(Clearwisdom.net) My name is Ms. Zhang Wei, and I am being persecuted by Jiang's regime because I practice Falun Gong. After I was illegally incarcerated at Dabei Prison, the police tortured me psychologically as well as physically. The Dabei Prison has become a place where atrocities against innocent people occur at the hands of the authorities.

During the time I was held there, the captain ordered two criminal inmates to torture me. It was in December. They took off my padded overcoat and pants, leaving me only with a shirt and one thin pair of pants, and poured water over my body, until I was soaked to the skin. Then they pushed me outside to freeze. In December, it was very windy and bone-chillingly cold. Even the inmates wearing warm clothes had to keep moving and jumping around and stayed out of the high wind to keep warm. My shirt turned into a sheet of ice. When touched, it would make crackling noises. Then criminal inmates, under orders from the captain, pulled my hair and slammed me against the iron gate, kicking and punching me at the same time. When I could not stand up any more from the cold and their beatings, they pulled my hair and made me stand up. I stared at the grey sky and my mind became numb. They dragged me to the room upstairs to warm up, then poured water on me and forced me outside to freeze again.

Often they took me to a small room and grabbed my hair to slam me against the wall, causing the tiles on the wall to fall off. My hair was pulled out and it was everywhere on the floor. Sometimes they would kick me in my chest so I could not breathe. They wrote on the bottom of my feet and shoes words defaming Falun Dafa and Teacher. When I refused to allow this, they would throw me on the floor, put the shoes on me forcibly and insulted me in front of many inmates, kicking and punching me simultaneously.

One day, the one inmate who was responsible for me left at 9 a.m. and came back at 3 pm. She told me that an elderly lady was brought in to a different group and was beaten with electric wires from 10 am until 3pm. She said, the old lady had passed out and they poured cold water on her to make her wake her up. She was black and blue all over from her neck to her heel; she looked exactly like an eggplant. (The inmate who did this was rewarded with a 3-month sentence reduction) She then said to me, "We should have beat you harder. Wait and see what we have for you tonight." That night, they took me to the small room and two most vicious inmates were there. They took out a copper wire with rubber insulation, the size of a thumb in diameter, and said to me, "This is the one that was used to beat up the old lady." After that, they stripped me and started to whip me with it. I was rolling on the floor from the pain and could not breathe. The next morning, I could not move. An inmate who sympathized with me took away the wire, worried that they would use it to whip me again. The one responsible for me had me sit on a stool in the workshop and asked a convicted murderer to pull out my hair bunch by bunch. Then she yanked me forward and backward by my hair. She shoved my back, which was covered in bruises, and said, "Let me make you feel better." At the same time, she stabbed my back with the tip of an ink pen. Finally, they pushed me to the floor and knelt on me with their weight of more than 65 kilograms, pushing and punching my back. When they'd exhausted all means of torturing me, they used the corner of the stool to hit my knuckles. I was in agony from the pain. Even the inmate, who hit me, shouted, "I am exhausted." Other inmates in the workshop who sympathised with me said to me, "We feel so sorry for you, seeing what you have gone through. Write your letter of repentance(1). Otherwise, they will kill you."

For twenty days, they did not allow me to use water or toilet paper. I was so filthy. I had not had a full night of sleep for a long time. Every night I was sitting on a small stool or just squatting. Once I was forced to stand for 24 hours and was not allowed to sleep. Several inmates took turns watching me. They were wearing warm clothes, their legs covered with blankets, their hands holding a hot water thermos, and yet they were still complaining about being cold. I was standing there wearing the one shirt I was permitted, exhausted, cold and hungry, and occasionally beaten by them. When I dozed off, they poured water on me, pulled me by my hair and pushed my face into the toilet and tied my feet together. Again and again I fell to the floor. Another inmate said to them, "She could kill herself if she keeps on falling like that." Only after that did they untie me. My mind became so confused at that point that everything I saw was distorted. The floor looked bumpy to me and as soon as I moved my head, I saw fireballs. At some point, I did not know who I was. When they hit me, I could not feel the pain. Everything around me had changed and I was experiencing hallucinations. I finally realized who I was when the lights shone on the windows and I looked at myself in the mirror.

Why are the kind-hearted Falun Gong practitioners treated like this? What did I do wrong? Why are we treated so brutally? My legs were so swollen that I could not bend them; even when I used the toilet I had to stand. My feet were bleeding. One day, I had terrible pain in my abdomen and my chest, and then I threw up and vomited a lot. At the request of other inmates, they let me rest for a little bit. My parents have been to the prison many times. They walked around outside the walls of the prison hoping to see me, but were always rejected. Then the police wanted my parents to work on me, so they let us meet. Before the meeting, they made the inmates put a turtleneck sweater on me so my parents would not see my broken collarbone and my neck. They also put some warm clothes on me. I felt so bad when I saw my parents. Their hair had turned grey during this short period of time, and they were so skinny and under stress and they looked much older. My mom cried her heart out when holding my hands, she saw my bruised face, with the marks of bristles where the inmates hit me with a brush, and that my eyes were blackened and my back was bent. I did not respond to what they said at all. My father was weeping, too. My parents said to the captain: "Our daughter is dying. She needs to go to the hospital." After the meeting, they took me for a check-up and found that I had all kinds of physical problems. The policeman who took me there said, "You have problems with all your major organs. You must renounce your belief, and then you can leave here." Then they took me to the clinic in the prison. At night, when I took off my clothes, I could see that my legs were swollen and bright, and that from my knees to my ankles was all bruises. My arms were like that, too. I lay down slowly, and it was extremely painful. I could not breathe and could not lie on my back. I could only find a spot and lie down with my whole body curled up. They did not stop persecuting me even then. This is what I experienced in the Dabei Women's Prison, Shenyang City. It's just one of the thousands of terrible things happening to Falun Gong practitioners.

All those with whom I came in contact in the prison knew that I was a good person, but they just followed the orders from the higher authorities to torture me against their conscience. My thanks go to the kind-hearted people who helped Falun Gong practitioners when they have being persecuted. I appeal to all people in the world to extend your help in rescuing the Falun Gong practitioners held in China.

(1): Repentance Statement: In this statement the practitioner is forced to admit remorse for practicing Falun Gong, promise to give up Falun Gong, and never again associate with other practitioners or go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.

April 12, 2004