(Clearwisdom.net) Ms. Zhang Yujie, nearly 60 years old, is a Falun Gong practitioner from Yushu City, Jilin Province. During the eleven-year persecution of Falun Gong, she was subjected to multiple illegal arrests and detention, just for clarifying the facts about Falun Gong.
The following is her personal statement about what she has had to endure.
1. Detained for Clarifying the Facts about Falun Gong in a Letter
After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, I immediately wrote a letter to the City Party Committee secretary, Li Wei, which validated the wonderfulness of Dafa. For this, officials from the Jianshe Police Station and the Politics and Security Section of the Police Department illegally took me to a detention center on September 25, 1999. They claimed that I had "disturbed the social order," and they filed this criminal charge against me.
In the beginning of my detention, guard Wang Fei opened all the windows to make us freeze, simply because we recited the Fa. In addition, our relatives were not allowed to give us anything. Therefore, everything we needed, including toilet paper and toiletries, we had to buy from the detention center where the prices were twice as high as on the regular market. During the first several days, we were given only two meals per day, which consisted of items made from gray cornmeal and millet. Afterwards, the millet cakes were changed to steamed sponge cakes, but the guards only distributed small pieces to us, which sometimes were not well cooked. Detained with us was a girl named Wang Xiahong. She was so hungry that she ate salty vegetables and drank tap water. Despite these poor conditions, we were still ordered to do forced labor, such as digging fish ponds, carrying soil, dredging, and collecting vegetables in the winter. The guards not ony didn't pay us anything, they even charged us ten yuan per day for lodging. They illegally detained me for two months.
2. Arrested on the Way to Beijing
I was on my way to Beijing, where I wanted to appeal for Falun Gong, on January 15, 2000. However, after I arrived at the Changchun Train Station, I was arrested and then held in the Yushu Detention Center. There, I studied and recited the Fa with fellow practitioners, and guard Teng Qingling poured dirty water over us. We were later transferred to a lockup facility. There, we did the morning exercises every day and went on a hunger strike. Wei Fucheng, the head of the guards, ordered Zhang Fuxue, Sun Jingfu, Zhang, and Han to severely beat us. After that, they stripped off our insulated clothing and forced us to stand outside for several hours in only light clothing. It was very cold with heavy snowfall. Some practitioners' fingernails froze and fell off. Guard Gao Yong watched us and forced us to stand still. One girl, Liu Jinfeng, sat in the snowfield in only light clothing. The back of her hands froze and swelled up, but Gao Yong still hit her hands with a small rod. One practitioner froze and lost consciousness. We wanted to carry her inside, but guard Xu Jiufei stopped us, saying, "Every year, we are required to beat two to death in order to reach our quota."
As of May 2000, over 60 practitioners had been sent to this forced labor camp. At that time Chen Xingguo was the head of the Politics and Law Section. Officials of this section, who also participated in the persecution, included Shi Hailin, Guo Shuqing, and Hu Manshan. In May only about 20 practitioners were left in the lockup facility. We were forced to plant trees, which caused the skin on my hands to split open, and I could not sleep because it hurt so much. I was released at the end of May, but only after my family handed over 1,000 yuan.
3. Detained Again after Validating Dafa at Tiananmen Square
Several fellow practitioners and I went to Beijing again in late 2000, to appeal for Falun Gong, but we were arrested by officials from the Tiananmen Square Police Station and then taken to the Shunyi Detention Center. The next day was the first day of 2001. We were separately put into dozens of trucks and taken away. I was transferred to a police station in Qinghe City and then detained in a cage underground. I went on a hunger strike and was later transferred to the Qinghe Detention Center. After my family had 3,000 yuan extorted from them by Chen Xingguo, I was released.
4. Arrested at a Fellow Practitioner's Home and Mistreated in a Forced Labor Camp
I went to a fellow practitioner's home on the evening of February 28, 2003. Officers from the Zhengyang Police Station, who were hiding there, arrested me and took me away. In the Politics and Security Section of the Police Department, officer Shi Hailin beat me severely and wouldn't let me use the restroom. They took me to a detention center and handcuffed me to an iron chair for over 17 hours. In addition, they poured cold water over me, burned me with cigarettes, and pulled my shoulder blades. Afterwards, practitioners went on a hunger strike. Then the deputy head of the detention center, Gong Tie, pulled me and another practitioner to his office, where several police officers beat us with wooden sticks.
We were later transferred to Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp. Every day we were forced to sing songs that praised the CCP and to watch TV programs and read books that slandered Falun Gong. We had to get up before 5:00 a.m. and go to bed after 10:30 p.m. Sometimes, we had to go to bed very late if we couldn't finish the forced labor tasks. The head guard was Hou Zhihong.
Most forced labor tasks given to us involved toxic substances. We were forced to make handicraft articles for export, such as birds and butterflies. During the period of SARS (Serious Acute Respiration Symptom) epidemic, we were ordered to make masks in one area of a large room. The area next to us was full of chicken feathers and the smell was unbearable. Another area nearby was designated for peeling garlic and shelling melon seeds. Practitioners who didn't write the guarantee statement, declaration to give up cultivation, were shocked with electric prods and deprived of sleep. The guards tied practitioners who firmly believed in Dafa to their beds for over a week. When they were untied, they couldn't move by themselves. This is how they mistreated me for over a year.
5. Detained for Clarifying the Facts about Falun Gong
When I clarified the truth about Falun Gong in public on November 25, 2008, officials from the Jianshe Police Station took me to the Domestic Security Division and put me in a lockup facility. I was released ten days later, after my family handed over 5,000 yuan.
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