THE FALUN GONG PRACTITIONER

One morning in December 2004, two neatly dressed women showed up at my door. Both of them seemed to be in their late fifties and looked like peasants from the nearby suburbs. One woman glanced around and whispered, We are not beggars. We are Falun Gong practitioners. The words “Falun Gong” stunned me. In the summer of 1999, after thousands of practitioners had staged a silent protest in Beijing against unfair treatment, the Party leadership saw the group as a threat to Communist rule, declared it an evil cult, and launched a massive campaign to eliminate Falun Gong in China.

Right at that moment, two “evil cult” members seemed to have arrived from another world. Each woman was carrying a bag that I found out later on contained stacks of Falun Gong literature. It took me a few seconds to compose myself. I had a daring idea. I invited them in, fumbled around for a notebook, and decided to interview Chen, one of the two women.

A week later, I heard another knock on the door. I looked through the peephole and saw two policemen outside. Worrying that the police were coming to get me for interviewing those Falun Gong members, I grabbed my stuff and jumped out my third-floor apartment window. Miraculously, I suffered only a few minor bruises. After that incident, I was on the run for four months and then moved to a small southwestern city.

LIAO YIWU: Before I let you in, could you check to see if anyone is tailing you?

CHEN: I think we are safe. I can normally sense it when I'm tailed.

LIAO: Good. Have a seat.

CHEN: Thanks for being open-minded enough to let us in. Nowadays, the government's brainwashing campaign and the threat tactics have made many people scared of being associated with Falun Gong. They become very nervous when they see a practitioner outside their door. Some even dial 110 to call the police. I don't blame them. Thousands of practitioners have been locked up and tortured to death. Who wouldn't be afraid? But people need to find out the truth about us. We are not a cult. The Communist Party is a true cult. No matter how the government tries to distort the truth by slandering and persecuting us, we believe truth will eventually prevail.

LIAO: How did you get started in Falun Gong?

CHEN: I'm a retired worker from a state enterprise in Hesheng Township, Wenjiang County. I was a Communist Party member for thirty years. After I retired, I lived on a meager pension, most of which was spent on medicine. I became ill very easily. I took so much medicine that my body became resistant to treatment. Each time I was hospitalized, the doctor would simply prescribe stronger and stronger medicine. I felt so helpless, thinking that I was going to die any minute.

On a sunny April day in 1999, I bumped into Liu, a former acquaintance of mine, on the street. I hadn't seen Liu for a long time and hardly recognized him. He used to be as sick and feeble as I was, with a hunchback. That day, he looked so different, healthy and younger. I was intrigued and stopped to chat with him. Liu told me he was practicing Falun Gong. I had read about it in a health magazine. He told me that Falun Gong combines Buddhist and Taoist meditation and exercises and was founded by Li Hongzhi. Practitioners referred to Li as Li Laoshi or Teacher Li. Liu also said that there were hundreds and thousands of followers inside China.

I was in a pretty desperate situation at that time. I would try anything that promised a cure for my illnesses. So when he told me about it, I said to myself: I will try it. What do I have to lose? So I borrowed a book of Teacher Li's teachings and joined a practicing group in a neighborhood not far from me. Every morning or evening, a large group of retired folks like me would gather in the courtyard, meditating and practicing Falun Gong. The movements are a little like those of tai chi. After the exercises, we sat together and read Teacher Li's book, which tells us how to cultivate our mind and be a good person.

Soon, I was so into it. I practiced many hours a day, and after three months, I began to feel the difference. So I went to the doctor and did some testing. The result showed dramatic improvement in my kidney and uremia. My arthritis was also getting better. As time went by, many of my illnesses disappeared.

LIAO: That was very dramatic and miraculous.

CHEN: Well, it's true. The only illness left was my asthma.

LIAO: Personally, I don't care whether it's scientifically proven or not. But when people practice together, it's like joining a therapy group. They can socialize, exercise, and talk about their problems. Depression and family spats will all be gone. The government can save lots of money on health-care costs. It's much better than sitting around a table playing mah-jongg and gambling, which seems to be the national pastime.

CHEN: You are absolutely right. After I benefited from Falun Gong, I also persuaded more of my neighbors to join our group. Everybody was happy—I mean the kind of happiness arising from our hearts, free of worries about trivial stuff.

On July 22, 1999, my neighbors and I were suddenly told to attend a meeting. At the meeting, a local official read an editorial from the Party newspaper, People's Daily. The editorial declared Falun Gong a cult and illegal organization, and urged all Party members to give it up. Believe it or not, I wasn't too shocked. My generation went through many big and small political campaigns. We all knew that the Party was capricious as a moody bitch. So we simply rolled our eyes and ignored the ban. Since we were not allowed to practice as a group in public, we simply did it at home.

Then the local government rounded up many people who refused to comply and put them in an auditorium. They were forced to read government propaganda materials and denounce Falun Gong publicly. The provincial government assigned a quota to each local public security bureau or government agency, ordering them to reform Falun Gong members. If a certain official exceeded the quota, he or she would be awarded a cash prize.

But later on, as more and more people refused to give it up, the actions of the government became frenetic. Local police began to search our homes for Falun Gong materials and treated each practitioner like a criminal. If one person was caught practicing, his or her whole family would be blamed and punished. After going through the Cultural Revolution, I couldn't believe a similar political campaign could be happening in China again. I decided to do something about it.

On January 15, 2000, a fellow practitioner and I traveled to Beijing to petition the government to stop the insanity. On the train, I was going through the petition in my mind again and again. I simply wanted to use my experience to tell the senior leaders in Beijing that banning Falun Gong was a mistake. That was it. I wasn't going to make trouble. After about twenty hours on the train, we finally arrived. Instead of getting food and finding a hotel, we simply walked directly to Tiananmen Square, which was about thirty minutes away from the train station. I was just eager to find the Citizens' Petition Office and tell my story. Before I reached the square, two policemen stopped us: Are you from out of town? When we said yes, they became suspicious and asked another question: Are you members of the Falun Gong group? We nodded our heads. Before we knew it, the two policemen swooped down on us, forced our hands behind our back, and dragged us into a police car. A couple of people had already been tied up there. We were taken to a branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Department near the Temple of Heaven. After two rounds of interrogation, police contacted authorities in Sichuan. Two days later, I was sent back home. Before my release, they confiscated six hundred yuan in cash from me. I overheard a certain Mr. Feng at the police station talking to an official who came to pick me up from Sichuan: Take this money as compensation for traveling all the way up here to get this idiot. When I reached home, the local police detained me in a small dark room for seventeen days.

LIAO: I heard people jokingly say that the Party had posted plainclothes policemen every five feet in Tiananmen Square because many Falun Gong petitioners like you displayed banners and practiced there in defiance of the government ban. Couldn't you have been a little more wary and told a little lie when police questioned you?

CHEN: Practitioners don't tell lies because it's a sin.

LIAO: I see.

CHEN: Not long after I was released from the detention center, three other practitioners in my neighborhood followed my example and traveled to Beijing to petition the government. Local public security officials suspected that I was the instigator. They came to my house, handcuffed me, and sent me to the detention center for the second time. I was locked up for another fifteen days. When I got home, I found a government seal on my apartment door. They forced me to move to a small, damp, and stinky shack. I was under their constant watch. Soon, the government stopped issuing my monthly retirement money. Instead, I was only given 120 yuan [US$15] a month to cover my basic necessities. They made my life very difficult, but I wasn't afraid. I still refused to denounce Falun Gong. Then, the government reduced my monthly pension from 120 yuan to 50 yuan, which was not even enough to buy a monthly supply of plain rice.

The more defiant I was, the more brutal and desperate the public security officials became. On July 1, 2000, I was ordered to show up at the township Party secretary's office for interrogation. The moment I walked in, Deputy Party Secretary Huang grabbed my coat and slapped me in the face again and again. That was still not enough to release his anger. He took a breath, balled his fist, and started to punch my face. In a few minutes, my face puffed up, covered with blood. My head was spinning and I fell to the floor. He then kicked my head with his pointed leather shoes. After that, I was dragged out of his office into the courtyard. Soon, a crowd gathered around me, with people kicking me like a soccer ball. I instinctively rolled around, covering my head, but had no place to escape.

LIAO: What prompted those officials to engage in such brutality?

CHEN: First, they were angry because I went to Beijing. It was a loss of face for local officials. Second, President Jiang and other senior officials had pressured local governments to brainwash and convert Falun Gong members. Failure to convert Falun Gong members could result in the loss of jobs for local officials.

LIAO: Did anyone step forward to stop the beating?

CHEN: No. Someone in the crowd even shouted: Come on and look! Another Falun Gong is getting beaten up. Hey, kick her some more.

LIAO: It's unimaginable. It was a lawless mob.

CHEN: I slipped in and out of consciousness, and could hardly see or feel anything. The buildings seemed to be swirling around me. I don't know how long the beating lasted. Then I heard an official say that it would give the township government a bad image if I was beaten to death in front of the government building. So a couple of guys pulled me by the legs and dragged me inside a meeting room. I gradually regained consciousness. I saw many people were peeping through the window. Someone shouted: Beat her, beat her. Emboldened by the shouts of the crowd, Deputy Party Secretary Huang, Deputy Mayors Zhang and Huang [no relation to the deputy Party secretary] began to take turns beating me. They forced me into a kneeling position, with my hands tied behind my back. They whipped me on the back and on my bare feet with copper wire.

LIAO: Were you still conscious during those beatings inside the meeting room?

CHEN: I was in and out. Deputy Party Secretary Huang threatened me by saying: You are the enemy of the people. I will not take responsibility if I beat you to death.

At seven o'clock that night, I awoke and found myself lying on the floor of my house. I had bruises all over my body. It was even painful to move my arms. Then I heard my seventy-year-old mother sobbing in another room.

A couple of days later, police ransacked my mother's house and took away all her valuable possessions, including a TV set, some antique coins, her clothes and bedding. Then they put us, Mother and me, on a truck, and drove us to a remote village to receive reeducation. In the words of government officials, sending me to a faraway place would prevent me from ruining the image of the township government.

LIAO: How could they be so ruthless?

CHEN: That was just the beginning. My mother and I lived in that village for about five months. I gradually recovered from the beatings. In the fall of 2001, before the moon festival, I teamed up with two Falun Gong practitioners in the village and painted a slogan, “Falun Gong Is Good,” on the wall of a Buddhist temple. We were caught by a monk. Worrying that he could get blamed for the slogan, he called the police. Once again, we were detained inside a police station near the village. During the interrogation, I refused to tell the police my name and address because I was afraid of implicating my mother again. So the police locked me up in a jail with a bunch of criminals. To kill time there, I put two hands together, palm to palm, and began to do meditation. Two fellow prisoners, who had been instructed by the guards to keep an eye on me, immediately grabbed my hair. They yelled: Help, help, the crazy Falun Gong woman is conducting illegal activities again. Soon, one guard showed up and whipped me with a leather belt. He then ordered my hands and feet shackled. After that, he brought a two-piece wooden board with a hole in the middle, put my head through the hole, and locked the wooden board around my neck. Those shackles and the wooden board were specifically designed for prisoners who are suicidal or who were on death row.

For over ten days, I couldn't move. I couldn't even use the toilet on my own. After they finally removed the shackles, my neck, wrist, and ankles were abscessed. The lower part of my body was all swollen. It took another four months for the wounds to heal.

On April 25, 2002, while visiting a Falun Gong practitioner at a village near Chengdu, I was once again arrested by public security. After two months of detention, they put me on trial and sentenced me to two years in jail. On July 3 of that year, they transferred me from the detention center to an all-women prison outside Chengdu. Each prisoner was supposed to have a health checkup before being admitted. Because of the many beatings I had suffered at the hands of the police, I was in terrible shape. The prison refused to accept me. They worried that I could die during my incarceration. They didn't want to take any responsibility. So I was sent back to Hesheng Township, my hometown.

LIAO: All those beatings and tortures didn't do much to change your mind.

CHEN: When local police and township government officials heard about my return, they treated me as if I were a devil who was out to ruin their careers. They spent a whole night figuring out ways to control me. Finally, they reached a collective decision: Ms. Chen's obsession with Falun Gong has caused her to lose her mind. She is suffering from grave mental illnesses. On July 5, they tied me up with ropes, put me on a truck, and sent me to the Wanchun Mental Hospital.

LIAO: Did the doctor offer a diagnosis before your forced hospitalization?

CHEN: The township Party secretary said, The decision of the Communist Party serves as the most authentic diagnosis. Under pressure from local officials, the doctors put me inside a mental ward with thick iron doors. When the door clanked shut, I found myself in Ward A, which was specifically furnished for mental patients—iron bed, iron chairs, and an iron desk. The window was fitted with iron bars. I was surrounded by mentally ill patients, some staring blankly at the ceiling or shaking uncontrollably. Others were drooling or making weird noises, laughing or crying. I was so scared, and I begged the police chief who escorted me there to let me go home. He gave me the brush-off with a cold laugh: You are our VIP. We put you in this “resort” so you can relax and enjoy life. Do you know that it cost us 3,700 yuan [US$462] to put you up here? But it's worth it.

I knelt down, grabbed his leg, and begged: There is nothing wrong with my mind. He kicked me away and said: That's what they all say. All the people you see over here think they are normal. Oh well, go practice Falun Gong if you want. I heard there is another crazy Falun Gong member in this ward. She is a former government employee and her name is Yang. Maybe you and Yang can keep each other company.

After the police chief left, the nurses tied me up in bed for a whole night. The next morning, when the doctor saw that I was pretty obedient, they untied me and allowed me to walk around freely. I began to ask about Yang. On the second night, when the nurses were chatting after supper, I snuck out of my room and located Yang. She was thin as a stick, almost like a shadow. I struck up a conversation with her, and found out that she had been locked up in the hospital for over a year. She said she had long since given up Falun Gong. All day long, she simply imitated the behavior of those mentally ill patients. She had to act out crazily and aggressively, because if she didn't, some patients would come grab her hair, choke her, ride on top of her, and pee over her body. I reproached her: If you act like this all the time, it becomes part of you and you could become crazy like those people. She told me that she had tried to practice Falun Gong when she was thrown in there, but the nurses would stop her, and force her to watch the government propaganda video that condemned Falun Gong.

I felt so sorry for her, and told her about the stuff that friends had got from the Falun Gong Web sites overseas. I told her that thousands of people practice Falun Gong freely in Western countries and that the international community had condemned China for the crackdown. We chatted for a long time, and before I left we made a pact to resume our practice.

The next day, we got together inside my room and began to do the slow Falun Gong movements. One nurse found out and notified Dr. Deng, head of the psychiatric ward. He immediately ordered the guards to carry us to the treatment room for electric shock. They tied Yang onto the bed first, and then turned on the switch. Her body began to twitch violently, and she was screaming, “Save me, Teacher Li.” Her loud screams were like something coming out of a tortured animal. I couldn't bear to watch her suffer. So I bent my head and closed my eyes. Dr. Deng grabbed my hair and poked his knee against my back, forcing me to watch and receive what he called “education.” After more violent spasms, Yang's body weakened, her screaming became inaudible, and her skin turned from pale to blue. I lost control, and my body began to shake. I cried, How can you treat people like this? You should be condemned to hell. Dr. Deng dragged me out of the treatment room by the hair and said: If you continue to practice, you'll be next.

After that scary electric shock episode, the nurses put us in segregated areas, with twenty-four-hour supervision. We were locked up in a storage room next to the toilet. All night long, we were covered with mosquitoes. The next day, we were not given our food. Instead, the nurses put us on IV. Since our arms and legs were tied to the bed and couldn't move, the IV drops dripped very fast. One morning, the nurses injected several bottles of unknown liquid into our veins. I whispered to Yang: I don't know what kind of IV drips they are giving us! Yang replied: Don't you think they are injecting us with meds that will damage our brain? These people are animals and they can do anything to destroy us. Her words made me really nervous. It reminded me of a Japanese movie I had seen. The hero in the movie was fed drugs that damaged his brain. He became a zombie and jumped from a high building without knowing it. Then his enemies claimed that he had committed suicide.

The thought of that movie gave me the creeps. I began to scream, struggling to break free from the IV tubes. One nurse rushed in, pinned me down, and tightened the ropes around my legs and arms. The next day, they started to shove pills down our throats, saying that the medicine would cure us of our disobedience. I had no idea what those pills were. During the first several days, I refused to open my mouth. The doctor simply asked several guards and male patients to force my mouth open with a metal clamp, and wash down the pills with hot water. I choked and would begin to cough and vomit. After I stopped coughing, they would force my mouth open and do it again. My tongue and throat were seriously burned while my head and my face had scratches all over. A week after I took the pills, I became sleepy all day long. I couldn't stop drooling and had no appetite for food. Then I became too feeble to resist. When it was time for medicine, I would simply open my mouth voluntarily, swallow the pills like other patients did, and then doze off.

LIAO: So they finally subdued you and turned you into a mentally ill patient.

CHEN: All I could feel was exhaustion; my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn't keep them open. A month later, when the doctor reduced the dosage of my meds, I became easily irritable. Then the nurses transferred us to a new place to make room for the real mental patients. They put me and Yang in a room, where the windows had been nailed shut and covered with wooden boards. The nurses even unhooked the electric bulb. Later on, we found out that we were actually next door to the morgue.

I ended up staying in the mental hospital for 110 days. Yang actually stayed there for one year longer. One day, the director of the local Woman's Federation, a pseudo-government agency, came to visit me in the hospital. I was brought to a meeting room where visitors and patients were separated by an iron fence. She first inquired about my living conditions and then tried to persuade me to abandon my belief in the “cult.” She said, Falun Gong has led to broken families, disgrace, and mental illness. I simply interrupted her by saying: I'm not mentally ill. I'm a normal person. I told her about how I was forced to take medicine. The director asked me to promise her that I would change. In return, she would tell the doctor to stop the medicine. But I refused to make any promises.

After the director of the Woman's Federation left, the doctor didn't stop the medicine, but he did reduce the dosage. At the same time, the director told the hospital to prohibit any visits from my relatives or friends.

LIAO: Why?

CHEN: Because they were worried that my relatives would find out about how I was being treated, and share it with the public. One day, my sister rode her bike for many miles to see me but she wasn't allowed to come in. So she started to shout my name as loudly as she could. A patient heard her and came to get me. By the time I rushed to the door, the guard had already chased her away.

LIAO: When did they discharge you from the hospital?

CHEN: At the end of 2002. A police car came to pick me up at the hospital and then sent me directly to a women's reeducation camp. I had to go through another health checkup and didn't pass. Again, the camp authority didn't want to accept me. The police told them: If she dies, nobody is responsible. Finally, the camp reluctantly admitted me.

LIAO: What happened later?

CHEN: One day, while we were out working in the wheat field, I escaped. After the camp authorities found out about it, they didn't even bother to send anyone to catch me. I figured they were just happy to get rid of me so they didn't have to bear any responsibility if I died.

Since I got out, I've been able to come to Chengdu and reconnect with more Falun Gong members here. Whenever I have the opportunity, I will secretly distribute Falun Gong pamphlets to as many households as I can. This morning, I walked for about twelve kilometers and dropped several hundred pamphlets inside residential buildings in the area. I still have some left and will finish these by the end of the day.

LIAO: How long did you stay inside the reeducation camp?

CHEN: I was sentenced to two years. I had two more months left before I escaped.

LIAO: Why did you bother to run away?

CHEN: I was worried they might change their mind and not let me go on my release date, on the grounds that I hadn't given up on my faith.

LIAO: I used to think that if every Chinese followed the principles of truth, benevolence, and tolerance, as preached by Teacher Li, we would totally resign ourselves to oppression. The Communist Party could rule this country unopposed forever. I guess I'm wrong.