On March 27th, 2004, Qidong County Police officials arrested me as I distributed informational materials that explained the truth about Falun Gong and exposed the persecution. They incarcerated me in Shaoyang County Detention Centre. After I started a hunger strike to protest the detention, the police force-fed me and injured my throat in the process. Six days later they transferred me to Qidong County Detention Centre. While there, they hung me by one arm on a window frame for half a day, with my feet not even touching the floor. In addition, they tortured me with the "tiger bench" for six consecutive days. I was later sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for my belief in Falun Gong and served my term at Changsha City Women's Prison.

Detained in the Banqiao Women's Forced Labour Camp in Tianjin City, Ms. Wang Wenqing went on a hunger strike in protest. When her weight dropped from 60 kg to 20 kg, she was released for medical treatment. I witnessed the guards alternately torture, intimidate, and cajole her. The Fourth Prison is a notorious "model prison" in China. The persecution of practitioners there is among the most severe and brutal. To persecute Ms. Wang, for example, prison captain Li Hong boasted, "I will never let your weight drop below 20 kilos. I will fill you up with water, so that you weigh above 50 kilos." Ms. Wang was force-fed with watery flour soup. They often inserted a hard, thick 2-metre-long feeding tube into her stomach. Her stomach often bled as a result. The large amount of water poured into her stomach gave Ms. Wang excruciating stomachache.

I am a 75-year-old woman. Since the persecution of Falun Gong started in July 1999, I have been imprisoned twice because I refused to renounce or give up the practice. Just because I refuse to give up my belief in Falun Gong and I want to follow the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance to become a better person, the Chinese Communist regime plans to sentence me to seven years in prison. Let me ask a question: Which country in the world has this type of law?! Does any article in the Chinese Constitution justify such treatment? I am now forced to leave my home and go into hiding. Nevertheless, my family, relatives and friends continue to suffer from severe harassment by the police.

I am a nursery teacher. Because I would not give up my personal belief and wanted to become a good person according to the standard of "Truthfulness, Kindness, Forbearance," I have been arrested and detained six times since the persecution of Falun Dafa began. On February 29th, 2000, I travelled to Beijing to appeal for Dafa and was arrested and taken to the county detention centre. The police hung a big poster around my neck and tied my hands behind my back. They forced me into the back of a truck and drove around different streets in the county, exhibiting me as an object of scorn. At the detention centre, they would not allow me to go to sleep. They interrogated me day and night. One policeman called Bai Bangwu beat me. I insisted on doing the exercises, so they put handcuffs and shackles on me. They were not removed for a week.

My husband, Yang Jianpo, has been detained several times and severely tortured because he refuses to give up Falun Gong. In detention police tied my husband to an "iron chair", and used a hand-cranked-telephone which generates electrical current to shock him. They connected wires to all of his fingers, and when they shocked him, the pain was beyond description. He felt his heart was broken into pieces and his body ready to explode. They took turns torturing him. He was deprived of sleep and tortured day and night for three consecutive days. From 1999 until today, the authorities have confiscated from my family a total of 80,000 yuan (5,000 British pounds), consisting of cash, belongings and vehicles.

On October 25th, 2001, I went to Tiananmen Square again and unfurled a banner that read, "Falun Dafa Is a Righteous Practice" on one side and "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance Is the Universal Law" on the other side. I was sentenced to one and a half years of forced labour. I was beaten and was forced to perform labour during the day and I was forbidden to sit down while I worked. The work they made me do was packaging chopsticks, which I had never done before. I was ordered to put 8,500 pairs of chopsticks into paper holders each day, package them together, and get them into cartons. On the third night I was still not allowed to sleep.

The Anhui Women's Labour Camp forcibly brainwashes practitioners. The guards tried to force me to watch videos that slandered Falun Dafa, and when I resisted, the collaborators [former practitioners who assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners] took me to the video area and tied me to a chair. The head of the labour camp also deprived me of sleep for long periods of time, waking me at 5:00 a.m. and not allowing me to go to bed until after midnight. He sent two inmates to watch me, did not allow me to talk to anyone. I later lost the sight in my right eye as a result of the physical abuse, and my blood pressure rose to 160/130. When the doctors examined me, they said that I was also about to lose the sight in my left eye. To this day, my health continues to suffer as a result of the persecution.

In early January 2007, two Falun Dafa practitioners and I went to the villages of Longjing City to distribute leaflets exposing the persecution and were stalked and reported on by an old man, the village guard. We were arrested and taken to the Longmen Police Station in Longjing City where I was beaten severely and tortured with "hanging up in the air," "iron chair", "pouring freezing cold water over people," for 10 hours by Vice Director Zheng and other policemen. The police also stomped on my stomach which caused me to empty my bladder immediately.

Since the persecution began in 1999 I have been arrested over ten times by police from the 610 Office in Changchun City, Jilin Province, and tortured so severely that my life has been in danger several times. In September 2001 police rampantly arrested dozens of Falun Dafa practitioners, including me. I was tortured with electric batons and my arms were pulled behind my back for several consecutive nights. My skin was torn and bloody from head to foot. The police blindfolded us and took us to Jingyuetang in Changchun, where there was a dark den where evil persecutors abused practitioners. I heard miserable screaming from many rooms where practitioners were tortured. The police also often took practitioners outside and beat them late at night. They covered practitioners' eyes with a black cloth, lest they recognise the place where they had been persecuted.

I am a Falun Gong practitioner in Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province. Staff from the local police department arrested me in May 2002. They cuffed me to a metal chair and took turns interrogating me. I refused to answer their questions, so the police verbally abused me and threatened me. A police officer surnamed Zhang slapped my face and hit my head. Another policeman surnamed Xue from the local 610 Office kicked me fiercely when I refused to answer the questions in the way he demanded. In the evening, I was locked to the leg of a desk inside the conference room and forced to sit on the floor with my back straight. The police took one-hour shifts monitoring me for the entire night. I was locked onto a mental chair for two days at the police department. Later, I was sent to a local detention centre and was held there for almost three months.

Because we cultivate Falun Dafa and believe in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance," we were arrested by police and sentenced to forced labour. The guards always discussed how to make us suffer more. Under their instigation, drug offenders or prostitutes did their best to torture practitioners in order to decrease their prison terms. Their ruthlessness went to extremes. Innocent practitioners were tortured every day with beatings, being handcuffed with their arms behind their back, being hung up while handcuffed, shocked with electric batons, tied up with ropes, tortured with the "tiger bench", splashed with dirty water or excrement, being forced to stand for long hours, not allowed to go to the toilet, were deprived of sleep, not allowed to brush their teeth or wash their face, and so on.

During the first few years when we were forced to drift around on the streets to avoid arrest, the police often went to our home and knocked on the door. At that time, our little daughter was the only person at home and she got very scared. She would cry and say on the phone, "Daddy, I miss you and Mummy. But you must not come home. The police hide somewhere downstairs. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine as long as you're safe."

On March 16th, 2002, my daughter and I took a train to Beijing. After we arrived in Tiananmen Square, as we walked, we called out, "Falun Dafa is good! Restore the good name of Dafa! Restore the good name of our Teacher!" A group of police officers tried to drag us into a police vehicle as they beat us. We tried to get away, but they pushed us into the vehicle and beat us. My head swelled up. When we explained the facts about Falun Dafa to them, they pounded on my chest and covered my mouth. They sprained my arms and cut my hands. My property was seized, I was fined 10,000 yuan, and three months' worth of my salary was confiscated. Eventually, I was sent to Wanjia Forced Labour Camp for three years.

I noticed that Falun Gong practitioners received even worse treatment. Guard Hong Ying made me monitor practitioners and compelled me to report practitioners' activities, including making a list of who practitioners made eye contact with or smiled at. Two drug addicts would not let practitioner Ms. Gong Jinxiu sleep. At night they made her kneel by a barrel full of urine. When she nodded off, her head would drop into the barrel. Her hair and clothes were wet with urine.

My name is Zhang Huiru, and I am 65 years old. After the persecution began, I told myself that I must appeal for Falun Gong and try to restore its reputation and that of my Teacher, Mr. Li Hongzhi, because I have benefited so much from the practice. I went to Tiananmen Square on February 11th, 2000, to appeal. A plainclothes police officer approached me and said he was a Falun Gong practitioner from Harbin. He asked me if I was also a practitioner. I said, "Yes." A police van arrived and police officers forced me into the van and took me to the Qianmen Police Station. I heard later that police officers were to be paid 50 yuan for each practitioner they arrested on Tiananmen Square.

I am a researcher studying medical science and technology. I am a firm believer in Falun Dafa and was once detained in the Banqiao Women's Prison in Tianjin City. Practitioners there were not only tortured mentally through intense brainwashing, but were also tortured physically through hard labour. The prison officials forced the practitioners to pick beans, make car cushions, and to sew military uniforms and shirts. On average, they were forced to work over 18 hours per day, and often past 3:00 a.m. They had no rights and no labour law protection.

I am a practitioner from Guizhou Province. During the eight years of persecution at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) I have been arrested and detained many times. When I was in the Zhongba Women's Forced Labour Camp, I was beaten to the point of being being severely injured and was black and blue all over my body. The perpetrators exploited my under-aged son to "transform" me. My son attempted suicide three times under such agony.

I was on my way to work early in the morning on March 21st, 2007, when several cars pulled up. Eight people jumped out, pinned me to the ground and punched and kicked me. Finally, they handcuffed me and put me in a car. I asked them, "Who are you?" One of them said, "I'll tell you when we get there." He never did. They tried to wrap my head in some clothes but failed because of my struggling. In the following month they tried to coerce me to "reform." Some read Falun Gong books to me out loud and deliberately twisted the teachings in an attempt to confuse me; some talked about various religions, some showed me official documents in an effort to prove the persecution of Falun Gong is based on the law, and some threatened to sentence me to a prison term from between five years and 20 years if I did not give up my belief.

I was arrested by officers from my local police station in the end of 2004 and was sent to the Qiqihar Forced Labour Camp. The practitioners who refused to be "transformed" were all forced to do the dirtiest and heaviest work. The labour camp forced me to package pesticide in the agricultural chemical factory. The strong pesticide smell in the air made it hard to breathe and caused my abdomen to swell. The work the labour camp assigned to us was hard to finish. Guards arbitrarily increased our workload and they inspected the practitioners' work very strictly. The labour camp also forced us to work in the corn-processing factory which caused our hands to become swollen. If we stopped to rest for a while, the officials yelled at us.

On September 9th, 1999, three practitioners and I went to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong. Since then I have been tortured on several occasions including with electric batons and force-feeding. The persecution that I suffered led to a loss of several hundred thousand yuan. The police arrested me numerous times, broke my door lock and tore up my clothes. My son was deeply traumatised. As a result, my son could not go to school and suspended his schooling for one year. My daughter was terrified many times. At present, she trembles when she encounters even insignificant incidents.

In August 2002,police arrested me for distributing leaflets about the persecution of Falun Gong. I was sent to the local detention centre in Liaoning Province. I went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution and asked to be released with a not-guilty verdict. Several inmates held my head still while Doctor Qian Dapeng repeatedly force-fed me by sticking a tube through my nose. I almost suffocated. My throat and the tissue inside my nose was injured and bleeding. The pain was unbearable. Both sides of my face were pinched so hard by the inmates that it was extremely tender and the pain lasted almost two months. During my hunger strike I was taken to the district's public security bureau and interrogated. As soon as Sun Lizhong saw me, he said, "Lu Jianhua, I'm going to shoot you to death today." I ignored him.

Diary: April 20th, 2006: Dad was arrested again. This was the fifth time Dad has been arrested. That evening, I was home alone. Seven or eight policemen rushed into my home. They took away my computer, which I use for school work, and my MP3 player. My home was searched and turned upside down. I am so scared. I'm worried about my dad, because I heard there was an uncle that practises Falun Gong in the detention centre. One day he had diarrhoea, but the police refused to let him go to the toilet and told him to force it back. He was tortured very badly. I was shocked by this. I can't imagine what kind of torture Dad will have to go through this time.

Police came to my home and carried me into a vehicle. A police officer stepped on my head until we arrived at the county government building. They wrote something and attempted to force me to sign it. I refused. The policemen handcuffed me behind the back, and one person on each side beat me. I was knocked down to the ground. They stepped on my head. That same night they sent me to the Shuangchen Detention Station. It was very cold, but they stripped me naked. They poured cold water on me for a long time. I was shivering from the cold. After suffering 15 days of such torture I was sent to Harbin City Wanjia Concentrated Training Team for another five days. Then I was sent to Changlinzi Forced Labour Camp.

One day in June 2001, three practitioners and I went out to explain the facts about Falun Gong to people. Someone reported us, and officers from the Donghai Police Station arrested us. They interrogated us and beat us until my body was bruised everywhere. I was in terrible pain. They pinned us to the floor and dragged us into a small and filthy toilet by our feet. They locked us in there for one day. We were then detained in the Dongpoling Drug Rehabilitation Centre the following day and went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. The director of the rehab centre screamed, "Let her die! We'll say it was suicide! At most, it'll only cost me 30 yuan to cremate your body--that's nothing."

On August 22nd, 2002, because of distributing leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Dafa, I was sentenced to 5 years in prison by the Chaoyang County Court. On December 22nd, I was sent to Dabei Prison in Shenyang. During those five years, I witnessed the darkness of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), experienced its brutality and violence. The guards tried to force me to study books that slander Dafa. A female guard used soles of her shoes to rub my eyelids until my eyelids tore. Also, after more brutal persecution, I started to experience severe pain in my abdomen and gradually I was able to eat less and less. Later, I was sent to Medical University of Shenyang and Specialised Hospital, where they said I had "tubercular peritonitis."

I was detained for 70 days, until July 5th, 2001, by the 610 Office. On top of the physical torture, there was also mental torture, which was even more damaging to practitioners. We were forced to watch videos and read books and pamphlets defaming Dafa. They tried to brainwash us with the lies. During my detention, the authorities extorted my family out of 10,000 yuan. Moreover, I was denied my pension of 3,000 yuan. Later I was detained again. Although they did not succeed in sending me to a forced labour camp, they have stopped me receiving my pension fro the last five years. I worked for the Chinese Communist Party for more than 40 years but now it has been cut off becuase I believe in Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance, the principles of Falun Dafa.

My son Liu Yongwang is 35 years old. In 2001, police officers and officials from the 610 Office arrested him. Subsequently, they detained him at the Baoding Forced Labour Camp, Tangshan Forced Labour Camp and Hebei Jidong Prison, and he has endured various kinds of inhumane tortures. Currently, he is paralysed in his lower body and is extremely weak. He has passed out several times when they force-fed him. His life is in danger and he could die at any moment. Seeing my dying son, my heart is pained with worry and anxiety! Therefore, I am writing this letter calling upon all levels of the government to investigate the misery of us ordinary citizens and to ensure that justice is served!

I am Zhang Lifang, fifty years old. Because I distributed leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong, I was detained at Nanmusi Forced Labour Camp. I suffered and witnessed personally the persecution of practitioners. The guards punched and kicked the practitioners, shocked them with electric batons, and forced them to remain standing in the same position for long stretches of time. They also subjected the practitioners to sleep deprivation and assaulted them.

After I was released from prison, police tightly watched me, stalked me, monitored my telephone conversations, installed video cameras in my neighbourhood, and even requested my neighbours to report on me, even including my mother's neighbours. I saw notices on the wall of the police department saying: "Detaining a practitioner gets a large bonus, sentencing a practitioner to a forced labour camp gets a large bonus, sentencing a practitioner to a prison gets a large bonus." I heard that while I was sentenced in prison, the director of the police department received thousands of yuan as a bonus.

My name is Cui Deli, and I am a 65-year-old woman from Sichuan Province. I have benefited physically and mentally from practising Falun Dafa. Since July 20th, 1999, I have experienced various forms of persecution merely because I chose to uphold my belief in Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, and be a good person. In 2001, the Public Security Bureau stole more than 140,000 yuan, which was loaned money, from my daughter and son-in-law's safe, and told them that they had to investigate before they could return the money. My son-in-law was taken away and detained for a week. But they still didn't return the money.

My mother is a Falun Gong practitioner. When I was one-and-a-half years old, mother was forcefully taken to a detention centre or prison time and time again, and I had to live with my father and grandmother. Mother conducted a hunger strike, refusing food and water for ten days. The labour camp guards inserted a tube through mother's nostrils to force feed her; the guards filled highly-concentrated salt water into my mother's stomach, and the salt water burst from mother's nasal cavity and oral cavity. Mother's stomach was so swollen that she tossed on the bed due to the pain, without closing her eyes all night long. Fearing responsibility for my mother's death, the labour camp agreed to release her. When my near-death mother saw me, she opened her cracked mouth and smiled.

I was abducted by local authorities in 2001 because I had been distributing leaflets exposing the persecution. I was later imprisoned in the Beijing Women's Forced Labour Camp for a year and a half. Whenever I recall those days at the labour camp, it's as if reliving a nightmare for me. More than twenty of us were locked in one room of thirteen or fourteen square metres. It was the same room in which we made disposable chopsticks during the day, for one-time use at restaurants. The guards set heavy workloads for everyone, so those who were elderly or slower than others would have to work until three o'clock in the morning. The guards also ordered drug addict inmates to torture Dafa practitioners. Some inmates tore at practitioner's mouths until they bled, others stuck wooden sticks into practitioners' private parts.

In July 2003, members of the 610 Office talked to me. The main point was to demand that I become an informant and spy by taking pictures and monitoring the activities of Falun Gong in Germany. I kept silent during the talk, thinking that I would not do those things. I booked an airline ticket and left China as soon as I could. On July 27th, 2003, I arrived safely at Berlin, Germany. When I called home to China several days later, the line did not sound right. It was confirmed later that my home phone in China was being monitored.

I was sent to No. 6 Battalion, which is known as the "strictly monitored" class. I was forced to sit on a board every day. The small bench is 20 centimetres high, 30 centimetres long and less than 10 centimetres wide. I was forced to sit with my back straight, with both legs at the same distance apart as my shoulders, and with my hands on top of my legs with palms up. If at anytime I did not sit as they instructed, they hit me with a board. I only had 10 minutes for breakfast, lunch and supper each day and a five-minute toilet break in the morning and afternoon. For over one month, I was forced to sit. My buttocks became very sore by the end of the month.

On January 25th, 2005, I explained the facts about the true nature of Falun Gong to a person called Liu Lijie. He reported me, I was arrested and sentenced to two years of forced labour. In the evil den that is Heigemu Forced Labour Camp, the food and living conditions were horrible. We were only given soup for all meals, with nothing but a few vegetable leaves or chunks of turnip in the soup. One day, I even found a dead mouse in the soup. Besides the horrid living conditions, we were forced to do 10 hours of labour every day. To do the labour, we were forced to sit in a dark, cold workroom for a long time and no one was allowed to move or talk. If one couldn't finish the task, one had to work overtime. And the guards would constantly beat and verbally abuse us every day. I was under intense mental and physical stress for a long time.

"I am a Falun Gong practitioner. Because I posted flyers that informed people about the persecution, I was arrested on February 9th. I was taken to Daobei Police Station. In about 20 minutes, Feng Jitang appeared. Before he said anything, he kicked me in my back. He handcuffed me to a bedpost, cursed me and took one of his leather shoes and hit my head and ears like a madman. He also said, "I am going to beat you to death today!" He beat me so hard that he broke two clubs. He got another one and continued beating me. I cried out from the severe pain. I am suing Feng Jitang for the excruciatingly painful torture he used on me.

In May 2001, my son, Cheng Peiming, was sentenced to eight years. He recounted: "The police punched me in the face, inserted heated skewers into my nails, shot at my lips with rubber bands, scratched a belt buckle up and down my ribcage, clipped my nipples with steel clamps, beat me with batons, forcefully dug into my collar bone, and used a torture called "Nama" on me. "Nama" - two police pushed really hard on the gap between my legs and lower abdomen; two other police squeezed really hard on my ribcage from my lower rib up to my arm pits. It was extremely painful and it exhausted me. "Space Hat" - the police put a plastic bag on my head, tightened it, and put a helmet on my head. They heavily banged a 7 pound hammer on the helmet until I partially lost consciousness due to the fierce impact. They repeated this during interrogation.

Because of physical and mental torture, my health was ruined. After one year and six months at the forced labour camp I had lost much of my eyesight, my memory had deteriorated and my hair had turned grey. The inhuman torture took a toll on my body. I even came close to a mental collapse at one time. I suffered increased interstitial fluid in my organs due to prolonged malnutrition and sitting on a high board for a long period of time. Even after being released from the forced labour camp I had difficulty walking unaided for a long time. Practitioners who were "transformed" and who renounced Falun Dafa were still forced to perform slave labour. Sometimes we made handicrafts and other types of jobs. In the summer of 2006 we were required to pack sugar. There were flies everywhere in the workshop and it was a very unhygienic facility.

On August 18th, 2006, I was transferred from Wafangdian Prison to Panjin Prison. After August 20th, I was shackled to an "iron chair" and force-fed twenty-four hours a day. The iron chair is made of thin, irregularly-shaped steel bars that are welded onto a steel plate. One's chest and thighs are bound by two pieces of eight-centimetre-wide steel scrap, and the hands are cuffed onto the chair. In addition, one's feet are locked up by two steel bars that are connected. There are a total of five locks. Only one's head can move. One sits on three steel bars. In fact, sitting on the "chair" means sitting on three steel bars. As a result, one's buttocks will be torn very soon; one's neck, lumbar and coccygeal vertebrae will be injured to different degrees.

One morning in April 2001, several other practitioners and I were studying the Falun Dafa teachings, sitting on the floor of a small classroom. I was reciting the teachings to them. Camp guard Deng Tao discovered us. He brought me to the office for questioning and called in other guards from the fifth floor. They pushed me to the floor and stood on my back. They tied my hands very tightly behind me and then shocked me with electric batons.

I was abducted to Jinan First Female Prison in October of 2002. Due to worrying about my being enslaved and tortured, my mother-in-law passed away on December 5th that year. We were forced to do intense labour such as making clothes and sewing. The director of the fourth division Xu forced us to work in the basement, which was very humid. The conditions were terrible. My rheumatism, which had been cured through practising Falun Gong, recurred under such harsh conditions. We were forced to work from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. the next morning. The earliest quitting time was 12:00 a.m. Besides meal and toilet breaks, we worked non-stop.

I was sentenced to three years of forced labour in November 2000 for distributing leaflets exposing the persecution. Once, late at night, I was awakened and taken to an office. They pulled off my trousers and started to beat my buttocks with rubber sticks. When they finished, they called for another practitioner. One by one we all suffered brutal beatings. When we were sent back, we couldn't lay on our backs to sleep at all. All practitioners in our cell suffered beatings. Then they beat the practitioners in other cells. A few days later, when we took showers, every practitioners' buttocks were covered with dark purple bruises, which frightened the other inmates and made them feel sympathy for us.

The past is almost too painful to recall, yet it is so vivid, as if it just took place yesterday. Guard Wang Xiaofeng in Masanjia Forced Labour Camp threatened me. He said, "You cannot practise Falun Gong anymore; if you do, I'll teach you a good lesson!" I refused to comply, and he told me to go to the ground floor and handcuffed me to a heating pipe. He gagged me with a cleaning rag and taped my mouth shut. Then he proceeded to shock me with high-voltage electric batons. Soon my hands bled while he kept accusing me of making trouble. My blood stuck to the electric baton. He removed the tape from my mouth and began shocking my mouth. My lips doubled in size, and I could barely open my mouth. He sent me to solitary confinement cell. It was very cold that winter. They opened all of the doors and windows to freeze us.

While I was informing people about the true nature of Falun Gong I was reported and arrested. I was sent to Jinan City Women's Forced Labour Camp on August 1st, 2003 and suffered three years of persecution. The guards locked me in a small cell every day and forbade me to meet anyone. They forced me to watch TV programmes slandering Dafa. They found some former practitioners who had gone against Dafa to tell me lies. Guards wrote a "guarantee statement to stop practising" for me attempted to force me to sign and fingerprint it. I didn't follow their orders. A group of guards then held me down. Some of them pulled my hands to put my fingerprint on the statement. After that, they forced me to do work for at least 12 hours per day. Sometimes, they made me work overtime, until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.

Lead guar, Shi Fengyou, asked me, “Why did you go on a hunger strike?” I told him, “We cultivators also have our human rights protected by the constitution. I demand unconditional release. Is there something wrong with using a hunger strike to protest the violation of my human rights?” He said, “Forget about it. No one has been released from the forced labour camp using a hunger strike. We have many methods to deal with hunger strikes.” They forced a feeding tube into my stomach. The tube they used was a thick and hard plastic tube. They force-fed me corn paste. Once the corn paste entered my stomach, I suddenly felt cold, and a tightening in my chest, then my heart started beating crazily and my body became very hot. I could barely breathe. I felt as if I was suffocating to death. Obviously, they had added something to the corn paste that caused these symptoms.

I went to the Beijing Appeal Office in October 1999 to inform people about the true nature of Falun Gong. I was stopped and asked if I was a Falun Gong practitioner and where I was from. I answered honestly so I was arrested. My mother received a phone call from my bank, asking me to write a statement promising to no longer practise Falun Gong. I refused to do so. At that time, there were many cases of arrests and layoffs of Falun Gong practitioners. Someone suggested getting a mental illness statement for me to save my job. The doctor at the hospital declared that I had “paranoid schizophrenia,” basing his findings on the fact that I would rather give up my job than promise not to practise Falun Gong. I went on a hunger strike to protest. The doctors inserted a feeding tube into my stomach to force-feed me with food and medicine.

In November 2002, the authorities carried out an attempt to "reform" practitioners. It was extremely cold in winter in Northeast China. The guards ordered us to strip down to our pyjamas. All the windows were opened, and the piercing wind blew in. The guards couldn't help shivering in their overcoats. We were then forced to squat barefoot in the freezing cold, trembling all over. Some of us were chained to the ground with fixed cuffs. The guards put basins of cold water under our buttocks. Each guard also carried an electric baton and continuously applied shocks to practitioners. The crackling sound from the electric batons never stopped, and the strong smell of burning skin permeated the air. Some guards let out wild, evil bursts of laughter while swearing at Dafa nonstop.

I'm calling on the world's people to help my husband, Yang Jianpo, who has been tortured and who has been on a hunger strike for more than 400 days at Hebei Jidong Prison. He is now in critical condition and on life support. In Wanzhuang Forced Labour Camp, he was forced into heavy labour and worked 20 hours daily. He was beaten with wooden sticks. In Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp, he was handcuffed to an iron ring on the ground outdoors. He suffered blazing sunlight during the day and mosquito bites at night. The guards inserted an electric baton into his mouth to shock him. They did not release him after he had served his sentence. He went on a hunger strike for 60 days. Eventually, he was released, but not before he was at death's door.

On October 12th, 2000, police arrested me because I would not give up practising Falun Dafa. The police head, Lu Feng, ordered me to write a "Repentance Statement." I refused to write the "Repentance Statement," so they sent me to the detention centre. During the interrogation, Lu Feng brutally tortured me and dispatched someone to monitor me. He forbade me from sleeping. The police called this torture the "enduring eagle." After a long time of torture, one's mental state collapses, and feels worse than death. The police saw me reciting Dafa articles and added a shackle weighing 19 kilogrammes (42 lb.) on me. I wore it for one month. This is the heaviest shackle in the jail, usually put on criminals to be executed. When I once spoke to another practitioner, they added another handcuff to the shackle. Beating practitioners is common in jail.

The guards in the forced labour camp wanted to put on the statement that I “admit” practising Falun Gong was wrong. The captain then pressured the drug offender to put words that slandered Falun Dafa at the end of my statement and read it in public.I strongly protested and asked them to give me the statement, and went on a hunger strike. Captain Fan ordered 4 or 5 drug offenders to pin me to the ground and cuff my hands behind my back, with one of my arm up and the other down. I screamed from the pain. They then cuffed me to the bed frame. I was locked in a position in which I couldn't stand, kneel down or squat. I was forced to change my body position and reposition my legs constantly. Even the drug offenders felt sorry for me and shed tears.