Over two years ago, in November 2006, I was sent to the Sichuan Women's Prison because I continue to practise Falun Gong. Being detained, mistreated and brainwashed by three collaborators [former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture.] for such a long time subjected me to huge mental pressures. It has been a long time since I was given any regular food. My diet has been without vegetables and fruit. Lacking sunshine, I developed all-over oedema. I requested many times to leave the cell to get hot water, but permission was never granted. Soon, my life was in danger and I was sent to the police hospital.

On May 8th, 2007, I was reported and arrested for encouraging people to quit the communist party. I was detained in the Women's Detention Centre, and then transferred to a brainwashing centre in Jianghan District, Wuhan City, where I was brutally tortured. A policeman named Qu instigated henchmen to force me to listen to the communist constitution. I told them not to contribute to the persecution of Falun Gong. They would not listen to me. Instead, they pulled me off the bed and kicked me brutally. After three months of torture, my body was thin as a piece of wood. Police carried me to a Drug Rehabilitation Centre to do forced labour for a year.

On June 25th, 2008, I was abducted by two policemen who forced me into a squad car and then took me to the Haikou Brainwashing Centre. Collaborators, former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture and assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners, relentlessly badmouthed Falun Gong, and my practising Falun Gong. To try and force me to give up my cultivation, they yelled in my ear through a megaphone, and they hit my head with Falun Gong books. One person said that I would not be able to get out if I did not give up my belief, and that they would beat me to death and I had no chance of winning the fight.

On June 17th, 2008, police came to my home, saying someone had reported that I distributed flyers about Falun Gong. They took me to the police department. In the detention centre, I went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Twelve days passed. Qin Shijun, the chief of the detention centre, sent me to the county hospital for forced-feeding. The doctor could not insert the feeding tube even after he tried for some time. He said, "We can force feed her after cutting her trachea open." Qin Shijun did not agree. I lost consciousness after the doctor injected me with an unknown drug. When I woke up, my hands were handcuffed to the bed rail in the detention centre. Tubing had been inserted into my nose.

My name is Huang Yanqing. On the afternoon of June 25th, 2008, I was abducted by two policemen who forced me into a squad car and then took me to the Haikou Brainwashing Centre in Haikou City, Hainan Province. There I met the collaborators that I had known when I was in the forced labour camp the first time. They said that they had been looking for me for many years. The place was very dark and gloomy. They badmouthed Falun Gong, and my practising Falun Gong. I was handcuffed to the window in the toilet overnight many times. The worst thing was that after 10:00 p.m. when I got tired, they would beat me as soon as I closed my eyes to stop me from falling asleep.

I was detained in Changlinzi Forced Labour Camp. During these three years of persecution, I was bound to a metal chair twice in a small cell. Due to being tied to the chair without moving for so long, my feet, hands, arms, and legs became swollen. The metal rings cut deep into my flesh. Because we were kept in the dark, wet and mouldy labour camp, many practitioners developed scabies. I had scabies on my legs as I was kept on the metal chair for long periods. The area with the scabies began rotting. The guards used electric batons to shock me and force-fed me. They tried to deceive and threaten me. They also tortured me by not allowing me to sleep.

I was a regular inmate in the Women's Prison of Wuhan City. At the end of 2003, another Falun Gong practitioner named Ms. Sun Xiuqin entered the prison ward where I was being held. There are many methods of torture used in the Wuhan Women's Prison. Inmates are never respected, guards will treat inmates really nicely only if the inmates are wealthy or powerful. They are really cruel to Falun Gong practitioners. They would try to force them to give up their belief, make them watch slanderous videotapes, and force them to do hard labour, day and night. If they didn't cooperate, they would be strung up to a metal door.

I am a Falun Gong practitioner in Guizhou Province. Since I wouldn't give up my belief in Falun Gong and insisted on practising, in 2001 I was detained and sent to the Zhongba Forced Labour Camp. I was brutally tortured there for three years. They used various inhumane methods to try to force me to give up my belief, and the supervisor at my workplace suspended my job and my salary. In Zhongba Forced Labour Camp I was forced to run in the yard for a very long time. They forced me to practise military marching manoeuvres, such as standing for a long time, kneeling down and standing up (sometimes on one leg) thousands of times. This "military training" lasted five hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon everyday.

On January 16th 2009, I returned home and saw a mess everywhere. Dad was very haggard. Under my persistent questioning, he simply told me that mum had been arrested because of her distributing leaflets exposing the persecution and telling people the facts about Falun Gong, and was taken to Dashan Detention Centre in Qingdao. I could not control my agitation and went to Shen Tao, the director of the Political Protection Office, to ask for my mum. In 2004, he arrested her and tortured her. She could be in life-threatening danger: how could I calmly stay at home? Suddenly Shen Tao pushed me. I felt a searing pain in my back. I asked, "Why are you beating me?" He replied, "Who beat you? It served you right!"

Ms. Song Wenjuan came from Heilongjiang Province. Because she practised Falun Gong, she was repeatedly tortured by the guards in Wanjia Forced Labour Camp in Harbin City. In order her to force Ms. Song to give up Falun Gong she was hung up, left out in the cold, beaten, and shocked with electric batons. Because of the torture, she lost consciousness many times and her left hand became completely paralysed. She also had to do slave labour.

In 2001, I was arrested while distributing leaflets exposing the persecution and telling people the facts about Falun Gong. The following year I was sentenced to a three-year prison term and incarcerated in Liaoning Province Women's Prison. The prison enforced starting work at six in the morning, stopping at ten in the evening, and going to sleep at eleven. Prisoners were frequently forced to work overtime to create more income for the prison. I was allowed only three to four hours of sleep each night. Every week the prison provided only two meals of fine flour and rice in limited quantities. The rest of the meals were all coarse bread.

I am the mother of a Falun Gong practitioner. My daughter has been detained for six months. I call out her name in my dreams and awaken in tears again and again. From 1999 to 2009, my daughter, Jiao Xuemei, was arrested and detained four times. During the past 10 years, she has been persecuted again and again. Our family has suffered great loss financially and has suffered tremendous mental pressure. On June 16th, 2008, on the eve of the Olympic Games, officers from Xishandao Police Station again detained Jiao Xuemei and took her to the Tangshan No.1 Detention Centre. The Lubei Court put her on trial on September 19th and sentenced her without evidence of any wrongdoing.

On April 20th, 2002, I was arrested by police officers and sent to Huangpu Detention Centre. Several policemen violently beat me. I was taken out of the detention centre one night and sent to a small, enclosed room, where eight policemen threatened to inject me with medicine and send me to a psychiatric hospital. I didn't cooperate, so four of the officers left the room while another four remained to brutally beat me and threaten me. I became unconscious due to the torture and was taken back to the detention centre early the next morning. I couldn't walk by myself and had to lean on the guards for support. I protested with a hunger strike, and was then tied to a chair, where guards forced a feeding tube down into my lungs. They continued to insert the tube and didn't stop until I lost consciousness.

On June 26th, 2008, I was transferred from an addiction treatment centre in Sichuan Province to the No. 7 Section of the Nanmusi Women's Forced Labour Camp. Three days after I arrived, I was forced to perform slave labour. Whenever we entered or left the workshop's main door, we were required to report to the guards, otherwise we were not allowed to use the toilet. Since I did not report for two days, I had to wait until 11:00 p.m. to use the toilet. Shortly after this incident, the guards required all practitioners who were not "transformed" to work in their cell for about 15 hours a day, rather than the workshop.

My name is Wang Yajun. I was arrested at home on May 16th, 2007, by police for attending a Falun Gong experience sharing conference. I was later detained in Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp in Changchun City, Jilin Province, for 18 months. On June 17th, 2008, I went on a hunger strike. I was then subjected to more persecution. Under the instigation of the police, drug addict inmates tied me to an iron bed. They handcuffed my hands and legs. Four vicious addicts hit me in the genital area. They also used a pair of slippers to hit my face, and they pulled my hair. After kicking and punching me with their fists, they started to force-feed me. My lower back was injured because of the torture. It bled and festered and developed a hole as large as a fist.

In 1994 I was so fortunate to start practising Falun Gong. I looked like a new person: the diseases were all gone. After July 1999, when the persecution started, my siblings and I were all persecuted. My mother was devastated. After the onset of the persecution, I was ordered to a brainwashing centre every day. One day as I returned to my work place after the brainwashing session, my supervisor did not allow me to go home and tried to force me to write a guarantee statement to quit cultivation and a "regret statement" to slander Falun Gong. My mother passed away because she was scared to death. My heart hurts because of sadness and pain.

To try to force me to give up cultivating Falun Gong, the guards used all sorts of torture means. I remained handcuffed 24 hours per day for 141 days, until December 2000. I was detained in a 40-square-foot cell with a coffin-shaped bed. I was cuffed onto the metal gate and forced to stand holding the gate for 79 days. They did not allow me to sleep for the first ten days. If I closed my eyes, the guards would punch me, beat me, or curse me. By the tenth day, I could not bear such inhuman torture. I requested that they let me sleep during the night. Just because I dared to raise such a request, more than a dozen guards, each holding an electric baton, shocked me for the whole morning.

Ms. Tian Huiying was killed in a so-called "suicide attempt" in July 2005 as claimed by the Sanshui Women's Forced Labour Camp. She was 50 years old. I witnessed the entire process of her being persecuted. A car drove out of the cafeteria in the labour camp and struck Ms. Tian Huiying. The wheels of the car drove over her legs and feet. She immediately lost consciousness. Later on, police said that Ms. Tian had run towards the car to commit suicide and that the people who were monitoring her could not stop her. In fact, there were no guards at the scene. Moreover, the two criminals who were monitoring Ms. Tian were very strong young men. The car hit her on purpose.

In 2008, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) arrested my husband again, allegedly for the sake of the Olympic Games. On July 13th, 2008, police broke into my home. They covered my husband's head with a black plastic bag and forced him into a police car. They searched my home and seized expensive items. They also destroyed my electric fan. My husband has been detained in the Shuangfengsi Detention Centre for more than five months, and we are not allowed to visit him. Recently, we learned that he will be brought to trial at Shuangqiao District Court on December 15th, 2008. I call for the immediate release of my husband.

Since the persecution started in July 1999, my sister-in-law Ms. Zhu has been arrested for calling for justice for Falun Gong by unfurling a banner in Tiananmen Square. In August 2002, a few months after she was released, she was arrested again with my brother by six police officers, for speaking out on the Internet against the persecution of Falun Gong. My brother was beaten when he tried to resist being arrested. They were sentenced to nine and eleven years of imprisonment respectively. Their son, Huhu, has been deprived of his parents' care.

My son, a Falun Gong Practitioner, has been thrown into jail, and whether he is dead or alive is unknown. I feel anxious every day and I frequently have nightmares. I am already in my seventies. My son has been imprisoned three times. On this last awful day, the whole family was working in the fields. I witnessed with my own eyes how a gang of policemen pounced on my son and handcuffed him while forcing him into a police car. At the same time two men held me back as I struggled, and kept me from resisting their unlawful arrest of my son. I fell to the ground as my heart was broken. I could only watch helplessly as the police car drove away with my child!

On March 11th, 2004, I was taken to the Beijing Women's Prison. Since I refused to give up my belief, I suffered the most brutal tortures, both mentally and physically. Mentally, they forced me to watch video programmes and read books that slandered Falun Gong. They wanted me to write "confessions." Physically, they tortured me with sleep deprivation, forcing me to stand still all night in military postures. They would punch and kick me whenever they were not happy with me. Sometimes I was only allowed to use the toilet once a day. Verbal abuse, humiliation, kicks and punches, and slaps in the face were common practice. They attempted to use force to press me into giving up my belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance.

Ms. Wang Hongyan, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested on March 3rd, 2007, and her home was ransacked by police. She suffered inhumane persecution at the Shulan City Nanshan Detention Centre, and was later sent to Heizuizi Women's Labour Camp where she was ruthlessly tortured again. In the detention centre police ruthlessly beat Ms. Wang. Then a policeman poured a whole bottle of hot pepper liquid into a tube and said they were going to insert it into her nose. He splashed the liquid into Ms. Wang's eyes, and she couldn't open them.

When my two older sisters and I were arrested and sent to a detention centre, harshly punished, beaten, and forced to do hard labour, our father's hair turned grey overnight. When one of my older sisters, who was persecuted to the verge of death, was again arrested, our mother cried and shouted bitterly. She attempted to lie under the wheels of a car to stop her daughter's persecution. In a detention centre I was forced to do hard labour every day, and if I didn't finish my work on time, the guards deprived me of sleep. Only a small amount of hard rice noodles, which were cooked without any oil, was provided, and I saw insects floating in the muddy vegetable soup.

The Chinese Communist Party began its persecution of Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. As a result, my mother, Ms. Ma Lingxian, was subpoenaed twice, fined three times, her salary reduced, her promotions were cancelled twice, detained three times, and her home was ransacked seven times. She was sent to the Nanmusi Forced Labour Camp and was harassed numerous times by officials. All this took its toll on both my mother's psyche and our family's finances. On July 19th, 2008, my mother attended her first class reunion in 30 years in Xichang City. She was arrested again after only two days. The reason was that during the Olympics, the local government had to keep "sensitive" individuals under surveillance to prevent any public appeals.

On April 11th, 2008, I was arrested by police officers. They were afraid that I would escape so they broke my right foot. When I arrived at the National Security Division office, four strong men stripped me of my clothes and handcuffed my hands to the back of a chair. They force-fed me something that immediately made my lips swell and become numb. To prevent me from crying out, they covered my mouth with a rag. Then, they force-fed me chilli pepper powder, red flower oil (burning herb extract), boiling water, and inserted dirty water through my nose. They also used toothpicks to put chilli pepper powder up my nose, which hurt very badly. I was in so much pain and could hardly breath, then these four men grabbed my legs, two men on each side and pulled them apart.

I started practising Falun Gong in the year 1996. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, I was arrested, beaten, detained, fined, my house was ransacked and my family was implicated. Because I married another Falun Gong practitioner, the CCP personnel wanted to make me undergo a forced abortion. After appeals from various parties, the regime officials failed in their evil plan. The persecution my family had suffered is a clear manifestation of the cruelty of the tyrant CCP.

At the end of 2004, I returned to work after I was released from three years in a forced labour camp. From 2005 to 2006, my workplace kept asking me to write a so-called Guarantee Statement to declare that I wouldn't practise Falun Gong any more. I refused. On January 9th, 2007, Public Security Bureau police dragged me out bed and took me to Lanzhou City Brainwashing Centre. They tried force-feeding me. They pulled me up by my hair and made me face up, then they tried to push a plastic feeding tube through my nose. They tried numerous times without success. I almost suffocated to death, and I struggled due to the agony. They stepped on my legs so I could not move. The handcuffs rubbed the flesh off my left wrist. Later they forced drugs into me. The drug was bitter, numbing, and caused nausea. I was tortured on and on.

Ever since 1999, when Jiang Zemin's [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] regime started persecuting Falun Gong, my family has not had a single normal day. The joyous life was no more. It is a fact that I have benefited both physically and mentally from cultivating, and that my family lived in harmony and all of my illnesses were cured. I didn't understand why they wouldn't let us practise. As a Chinese citizen I went to petition. My rights as a citizen permit this, and I told everyone who was there of the physical and mental benefits of practising Falun Gong. On September 18th, 1999, I went to the Office of Appeals in Beijing to petition, but I was taken away by the police before I even reached the office. The next day I was sent back home to a local detention centre. Later I was sentenced to forced labour.

I was arrested on November 9th, 2003 for distributing leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong. In April 2004, I was sentenced and sent to Shenyang Women's Prison in Liaoning Province. I was assigned to Group 3, Ward 1, infamous for its brainwashing of Falun Gong practitioners, with a high success rate in "transforming" [forcibly renouncing Falun Gong] the practitioners. Police officer Li Zhe directed convicted murderers to torture me around the clock. They tied me up and beat me, stripped me naked and poured cold water on me. They also put drugs in my meals. During the time they were drugging me, I was having mental breakdowns and suffered from depression, with frequent panic attacks. To this day I still do not know what drugs they used on me.

In an image that so rarely escapes from China, Zhang Lianying is telling her story of horror. In Beijing Women's Forced Labour Camp Zhang was slapped, kicked, beaten, strangled, abused, deprived of sleep, had her private parts attacked. She was beaten or strangled into a coma 14 times. She says all parts of her body were violated and injured. Because she refused to renounce Falun Gong she recounted: “They tied up my hands and feet, lifted my feet and tied them to a chair, and used a rope from strips of bed-sheets to tie my neck to the back of the chair—so tight that I could not move."

In 2000 I went to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong. Because I stated the truth-- "Falun Gong is truly good"--I was sentenced to one year of forced labour and taken to Baimalong Women's Forced Labour Camp in Zhuzhou City. Because we did not capitulate or cooperate with the authorities, we were severely tortured. Some of us were deprived of sleep for the whole night; some were handcuffed and forced to stand on their tip-toes, causing their hands to bleed; some passed out from being handcuffed; some were put in solitary confinement, and some were forbidden to use the toilet. Some practitioners went on hunger strikes to protest. The police got four to five people to hold one practitioner down and force food into her mouth with a thick bamboo tube while pinching her nose shut.

In January 2001, several practitioners and I went to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong. As soon as we arrived in Tiananmen Square we were arrested. It turned out that the Bailong police found out we were missing and followed us all the way to Beijing. 610 Office head Liang Min shouted, "Throw her into the trunk. After we get home, beat her like you are beating cattle." We were detained for three months and sent to a labour camp for a year. While there, they tortured us very badly. In order to force us to give up Falun Gong, they made us stand facing the wall for a long time. They also forced us to stay in a half-squatting posture with our arms around our bodies. The torture went on 24 hours a day.

Ms. Zhao Jiayu was sentenced to two years of forced labour and was incarcerated from July 19th, 2000, to August 14th, 2002, simply because she wouldn't give up the practice of Falun Gong. On November 4th, 2002, not long after she was released, Chinese Communist Party member Zuo Jin and a dozen others from the local township government and the Jingkou Police Station took Zhao Jiayu to the Geleshan Brainwashing Centre. She was detained and tortured regularly in the centre for one and a half years and was not released until June 2004. On February 25th, 2005, Ms. Zhao was again arrested by Zuo Jin and sentenced to two years forced labour without due process.

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Zheng Baohua was arrested by police officers on September 10th, 2008. They then used torture to interrogate him. To protest, he went on a hunger strike and was brutally force-fed. He was finally released when he was on the brink of death. He recounted, "During the time I was on the hunger strike, I was force-fed with salt water every two or three days. While I was in the hospital, a guard told the doctors, 'All you have to do is to keep him alive for another three days. There will be no consequences as long as he does not die in the detention centre.'"

Mr. Sun Pinghua is 36 years old. He is a machinery repair worker at the Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant in Yueyang City, Hunan Province. He was arrested in March 2008 by the Domestic Security Division and was injured when the police tortured him trying to force a confession. The doctors said that he had no feeling from his left elbow joint to the fingers due to external forces pulling on the arm. If his arm didn't recover within six months, then the arm may need to be amputated. The police took him to the Xinkaipu Forced Labour Camp in Changsha City on August 12th, 2008.

After Ms. Chang Ping began to practise Falun Gong she was cured of her illnesses within a week. Then, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials sent her to a mental hospital four times because she refused to renounce Falun Gong. She is now at the Jiamusi Mental Hospital. At the first mental hospital she recalled, "Several people held me down and injected me with a drug. I lost consciousness almost immediately. When I regained consciousness, they forced me to take some drugs and kept me on an IV that also held some kind of medication. I was kept drowsy and muddle-headed for a long time. One day, I looked into a mirror. My eyes stared blankly out of my face, my hair was messy and the corners of my mouth had bloodstains from the force-feedings. I burst into tears. They had tortured me beyond recognition."

On August 1st, 2008, I was riding my electric bike and I was forced off my bike by one car and then surrounded by five or six others. I was arrested. I was taken to a detention centre by police. They handcuffed me to a chair and directed a very bright bulb into my eyes. Police officers took shifts torturing me in different ways over a 24 hour period, and did not let me sleep. One officer used police equipment to stab my lower back and thighs in front of the security guard, each time for about an hour. When I fainted, he would apply a stinging chemical to my upper and lower eyelids, temples, inside my nose and even in my mouth. Every inch of my skin touched by the chemical developed a rash, swelling, and peeling skin.

In July 2002, over a hundred practitioners were transferred to ward seven to conduct a "law class." In actuality, this was a brainwashing class, pressuring them to give up Falun Gong. Each practitioner was monitored by one or two criminals. The criminals strictly confined practitioners' freedom, reporting what they said and did to the guards. Eating, washing clothes, showering, going to the toilet, and other everyday activities had time limits. The guards did not allow the inmates to talk about Falun Gong with practitioners. If they did and were discovered, they were punished. The guards spread malicious lies to stir up hatred towards practitioners. They induced teaching assistants and inmates with credits and penalty reductions to persecute practitioners.

On December 9th, 2006, I went to a hospital to see a Falun Gong practitioner who was at the point of death due to persecution by Chinese Communist Party officials. A doctor from the detention centre did not allow me to visit the practitioner and called the police. I was arrested. I was arrested only because I went to a hospital to visit a Falun Gong practitioner that had been tortured and because of my faith in acting as a good person. I was sentenced to one year of forced labour and had money and property taken from me. We are practitioners that cultivate according to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, but we are brutally persecuted.

The brainwashing centre usually used two steps to persecute practitioners. The first step was to brainwash the practitioner and the second step was to coerce the practitioner into exposing other practitioners. If the practitioners refused to be "transformed" [give up Falun Gong], the police would then interrogate them. During the first step, the collaborators who had practised Falun Gong before tried to brainwash me and "transform" me. Since they had been practitioners they knew how practitioners talked and thought. They also deliberately misinterpreted and defamed Falun Gong when they felt it necessary. They helped the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to slander Falun Gong and used their experience and evil theories to "transform" the practitioners--just for this very limited salary.

On March 13th, 2006, I didn't lock the metal security door of my home. That morning, about 20 policemen broke into my home and ransacked it. They failed to show any warrant or legal document, but they searched my home and arrested my wife and me. They told me that it's illegal to have Falun Gong books at home. But Falun Gong books were legally published by China Broadcast Television Publishing Company before the CCP started the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999 and were among the top 10 best selling books in China. For having Falun Gong books at home, I was given a two-year jail sentence. I spent 16 months in Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Daxing, Beijing. During those 16 months, I was incarcerated in an isolation room for eight months where I was forced to sit still on a small stool facing the wall for 18-19 hours a day.

The Party has spared no means to try to coerce Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their belief. While at the labour camp, I was several times held in solitary confinement, a small, dark room. The first time, they did not let me sleep for 18 days, and the second time I was forced to stand continuously for 42 days and nights, while nine people took turns torturing me and attempted to coerce me to write a guarantee statement to renounce Falun Gong. I also sustained severe injury in my lower back and legs from beatings. I endured endless, unspeakable abuse: complete isolation, drawn-out starvation, toilet use restriction, sleep deprivation, beatings, and psychological abuses too numerous to count, that left me with wounds and near-blindness in both eyes, and stunted speech.

On August 27th, 2008 when the Chinese Communist Party Court sentenced me to 13 years of imprisonment, my heart was trembling. At that moment I saw even more clearly the evil nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is made up of gangsters and resorts to violence and deceit. I knew that the result of this trial would be too much for my family and all my relatives to bear. During the four-day-long trial, a Beijing lawyer argued a not-guilty defence. At the trial several practitioners explained the tortures they had been subjected to and showed the court their scars from the electric baton shocks. Not a single judge came over to look. They were completely indifferent. In the end, the judges publicly read out a statement fabricated by the police.

My dad, Mr. Zhang Xingwu, who is over 60 years old, and my mum, Ms. Liu Pinjie, have both been detained for more than a month. There is nobody at home to pick up the phone. I don't know how long I will have to wait before I can hear their voices again. I feel a great sense of hollowness. I try to not think about that phone call or happy memories. But, I am not able to stop thinking about my mother's voice from our last phone call before she was arrested. She had said only one sentence, but I will never forget it.

After July 20th, 1999, Jiang Zemin's, [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] regime began to brutally persecute Falun Gong. They fabricated slanderous news and broadcast it on TV and radio in order to deceive people. Because I am very determined in my belief, I was arrested and detained many times. Police from the Gaozhou Domestic Security Division, 610 Office and local police station interrogated and severely beat me. They harassed me in my home and at my work unit. They used thug-like means to try to force me to give up Falun Gong.

“As far back as two years ago, I signed my name here, demanding the CCP to stop persecuting Falun Gong, but the situation has not changed in the least.” Watching the Berlin Students in front of the Bolandeng Fortress and seeing scenes of the Chinese Falun Gong practitioners suffering cruel torture and live organ harvesting, a passer by expressed her suspicion and discouragement. A Chinese person suddenly said to her, “No, the situation is changing; it is just difficult to see immediately from abroad, please follow me.”

I am a Falun Gong practitioner from Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province. Because I have remained faithful to my belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance since 1999, I have been sentenced twice to forced labour and locked up at the Shuanghe Forced Labour Camp in Qiqihar City. In addition, I was incarcerated for almost four years in the Harbin City Women's Prison, where I was made to do hard labour and subjected to various ruthless tortures. Among other things, I was hung up in the air and swung from side to side, and I was stripped naked and beaten.

In September 2002, police once again arrested my husband and sent him to Gongjiawan brainwashing centre. During that time the director of the facility brutally persecuted my husband. They handcuffed him for about one week. They forced my husband to tell them about my whereabouts. I was hoemless to avoid persecution. They released him after persecuting him for over 15 months. During that time, my 11-year old son lived alone and barely had enough food to eat. He spent every night in fear.

In August 2001, I was sent to Deyang Prison, and forced to sleep on an iron bed without a mattress. It was difficult to sleep on such a bed, so I got up to practise the Falun Gong exercises. I did them only for more than ten minutes, and was discovered by a patrolling inmate surnamed Long. He, along with five other inmates, dragged me down from the bed and beat me. Later, I was forced to stand in a military posture. I couldn't keep my eyes open. I heard a guard shout at me viciously. Before I could react to him, he slapped me on both sides of my face continuously until he felt pain on his hand. Prisoner Wang gave him a table tennis paddle, and the guard chopped at my face with the paddle.