(Clearwisdom.net) My name is Xu Dong. The following statements are my recollections on how I benefited physically from Falun Dafa practice, and my experiences during the past seven years since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started the persecution of Falun Dafa.

1. Practicing Dafa; Becoming Healthy

In March 1995 my mother suffered a stroke and had rheumatism and other illnesses. We spent much money on different treatments for her, which did not improve her condition. Mother went to a Falun Gong group exercise site close to our home in September 1995, under a friend's guidance, and started practicing Falun Gong. After three months, miraculously, my mother recovered from all her health problems. Soon after that, my father stepped onto the cultivation path as well. After my father started practicing, his lung disease and rheumatic heart disease disappeared.

I had become a person who didn’t believe anything but the things I could see before me. This was due to the CCP's evil propaganda that had poisoned my mind. But when I saw the huge changes that happened to my parents, my mindset started changing. As my parents continued to practice, they underwent more significant changes. I felt I should understand Falun Gong better and see how Falun Gong was able to change my parents so significantly, both physically and mentally.

In July 1996, while I was reading Master Li’s book, Zhuan Falun, I quit smoking and drinking the same day. I had tried to quit so many times but was never able to completely quit until then. As I studied the Fa and practiced the exercises more, I started experiencing amazing physical changes. I swore that no matter what kind of interference I might encounter in the future I would continue practicing Dafa until the end. Falun Dafa is the truth and the goal that I’d been waiting for and pursuing my whole life.

2. Beginning the Journey of Returning to My True Origin; Purifying My Mind

As I was improving my xinxing, when others didn’t treat me well enough, I no longer argued or fought with them. I used to fight with others all the time. Since 1987, I had been wholesaling cigarettes in the Fushun area as a way to earn a living. Many vendors were privately selling fake cigarettes to make more money. I had friends from the south who could provide me fake cigarettes too, and after I sold them, they would bring me a higher profit. It sounded really appealing. After I had practiced Falun Gong for a week, I knew that as a Falun Gong practitioner I needed to become a good person. So, I didn’t work with them. Later on, I even totally gave up the business of selling cigarettes. Several friends said I was dumb to give that up. I said, "Our Master told us to maintain high morals. I will change myself to be a true practitioner." Eventually I started a business providing student lunches.

Our whole family follows the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance." Whenever we do things, we always think of others first. Our minds and bodies are purified. We live very happily. There is no way in any language for me to express enough appreciation to Master.

In order to have more people benefit, since August 1996 I have carried a cassette recorder every day to practice the exercises with other Falun Gong practitioners and introduce predestined people to Falun Gong’s wonders in improving health and purifying the mind.

Since 1997, with my family’s understanding and support, I went to the nearby suburban areas and villages to spread the Fa with other practitioners and practiced the exercises and studied the Fa with the practitioners there. It helped build a great and solid foundation for my steadfast belief in Dafa during the persecution I would experience later on. I also assisted in organizing some group exercise activities in the Fushun area and was responsible for making Dafa materials for the whole city.

3. The Persecution I Experienced Prior to July 20, 1999

On April 25, 1999, I went to the Appeals Office of the State Council at Zhongnanhai to tell the Communist regime of the benefits of Falun Gong to the country and the people. After the peaceful appeal was over, officers from the local police station and some other people with obscure backgrounds took me to the police station and tried to secretly video-tape me.

At that time the evildoing CCP head Jiang Zemin made lying statements to the world, such as, "The Chinese government has never banned any freedom of belief or practice." In fact, he presented a secret speech starting the persecution of Falun Gong and founding the 610 Office. Many righteous and kind people in Mainland China were repulsed by the lies.

One righteous person, Wu Zhanri, forwarded the content of Jiang's speech to the head of the Falun Gong Assistance Center in Fushun City. Wu Zhanri was taken away by the Political and Legal Committee of Fushun City and the 610 Office in the morning on July 20, 1999 and died from abuse on July 25. There is a news report on the Clearwisdom website about this. After Wu Zhanri had learned of the start of the persecution earlier that day, he was depressed. He let everyone he knew know it, and asked everybody to clarify the truth to the Chinese regime that Falun Gong is a good practice that only brings benefits and does no harm to society or the country.

While one practitioner was reading the secret speech document, personnel from the Political and Legal Committee of Fushun City and from the 610 Office arrested him. Under duress, he said that it was me who passed this so-called secret document to him. In mid-June 1999, people from the National Security Bureau, Public Security Bureau and the 610 Office organized a Special Case Team. They abducted me and detained me. They interrogated me for a long time regarding the source of the document. But when I asked them what they wanted to know, they were afraid to say because they were afraid of being exposed and because these kinds of "secret documents" can’t stand public scrutiny. What the evil Party has been doing has always been in complete opposition to the truth.

While I was illegally detained I never cooperated with the evildoers' unreasonable requests. They changed shifts every six hours. They prevented me from sleeping. With help and support from righteous and kind people and Falun Gong practitioners, after 48 hours of illegal detention, I returned home.

On the morning of July 20, 1999, agents from the Political and Legal Committee and from the 610 Office went to several homes of the assistants of the Falun Gong Assistance Center and attempted to take them away. They also came to my house to arrest me. I wasn’t home. They weren’t successful. They went to my friends' and relatives’ houses. They also went to my coworkers' homes. I chose to leave my home to avoid the persecution.

4. Being Persecuted and Detained

On October 15, 1999, half an hour after I got home, officers from Qianjing Police Station nabbed me and took me to the Fushun Detention Center. Their reasoning: I had participated in the "April 25 Incident" and illegally held secret national documents. They told me I was to, "Await sentencing."

I was incarcerated in the detention center during winter. The persecutors allowed me to wear only one shirt and underwear. The cold wind blew in from all directions. There were over 20 people in a ten square meter cell. Each meal consisted of a moldy bun. Life there was miserable due to the torture, cursing and beatings -- each day felt like a year.

My friends and relatives tried hard to get me out of there. Even after all the efforts and money spent, I was still sentenced to three years in a forced labor camp at the hands of agents from the Fushun Political and Legal Committee and from the 610 Office. I was locked up at the Fushun Labor Camp.

After my father heard that I had been sentenced to three years of forced labor and was tortured in the Fushun Labor Camp, he collapsed and passed away on November 29, 1999.

My sister and friends went to the labor camp to request a leave so I could attend my father’s funeral. Their request was unreasonably denied. The authorities took away my basic human rights.

5. The Brutal Persecution Experienced at the Fushun Forced Labor Camp

Fushun Camp head Huang Wei wanted to reach his personal goals and win rewards. In order to reach the "reform" quota of 90% to 95%, forcing Falun Gong practitioners to give up their belief, he urged camp guards to beat and torture Falun Gong practitioners.

In order to torment Falun Gong practitioners mentally and destroy them physically, Huang Wei forced us do hard labor washing coal. We had to pick coal from icy water. It was -30 ⁰ C that winter. Falun Gong practitioner Zhang Donghui raised a question and was dragged into a small room. Three brutish guards named Jiang Yongfeng, Guan Wei, Liu Kai and two others used five electric batons simultaneously to electrically shock Zhang Donghui for an hour and force Zhang Donghui to kneel on the concrete floor.

The persecution at Fushun has been more and more severe since 2000. They forbade practitioners to use the restroom. They used different kinds of torture methods: holding up a bench, kneeling, "flying the airplane," tiger bench, electric batons, beatings with bench legs and sleep deprivation. These atrocities happened at the behest of and with encouragement from Huang Wei. When they forced me to march forward, they made me stay still in one step. If I moved, I would get ruthless physical punishment or be exposed to the hot sun. I suffered so much from this torture that I almost became unconscious.

With Huang Wei's urgings, the evildoing guard Jiang Yongfeng started torturing the kind and innocent Falun Gong practitioners at 2:00 a.m. or 3:00 a.m. every day. He cruelly beat elderly and young practitioners alike. He covered the windows with newspapers to hide the torture scenes. Jiang Yongfeng also manipulated more than 20 more people to torture the practitioners who followed the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance. He purposefully put a TV in the hallway and put the volume to the maximum, to drown out the crying and shouting from the practitioners being tortured.

Due to long-term torture, practitioner Yuan Peng bit off his own tongue. Fushun Petroleum Institute graduate student Yao Songdong was tortured to the point of a mental collapse. Yao Yanhui and Ma Huaidong were abused so severely they lost their ability to walk. Yao Yanhui’s family visited him at the labor camp and asked guard Guan Zhen why he was so cruelly abused. Guan Zhen lied and tried to deceive the family, saying the reason for his condition comes from Yao Yanghui having played basketball and worked up a sweat, and then sat on the cold floor.

Dafa practitioners Mr. Jia Qinggui and Mr. Meng Qingchang are senior engineers at the Lingyuan Steel Plant. Because they didn’t give up their belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance, they were transported to the Fushun Forced Labor Camp. Camp head Huang Wei incited a group of people to savagely beat Jia Qinggui for a whole day. When he returned to his room, none of the more than 20 people in the room could recognize it was Jia Qinggui. His head was swollen badly. His eyes were swollen shut from the severe beating. Following that, guard Jiang Yongfeng dragged practitioner Mr. Meng Qingchang to the guard’s office to brutally beat him using a wooden stool for a long time until Meng Qingchang couldn’t move any more. The Fushun Forced Labor Camp is a living hell!

The above is just what I knew of at that camp. It is the mere tip of an iceberg of the nationwide persecution of Falun Gong by the evil CCP over the past seven years. There are some other brutal torture methods that can’t even be explained in any language.

6. Almost Taken Away from Home Again

After I returned home, the memories from the Fushun Forced Labor Camp constantly bothered me. I often shouted in my dreams and woke up my elderly mother and young children. My family suffered financially because of extortion by the authorities during my detention. In addition, agents from the local police station constantly harassed, followed and monitored us.

On the morning of June 12, 2002, I was about to go downstairs to shop for groceries. I heard somebody call me in the room. I unintentionally walked to the deck and looked downstairs. I saw several people walking into the building. One of them looked like Chen Feng from Division One of Fushun City Police Department. I immediately locked the door. Those people started knocking loudly on the door. I could see Guang Yong and Chen Feng from the Fushun City Police Department. I didn’t open the door. To avoid being persecuted again, I chose to leave home for the second time.

The police from Division One of the Fushun City Police Department, went to my grandmother, uncle and other relatives’ homes to search for me, but they weren’t successful. They issued an illegal arrest warrant and followed and monitored my family.

I kept clarifying the truth and hoped that more and more kind people wouldn’t be deceived by the CCP's lies. I did this during the four years of absence from home, so more people in the Fushun area would understand the facts of the persecution. During that whole time, I was never out of danger from potential arrest and other risks.

The Fushun area is one of the worst areas of the persecution. During my four years in exile, many Falun Gong practitioners in the Fushun area were abducted by the evil and ruthlessly persecuted in prisons. Many practitioners died as a result of the persecution, including Huang Ke, Liang Suyun, and others. They left their children behind. The crimes of torture that the CCP committed against Falun Gong practitioners are too many to be documented and have never before been seen throughout history.

Officials at the Fushun National Security Bureau and those from Division One of the police department had me on a list of "important people" specially targeted for arrest in our area. In order to reach their goal of capturing me, every time they arrested other Falun Gong practitioners they used torture methods, such as pushing the legs backward and outward simultaneously, kicking the testicles, "penetrating the forest" and other atrocities in their attempts to force practitioners to tell my whereabouts.

One of my friends who works for the National Security Bureau told me, "You have to leave Fushun City, the farther away the better! They’ve dispatched many spies to search for you everywhere. The phones of your family and relatives have been tapped. You have to be careful."

7. Being Homeless

When I chose to leave home, my younger daughter Xu Ming was only three months old. Now she is more than five years old. When some of my friends went to visit my family and children, my younger daughter mistakenly thought they were her father and opened her arms and called them "Daddy, Daddy." It made my friends cry.

Since Jiang’s regime started the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, I choose to leave my own home and go into exile. My life has been very difficult. I could be seized any time, anywhere. I face life danger at any time, even the possibility of being sent to Sujiatun Concentration Camp as a victim for live organ harvesting.

I seldom see my mother, my wife and two children. I miss my elderly mother, lovely wife and my young children. They are worried about my safety all the time during my long absences.

We sincerely hope the international community and human rights organizations might establish independent investigation groups in Mainland China to conduct investigations so as to truly understand the truth about the evil Party’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in prisons, forced labor camps and concentration camps. These people should understand the atrocities the CCP has ordered, to harvest organs from living Falun Gong practitioners.

Please, help stop the CCP's unequaled violence! Please, help stop this inhuman catastrophe so we can safeguard a beautiful world together.

Another New Year is coming. Dafa practitioners in the Fushun Area who are away from home would like to send greetings to our compassionate and great Master: Revered Master, Happy New Year! No matter where we are, we will do the three things well and won’t let you down. We hope to bring you more relief in the New Year!

I also would like to wish all Dafa practitioners from the Fushun area a Happy New Year!