(Clearwisdom.net) At the end of 2000, local police officers illegally abducted some of my fellow practitioners and me and locked us up in a local detention center. Each prison cell was packed full of Falun Dafa practitioners, and the number of imprisoned practitioners continued to grow. Later, we realized that we must not passively tolerate the persecution. As a result, we decided to hold a hunger strike to protest. Outraged, the police officers shouted, "If you stop the hunger strike immediately, we will quickly set you free. Otherwise you'll be doomed. We'll send you to forced labor camps right away!" Disregarding the threats, we continued our hunger strike.
One night, I heard a distant voice when I was half asleep, "You have overcome the obstacle..." I knew it was Master Li who was encouraging me.
In despair, the police officers changed their tactics. They threatened that they would force-feed us if we persisted. Once again, we did not give in.
In response to the brutal force-feeding, however, some practitioners tacitly consented to the persecution and passively tolerated this treatment. After exchanging our understandings from the perspective of the Fa, we reached a consensus that the purpose of our hunger strike was not to validate ourselves but to suppress and protest the persecution. The reason why the officers were using this brutal force-feeding tactic was to torture us and to force us to give in. Therefore, we had to maintain our righteous thoughts and not allow the evil to get close to us. We had to make every effort to validate the Fa. As a result, the officers failed even to step into our prison cell after attempting to force-feed us three times. In the end they gave up.
The result encouraged us to push even further. With compassionate hearts, we decided to write a letter to the relevant higher officials to explain why we were holding the hunger strike. We described how we had all benefited from the practice of Falun Dafa, how the cruel persecution had tremendously harmed our families and us, and how a righteous handling of the persecution would bring good future to them. Finally, we demanded an immediate end to the persecution and the unconditional release of all Falun Dafa practitioners who were illegally imprisoned.
First we read the letter to the inmates who had misunderstood our hunger strike and quickly eliminated their negative thoughts. In particular, the head inmate greatly changed her attitude towards us practitioners. Instead of treating the other inmates rudely, and obediently following the guards' instructions, as she used to do, she donated her own pen and paper to us and gave us suggestions on to how to deliver the letter to the outside world. Deep in our hearts, we experienced the power of compassion.
Apparently, our hunger strike stunned officials from various government organizations. The next day, on the afternoon of New Year's Day 2001, dozens of officials from the city's 610 Office, the city police department, and the local National Security Branch came to the detention center. It did not take much effort for me to pass the prepared letter to them, which they happily accepted because they believed they had found the "leader" or the "organizer" of the hunger strike.
Quickly glancing at the letter, the city police chief waved his hand with the letter in it and threatened me, saying, "We must sentence you all to forced labor camps. You want to be unconditionally released? No way!" The rest of them all expressed agreement.
Facing their aggression and arrogance, I told them, peacefully and compassionately, "We don't have any so-called leader. This is just a spontaneous act on our parts in an attempt to suppress the persecution. We have been forced to take such action. I simply volunteered to represent the group. With regard to our letter, please don't draw any conclusions without reading it completely. The letter is from all of us holding the hunger strike. It is full of sincere thoughts from the bottoms of our hearts."
The police chief quieted down and started to read the letter intently. He then passed it to the other officials. As the letter passed from one official to another, the Dafa practitioners' compassion and pure thoughts were touching every heart. One of the officials asked me, in a very low voice, "Did it hurt when you were force-fed?" I answered, "It hurts a lot. However, without our suffering, how else would you visit us on the New Year holiday?" A few moments later, the police chief gave me a very clear message: they would hold a meeting the next day and quickly set us free afterwards.
On January 3, 2001, I returned to the mighty torrent of Fa-rectification once again. When I passed by the detention center office, the director happened to be there. Confused, he shouted to me, "Don't come back here again! We do not want to arrest Falun Gong practitioners any more. Nobody arrests Falun Gong any more in the other provinces. We've set you free, all of you, right away!" When my family members requested a discount on my so-called "food expenses," he quickly agreed.
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