(Minghui.org) An article published on Minghui.org described how a Chinese Communist regime local official tried to deceive a practitioner into signing a statement to stop practicing Falun Dafa.
The official took a bucket of cooking oil and a bag of rice to the practitioner. Pretending to care about the practitioner, he tried to deceive her into writing a statement to say that she would follow the laws and be a law-abiding citizen.
This tactic reminded me of what happened to me when I was taken to a brainwashing center in 2012. After the guards failed to transform me with all kinds of brainwashing measures, they told me something similar, “Everyone must abide by the country’s laws and regulations, right? It shouldn’t be a problem for you to put that in a statement.”
They believed that, since Falun Dafa was being persecuted, following the laws meant not practicing Falun Dafa. The logic is flawed since there is no law in China that stipulates the practice is illegal. They do this to make practitioners feel that they’ve betrayed the practice and therefore can’t resume the practice.
I’d like to share what I experienced in the brainwashing center.
Isolation and Deprivation of Freedom and Rights
To effectively brainwash the inmates, the guards first completely isolated them. I was placed in a small room (about 100 square feet) that had three beds and a small toilet. Two collaborators lived with me and monitored me around the clock, even telling me how to sit and sleep.
The first day I was in the brainwashing center, I sat on my bed with my legs straightened and crossed. One of them yelled at me, “No exercising!” Another time, I woke up at 3 a.m. to use the toilet. After I returned to my bed, I started meditating. After less than a minute, one of them yelled, “What are you doing? Lie down and go to sleep.”
Whenever the door was left open and someone walked past the cell, one of them would quickly shut the door so I had no contact with anyone else. Once, when I stood by the door and looked into the hallway for just a second, one of them stopped me and told me that I wasn’t allowed to look outside.
I ate, slept, used the toilet, showered, and did my laundry in the cell. When it came to doing things like getting food, drying my laundry, and buying daily necessities, the collaborators would do it for me, so I didn’t leave my cell.
The inmates frequently had to move to different cells on different floors and be monitored by different collaborators. This was done to stop us from getting comfortable and to put constant pressure on us. I stayed in three different cells on two different floors while I was imprisoned.
Using Family to Try and Sway Me
Sometimes the collaborators would chat with me about my family. One of them asked if I had children and grandchildren, and I said yes. Then she said, “You’re so lucky. You should comply with the government and write a statement (to renounce your faith) so that you can go home to your family and enjoy them.”
I replied, “I did enjoy my family until officials brought me here without any legal procedures. As for writing a statement, you should give me a statement that explains the legal basis for locking me up here.”
She was silent.
Loud Noise to Mess with One’s Mind
It was a rule that the television in the cells had to be on from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sometimes the television played videos that slandered and attacked Falun Dafa, and sometimes it played regular television commercials and soap operas. The stories were all about fighting, making personal gains by any means, praising the CCP, and twisting Chinese history. The purpose was to turn a practitioner into an everyday person so that it was easier to transform them. When it was played constantly, the messages gradually corrupted a practitioner’s mind and righteous thoughts and moved them away from Falun Dafa’s teachings.
The volume of the television was sometimes turned all the way up. In a small space, such a loud noise over a long period of time makes one dizzy, agitated, slow, and unable to think properly.
My husband didn’t get to see me until I’d been imprisoned for 20 days. He noticed at once that my eyes were glazed over. He asked a staff member, “Why isn’t she moving her eyes?”
The staff member told him that the inmates there all looked like that. I suspected that it was due to the severe noise pollution and that I had been drugged.
I told my husband that I felt distraught, dizzy, and drowsy all day, and my eyes were dry and swollen. When my husband asked the staff member if they had let me go outside to move around, she replied “Not much,” and I told him “Not even once.”
Threats, Physical, and Verbal Abuse
To destroy a person’s will, the guards often threatened or verbally and physically assaulted the person. The most common threats were, “Don’t think about leaving without transformation,” “We’ll turn you over to the police and have them ruin your life,” “One of the practitioners who refused to transform is still here after so many years and a practitioner who arrived after you has already left after writing a statement.”
On December 25, 2012, fifty days after I was imprisoned, a person in charge of “educating” the inmates came to me. She told me that I had to understand that I could not practice Falun Dafa because it was banned by the government. I explained to her that practicing Falun Dafa is my constitutional right and that the Ministry of Public Security did not include Falun Dafa in its list of 14 illegal practices.
She started to threaten me, “Don’t fight the government. You must change your mind or this will not end well for you.” She told me that a practitioner who had quit the practice was waiting for me downstairs and that I needed to talk to her. I refused.
She persisted, “It’s almost the end of the year. If you missed the window to renounce the practice, after the New Year, your term will be prolonged for another year or two. You are almost 70, and you will lose your pension making it hard for your children and grandchildren to get a job or stay in school. Think carefully, it’s better to renounce the practice and go home to enjoy the New Year.” She pretended to be doing me a favor and made a call to extend the deadline for submitting the statement. I told her not to bother because I would never write a statement.
In her last attempt to deceive me, she calmly said, “Everyone must abide by the country’s laws and regulations, right? It shouldn’t be a problem for you to put that in your statement.” Before she could finish, I stopped her, “I have always abided by the laws, why should I put it in writing? Don’t waste my time.”
With Master’s protection, I was able to leave the brainwashing center later.
All content published on this website is copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
Category: Brainwashing
