letter. There was a total of 99 signatures. When the letter was completed, Liu's family members mailed it and posted it on the Internet. The letter was transmitted from the section leader to the intermediate leader and finally to the main leader. The practitioners requested the letter to be delivered to the highest civil court in the country. With so many procedures to follow, people were astounded that the letter was not interfered with. It was not long after the lawsuit was mailed that the Public Security Ministry investigated the issue of why Liu Juhua and Zhu Hong had been unlawfully arrested and detained at the Number Two Detention Center in Shijiazhuang.
Today, this story of sister Liu is narrated and recorded to encourage fellow practitioners to be brave and diligent in their advancement in cultivation.
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