(Minghui.org) My family was very poor and we lived in the countryside. Because my mother was sick, I lived with my grandparents. My younger brother and sister died, and I was the only child who survived. My health was poor, and when I was sick, I hovered between life and death.
I married at the age of twenty-five. We had several children, but because of the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) one-child policy, we were endlessly harassed and fined, and my wife committed suicide due to depression. I’d lost my mother at a young age and now, my wife when I was middle-aged. I often looked up at the sky and wondered when my suffering would end and why humans come to this world.
Beginning to Practice Dafa
When I went to work in another town, a Falun Dafa practitioner lent me a copy of Zhuan Falun. This book was so good, and exactly what I was looking for. I finally found the purpose of my life. I decided to practice Falun Dafa. I went back to my hometown that is more than 400 miles away to buy Dafa books, but I couldn't find any. Later, with the help of local practitioners, I was able to obtain all the Dafa books published before July 20, 1999, when the persecution began.
All my illnesses were gone soon after I started practicing. Through studying the Fa, I understood why I was so miserable in the first half of my life, and I understood that people came to this world to eliminate sinful karma, assimilate the to the universal characteristics of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, return to their innate nature, and return to their heavenly world. I had gone from being a person full of karma and at the bottom of society to a Falun Dafa practitioner. I was so happy!
Saving People in the Detention Center
During the more than 20 years of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Dafa, I was persecuted many times for sticking to my beliefs. One evening in the autumn of 2016, I drove my fellow practitioners to a neighboring county to distribute truth-clarifying materials. We divided into groups. The police saw me and took me to a detention center. I went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Due to my family’s and fellow practitioners’ efforts to rescue me, I was released seven days later on bail pending trial.
After returning home, the local police tried to contact me several times but couldn’t find me, so they issued a wanted warrant. When I ran an errand at a bank, they monitored me. Two hours after I finished my errand, the bank called me and said that I needed to return and do a make-up procedure. As soon as I arrived, I was seized by plainclothes police officers who were waiting there. They illegally seized my car, my money, and the truth-clarifying materials, and put me in the detention center.
When they interrogated me, I pointed out that the persecution of Dafa disciples by the CCP’s police and judicial systems was a violation of the law, and demanded my unconditional release. I refused to wear a detention center uniform and insisted on practicing the Falun Dafa exercises. That day, I persuaded a deputy director and a forensic doctor to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
I helped most of the people in my cell quit the Party. After I was sent to another cell, I persuaded the cell head to quit first, and the other prisoners also quit.
A local practitioner on the other side of the cell often shouted, “Falun Dafa is good!” and the prisoners who had quit the Party also shouted: “Falun Dafa is good!”
The shackles they placed on me opened twice, and the guards ordered the cell head to tighten the shackles with special tools. Unexpectedly, a few days later, I woke up at night, and found that the shackles had opened again. The prisoners were dumbfounded, believing that Falun Dafa practitioners were powerful and great people protected by divine.
The Battle Between Good and Evil in the Courtroom
Three months later I was placed on trial. On the day of the trial, my oldest daughter and son-in-law drove with local practitioners to help me send forth righteous thoughts. My son and second daughter also came. I later learned that several carloads of practitioners sat near the detention center to send forth righteous thoughts at close range. Many practitioners also sent forth righteous thoughts at home. We formed an indestructible unit.
The prosecutor said I violated Article 300 of the Criminal Law, and listed dozens of so-called pieces of evidence. For example, they found truth-clarifying materials, banners, and so on, in my car. The lawyer refuted the prosecutor’s evidence, point by point. The lawyer said, “It was not my client who undermined the implementation of the law; it was you. Falun Dafa practitioners are not violent. They are good people who follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, which is beneficial to family and society.” During the whole process of defense, it was not that they were trying me, but that the court was being tried by the lawyers.
Severely Tortured
After returning to the detention center, I went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. The director said, “If you want to practice, you can practice; if you don’t work, you don’t have to work; you don’t have to wear uniforms. But if you don’t eat, this is an issue. Please eat. You can fight against the Communist Party when you’re full. How can you fight if you collapse?” I clarified the truth in detail, and said, “I am not a prisoner, and there is nothing wrong with my doing things according to Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I'm not fighting against the CCP. I just ask to be released unconditionally.”
The guards shackled me and handcuffed me. After a few days, it was changed to leg cuffs (i.e., one end of the handcuff was cuffed to the wrist between the legs, and the other end was attached to the wrist next to the side of the leg from the back of the leg). I couldn’t walk upright. Seven or eight prison guards and inmates smacked, slapped, punched and kicked me, some of them beat me on the buttocks with plastic sticks, held me down in one chair, put my legs and feet on another chair, and beat the soles of my feet with thick wires or bamboo sticks with hooks, causing great pain.
Every day, several deputy directors of the detention center took turns beating me, slapping my mouth, pinching my cheeks, squeezing the flesh in my mouth, and pouring cigarette butts and cigarette ash into my mouth. They force-fed me once a day. One day, a group of prison guards force-fed me, and the director told me to eat it. After I refused, he sneered, “If you don’t eat again, I’ll give you a lot of dung.” He ordered the police to get a plastic bag of excrement, and seven or eight of them put me in leg cuffs and leg shackles. The deputy director grabbed the feces with gloves, stuffed it into my mouth, and put it onto my face, head, and body.
They didn’t let me sleep. As soon as I closed my eyes, they beat me, saying that it was called “stewing the eagle.” I looked at the director and said, “Are you the one who ordered the sleep deprivation?” He was stunned for a moment, and then told the prisoner who was restraining me, “Let him sleep tonight.” By that day they’d kept me up for four days and three nights.
In order to “transform” me, the prison guards forced all the inmates in the two cells where I stayed to write about how I told them about Falun Gong and persuaded them to quit the Party. Under the coercion and pressure of the director, the prisoners had to write. Those who could not read and write asked others to write on their behalf, but two inmates did not write anything. The director and the guards also wrote something, adding up to dozens of writings.
After collecting all the writings, the director and the guards talked to me, and said that if I still refused to eat, they would hand over the writings to the court to heavily sentence me. I thought about it for a whole day: “Am I here to save sentient beings, or am I coming to destroy sentient beings? I clarified the truth to the inmates in these two cells, hoping that they would have a bright future. If they report me, they will commit a crime.” For the sake of sentient beings, I began to eat again.
The two inmates who did not write were blessed. One was released early, and the other got his sentence commuted.
About six days after my hunger strike, they took me to the hospital, put me in a single room, turned off the camera, handcuffed my hands separately to the hospital bed, and shackled my feet with one ordinary set and one electronic set. They pulled most of my right foot out of the bed, and put two more cuffs under each ankle to hook it tightly to the leg of the bed. I had six cuffs on my hands and feet, plus two sets of shackles. I couldn’t move at all. The policeman smugly said, “This is not a place for you to be comfortable.”
The policeman kicked my right foot, which was tightly locked by the handcuffs. My right foot and leg hurt terribly. They also pulled and twisted my right foot and leg. The shackles on my right ankle dug into my flesh, and the pain was indescribable. The director of the detention center said that even a tough person could only survive this torture for a maximum of three days. They used a large syringe to inject a lot of water into my stomach. After a while my stomach was bulging and I needed to urinate, but they didn’t allow me. Once, they made me wait for more than two hours, and I felt like my bladder was going to burst.
I spent six days like that, where the pain was worse than death. They were afraid that I would die in the hospital, so they took me back to the detention center. In the detention center, they put me in the cell where the persecution was the worst. The cell head slapped me in the face with his shoe, and then pressed my head with his hand, one foot on the tightened shackles with the other foot in the air. The weight of his whole body was on me, and I was in great pain.
They shackled me for 45 days. Before I left the detention center, I clarified the truth to all the inmates who came into contact with me, including those who participated in the persecution and the cell head who beat me. I also convinced them to quit the CCP organizations. Of the three cells I stayed in the detention center, most of the inmates in the first two cells quit the Party. I also persuaded most of the inmates in the third cell to quit.
The CCP court illegally sentenced me to two years in prison.
Clarifying the Truth and Saving People in Prison
The day I was sent to prison, two prisoners took me to the workshop. All the inmates looked familiar. Even though I didn’t know them before, they all smiled at me and asked me what happened. I said I practiced Falun Dafa. Everyone said, “Then we will call you ‘senior brother.’”
The prison knew that the detention center had tried everything they could, but still failed to make me “transform,” so they stopped trying. I told them that I would not wear the uniform, memorize the prison rules, squat, participate in the flag raising ceremony, work, or sing the evil Party songs, and I would freely practice the exercises. The prison chief agreed and said he would respect my faith.
Later, the prison also wanted to “transform” me. I told them: “If you want to achieve the goal of being promoted and making a fortune through ‘transforming’ me, dream on. If a person wants to be promoted to an official position and become wealthy, he must accumulate virtue and do good deeds, and he cannot oppose Falun Dafa and the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Otherwise, not only will you not be able to get promoted and make a fortune, but you may even lose your life.” Later, the prison gave up trying to “transform” me.
I believed that I was not there to be persecuted. My relationship to the authorities was not that I was being persecuted and they were carrying out the persecution, but that I was there to save them. In the workshop, I walked around, helped the prisoners with their work, and fetched water. I took the opportunity to clarify the truth to the prisoners and persuade them to quit the CCP, and hundreds of people, including the prison guards, heard the truth.
When I heard that a fellow practitioner signed the “Letter of Repentance,” I wrote him a letter: “Master [Li, the founder of Falun Dafa,] mercifully saves us. If we do something we should not do here, or promise something to the evil, how will we face our family and fellow practitioners when we get out?”
After a few days, this practitioner began a protest, saying that the labor was too heavy and tiring, and that he could not keep up, so he had to practice the Falun Dafa exercises. He said if he wasn’t allowed to practice, he wouldn’t work. The prison guard promised that he could practice the exercises. He wrote a letter to the warden, stating that the “letter of repentance” was invalid. Later, the practitioner persuaded the people who were in charge of his cell, and the others, to quit the CCP organizations.
I saw a book in the library that slandered Dafa, so I destroyed it.
When I was released from prison after the unjust sentence, the guard at the registration office at the gatepost asked me, “Why were you here? What is your name?” and I said, “I practice Falun Dafa.” He let me go. I walked through the prison gate with my head held high.
The day after I returned home, I went to the local police station to move my household registration. They ordered me to sign a letter and slander Dafa. I said, “If I were willing to sign, I wouldn’t have been in jail for two years. I went to jail for defending my faith.” They told my son to persuade me to sign, and my son said, “My dad is not guilty.” I walked out of the police station in a dignified manner. After I left, the police station handled the transfer of my household registration.
I know that Dafa practitioners can only repay Master by studying the Fa well, truly cultivating ourselves, helping Master in Fa rectification, and saving as many people as possible.
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