(Minghui.org) My name is Ke Zhengji. I am a 52-year-old Falun Gong practitioner who has been persecuted for practicing Falun Gong since the persecution began on July 20, 1999.
I was handicapped because of a chronic inflammatory disease that can cause some of the vertebrae in the spine to fuse together, making the spine less flexible.
This illness caused me constant pain, which forced me to retire from the Maoming City Heat and Electricity Factory. After I began to practice Falun Gong in 1997, my pain disappeared.
A dozen police officers from the Maonan District Police Branch Department broke into my house and ransacked it one evening in May 2004. They found a card which said “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” in my nine year-old daughter's room. They threatened her that she would be expelled from school if she did not tell them who gave it to her.
The police arrested me, took me to the 610 Office and I was forced to stand while they interrogated me for 36 hours.
The Maonan District Court secretly sentenced me to seven years in prison for distributing Falun Gong informational materials. I appealed, which was turned down.
The police took me to the Yanjiang Prison where I was held in Ward 6. Workshop managers Li Ge and Warden Wang Jiancheng tried to brainwash me for more than 16 hours daily. I was forced to do hard labor, including holidays.
Zhang Qirui was ordered by the guards to put an unknown drug into my water. I could see white particles the size of rice in it, an indication that the drug had not dissolved.
A dozen police officers from the Hongqi Police Station in the Maonan District arrested me on Christmas Eve in 1999 and took me to the police station. Chen Jiliang, the head of the station, Chen Hua, deputy head and a group of people ransacked my house the next day and confiscated Falun Gong books and pictures of the founder of Falun Gong.
Local police arrested me when I passed Changge City in Henan Province on April 8, 2000 on my way to Beijing where I wanted to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. They confiscated the 200 yuan I had on me, illegally detained me in the Changge City Detention Center for seven days and forced me to work.
I was deprived of sleep for three consecutive days and nights. The police ordered inmates to beat me.
I was taken back to my home town by the Maoming Police Department and taken to the Maoming No. 2 Detention Center for a month. I was forced to work for long hours and given little food. Despite my handicap, I was shackled for seven days because I did not finish the assigned quota.
Practitioners had to pay five yuan per day for meals, and they extorted about 7,000 yuan from each practitioner's family and claimed that it was the release fee before they released us. My family did not pay, so my former employer paid the money and took 100 yuan out of my monthly retirement check.
The 610 Office head in my company asked me to meet with him to have a retired-worker talk one evening in February 2001. He demanded that I renounce Falun Gong, which I refused. He took me to the brainwashing center that the 610 Office had set up in the old Ward 4 at Shitan in Huazhou City.