(Minghui.org) Colonel Fang Zhiwen, 58, a former division chief from the Nanjing Military Region, recently filed a criminal complaint against former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin for initiating the persecution of Falun Dafa that cost him his once-promising military career.

Col. Fang was forced to retire early from the military in 2000, one year after the persecution began. He was later arrested twice and given one year in a forced labor camp, where he was brutally tortured. His family's life was permanently disrupted by the persecution, and his mother passed away prematurely.

Mr. Fang Recounts His Personal Experience

Although I was promoted to division chief in my thirties, my health had been bothering me. I had many illnesses, including severe stomach problems, anorectal problems, arthritis, migraine, urticaria, nephritis, and hepatitis. The array of illnesses left me exhausted.

After one of my superiors introduced Falun Dafa to me in 1996, I began practicing the exercises with other practitioners. I soon became healthy and energetic. I followed Dafa's principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance at work and did my job diligently.

However, not long after the persecution began, I was ordered to retire from the military at the beginning of 2000. My family and friends were startled by the news, as they all expected me to be promoted after having been at my current rank for six years. Many of them developed misunderstandings about Dafa as a result of my forced retirement.

I was arrested for the first time on September 30, 2001, when the police followed me home, ransacked my house, and took me away. I was detained for 26 days at the Xuanwu District Detention Center in Nanjing.

I was arrested again on July 21, 2007, and a month later given one year of forced labor. I was transferred to the Fangqiang Forced Labor Camp in October of that year.

I was brutally tortured in the labor camp, both physically and mentally. In intensive daily brainwashing sessions, I was forced to read and watch materials that defamed Falun Dafa. I had to write down my thoughts afterward and was pressured to write letters renouncing Dafa. I was forced to curse Falun Dafa and its founder.

I was physically tortured as well, including being made to sit on “small stools” for long periods of time, deprived of sleep, beaten, and having my legs forced into a split. In this extremely painful split torture, the guards and inmates pushed me down to the ground, forced my head down, sat on my shoulders, and violently pulled my legs apart. The pain lasted for several months.

Torture Re-enactment: Forcing legs into a split

My family was also severely affected by the persecution. My wife worried constantly about my safety and had to shoulder all responsibilities for the entire family while I was away from home. My young daughter was under a lot of pressure. My mother used to practice Falun Gong with me and had regained her health, but the stress of the persecution caused her to give up the practice. My own ordeal so traumatized my mother that her health deteriorated, and she passed away.

Background

In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.

The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners in the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.

Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.

Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.