Mr. Dong Jiahe is a Falun Gong practitioner from Sichuan Province. Because of his firm belief in Falun Gong, he was sentenced to forced labour twice and detained for a total of four years. In 2002 he was arrested and he recounts: "Police used a plastic bag to cover my head and fastened it tightly around my neck. I almost suffocated. They handcuffed me to a metal window. One policeman beat me using a wooden stick while other officers beat and brutally kicked me. "What's your name? Where are you from? Where did you get the Falun Gong materials?" I only replied, "Falun Gong is good!" Hearing this, they beat me more violently. When I fainted, they poured cold water on me, trying to wake me up. Later, they continued beating me until I fainted again."

Falun Gong practitioner Lu Xueqin has repeatedly been persecuted by officers from the local 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong), police stations, and brainwashing centres. Her most recent ordeal began in January 2008, when the Qingdao City 610 Office initiated an operation called "Case of 13 People" to target local Falun Gong practitioners. The police arrested and interrogated her, using torture to force her to confess that she was a "key player," which Ms. Lu resolutely denied. She was once not allowed to sleep for nine straight days, which resulted in her fainting several times. Her health declined rapidly but the police kept her from receiving medical treatment. As a result, she became paralysed from the waist down.

Ms. Wang Xiuyan was arrested three times and twice sent to forced labour camps during the past ten years. She was subjected to gross abuse and mistreatment while in detention. Ms. Wang recounts: "While at Wanjia labour camp, the guards forced me to squat and denied me sleep to make me "reform." They also made practitioners do hard labour. They watched us closely. They beat and kicked us, forced us to stand and squat, used the Big Hang-up [the hands are handcuffed and then pulled from behind the back and hung up on a hook high above the ground. The feet are made to hang just above the floor], electric batons and the Airplane [the practitioner's body is bent at 90 degrees while both hands are outstretched similar to the wings of an airplane. Sometimes a cup of water is put on both hands. If the water is spilled, prison guards will beat the practitioner brutally.

On August 12th, 2009, while going to her brother's home, Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Wang Xuchun was arrested by the local police. She was later force-fed to the point that she was on the verge of death. Wang Xuchun rejected all the police's demands and was finally released. She describes her experience in the detention centre: "A person then forced my head to face up and stepped on my mouth. Mud on his shoe fell into my mouth. I heard that the deputy director of the centre used to use the same approach to treat other people. I was thin and in my sixties. Finally, they tied me up on a stretcher and inserted the tube into my nose. I was seriously injured inside and bleeding. My collar was covered by fresh blood. Even after four days, blood was still in my phlegm."

I started practising Falun Gong in 1996. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. At the end of 1999, when I went back to China to appeal for justice for Falun Gong, I was detained in the Shenyang Longshan Forced Labour Camp for half a year. Though I am now an American resident, the CCP still constantly harasses my family in China in an attempt to threaten me. In the past several months, two spies from the No. 11 Section of Shenyang City's State Security Bureau regularly harassed my parents, who are both over 70 years old.

Mr. Li Jifeng is from Shulan City, Jilin Province. After becoming a Falun Gong practitioner, he was strict with himself yet tolerant of others. Everyone speaks very highly of him. Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to persecute Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999, Mr. Li has been arrested and detained several times. Because he refuses to give up the practice, he has been brutally tortured.

On August 30th, 2009, the chief of the Zhanqian Police Station in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, and several policemen ransacked my home when my son was home alone. When an officer saw Teacher Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong's photo, he stopped in front of it and then called the police station. He said, "There is a Falun Gong practitioner here." They searched our home and found some informational materials and several Falun Gong books. They took him to the police station, forced him to sit on a a "Tiger Bench" and did not release him until late. One policeman asked him, "Will your mother come?" My son asked him in return, "If it was your mother, would you ask her to come?"

On May 10th, 2002, more than ten officers broke into my home and arrested me. At the detention centre five thugs held me to the ground and tied my hands and arms behind my back using a rope, and then pulled them upwards toward my neck. Kang Kai held the rope and pulled it up for about seven minutes before letting it go, and then pulled it up again for about ten minutes. The police said, "You are not so good. Ms. Zhu Chengxin (a practitioner) endured the pulling ten times. Generally the hands become numb and partially paralysed after being pulled three times." I was later sentenced to a five and a half year prison term. My mother died from sorrow and fright twenty days after I was arrested.

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Li Yuqui, 56, was detained at a police station in Beijing in 2001, where the agents tortured him severely. He recounts: "I refused to tell them where I was from. The police took off my shoes and seven police officers tortured me. They handcuffed me backwards, hung me in the air by the handcuffs, and used several electric batons to simultaneously shock me on my back and on the soles of my feet. Then they lowered me to the floor, shackled me and shocked my back and the soles of my feet again. I screamed from the pain and my feet twitched and scraped between the shackles and the concrete floor, peeling off skin on my toes and exposing my bones."

My name is Meng Xiangfa, and I am 57 years old. In 2002, police arrested me and my wife because we practise Falun Gong. I was sent to Chaoyanggou Labour Camp in Changchun City, where I was grossly abused for two years. While at the labour camp, I wasn't allowed to speak with other practitioners. I had to sit on a small stool more than 14 hours daily and had to do intensive hard labour. They often incited criminals to beat and verbally abuse practitioners. They tried to "reform" us by depriving us of sleep. The officials used all kinds of tactics to torture us to achieve their goals, frequently using electric batons to shock us, beating and kicking us, depriving us of sleep, and extending our terms.

On April 30th, 2001, when I went to Beijing to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong, the Beijing police arrested me. After a body search, they held me in Dongcheng Detention Centre for 15 days. Those in charge used violence to force me to wear the prison uniform. One of them hit my neck with a high voltage baton so hard that I dropped to the floor instantly. In a Beijing police station, police tortured me. Two men lifted my arms upward until my shoulder joints were almost dislocated. One used a barbed stick to hit my back, buttocks, legs, and feet. He also kicked my lower back. He swore at me while he tortured me, saying "It's no big deal if you guys die--you'll die for nothing."

My mother's name is Hu Qili. She is 48 years old. She went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on November 21st, 1999, and was fired by the hospital director and Communist Party Secretary two days later. During the last ten years, my mother has been detained three times and sent to a labour camp twice. She is again facing sentencing. I cannot fully describe my mother's suffering. The type of physical and mental torture can only be understood by those who have personally experienced it.

My mother, Ms. Chen Zhenping, was sent to the Zhengzhou City Detention Centre. The practitioners there were forced to do 15 hours of forced labour daily, and they were forbidden from talking or using the toilet during that period. They usually held one position for more than ten hours, and were forced to make 2,000 to 3,000 lighters per capita every day. Many people's hands peeled layer by layer, which brought them burning pain at night. Some criminal offenders couldn't tolerate the hard labour, and committed suicide. Although my mother was already in her later fifties, she had to finish 3,000 lighters every day, the same quota as the younger detainees. Moreover, she suffered abuse and was severely beaten at any whim there.

I was not even in my 50's and yet I had to retire and stay at home due to illness. In March 1995, my husband started the practice with me. We both experienced tremendous improvements in health and fitness. In December 2000, police deceived me to leave my house. They dragged me into a car and took me to the Shizui Brainwashing Centre to be incarcerated for more than two months. During my incarceration, my husband was under extreme mental pressure and he cried every day. He used to be very healthy but suddenly his health deteriorated. When I was arrested again my husband had a stroke. On September 30th, 2004, my husband passed away due to shock and fear.

In July 2000, I was 22. I was arrested by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and put in a detention centre for going to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong. You can hardly imagine how evil the environment is unless you are in it and experience it yourself. What you heard every day were the guards beating and cursing the inmates, the sound of the electronic batons, and the cry of pain from the victims. A male practitioner insisted on doing the exercises and was shocked with electric batons, beaten by inmates, burned with cigarettes, and his fingernails were stabbed with needles. I was also tortured with a torture device called the "iron chair. When I was released I could not walk.

Ms. Zhang Shufen was sentenced to imprisonment in 2002 for refusing to renounce her belief in Falun Gong. She was taken to Heilongjiang Province Women's Prison and suffered five years and eight months of torture. In prison, police incited the criminals to brutally torture Ms. Zhang. In July 2004, thirty of us were hung up. Three hours passed, but we were still hung up. I passed out due to the pain. When I became conscious, I was still hanging. Another time my hands were handcuffed together in this painful position called "carrying a sword on the back." Inmates were incited to kick and punch me.

I was sentenced to one and a half years of forced labour in 2008, and imprisoned at the Shandong Province First Women's Forced Labour Camp. The labour camp was overcrowded. The younger ones had to sleep on the floor. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imprisoned many people in the labour camp in order to make money through free labour. The labour camp had many orders to fulfil. Some were for toys, some were for mobile phone cases. Inmates had to work more than ten hours a day, seven days a week. Some inmates' wrists and fingers were injured by the repetitive labour. Some had friction burns on their hands, some had swollen legs. Inmates had to ask for permission before using the toilet.

After July 20th, 1999, when the government's persecution of Falun Gong began, I was arrested by officers many times, and sent to a forced labour camp and inhumanly tortured. The fourth time they arrested me was in June 2004. When eight other practitioners and I were in a fellow practitioner's home, we were arrested by police and held in a detention centre. Zhang Wei, the assistant warden, rushed into the cell and was very angry. He said his name had been posted on the persecutor's person's list on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. He thought that I was the one who had leaked his name, and he started to beat and kick me until I fell down. My head and many parts of my body were black and blue with bruises. Combined with old and new injures, I was in agony, had excruciating pain, and was not able to get up for a long time.

Before practising Falun Gong, Ms. Liu Daju, 56, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Ms. Liu Daju recounts the persecution she endured: "I talked about the goodness of Falun Gong to the prison guards but they did not listen. They hung me up on the window frame of the toilet and opened the window, exposing me to the bitter cold winter wind, more than ten degrees below zero. My whole body became swollen and the handcuffs cut deep into my flesh. My wrists were so swollen that the handcuffs were not even visible. I was hung there for 15 days. When the guards unlocked the handcuffs, I was unable to move my hand and fell down in the filth of the open-pit toilet. I could not bring my hands down, which were stuck to my back."

I have been cultivating Falun Gong and following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance for 13 years, and have never wavered in my faith in all that time. Since the open suppression and persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started on July 20th, 1999, the police have used deceitful methods eight times in order to gain entry to my home, confiscate my property, and arrest me. I was sentenced in Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp, Beijing to a term of one and a half years; then I was sentenced to 3 years in the Chadian Qianjin Prison of Tianjin City. In 2008, before the Olympics, I was arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in a labour camp. The term was served outside of the labour camp because I was over 75.

I was arrested in 2008. The police assigned other inmates to monitor practitioners. Practitioners are even forbidden to stand by the cell door and converse with anyone except their personal spy or to respond to any questions. Every day, the inmates monitor and report the practitioners' every word and deed to the police. In order to find out practitioners' states of mind and weaknesses to thereby better control them, the police usually have a "conversation" with practitioners on the first few days after their arrest. They then use deception and other means to "transform" practitioners by targeting their weaknesses.

On October 31st, 2001, I opened a banner on Tiananmen Square that read "Falun Gong is good". I was arrested and transferred to Miyun Detention Centre. One policeman slapped me very hard for a long time (the marks on my face did not fade for ten days). He stripped my clothes until I was in my underwear and began savagely beating me, I was quickly beaten to the ground and passed out. Policemen stepped on my fingers, and took turns pressing on my eye sockets. My life was hanging by a thread. The jail cell mates told me that I looked dead to them. They used a pungent gas to wake me up and took me back to the jail cell. By that time, it was 4 a.m.

My name is Qu Lihua and I am forty-four years old. Because of my perseverance in practising Falun Gong, I have been arrested, locked up, fired from my job and put into forced-labour camps in the past ten years. Now I have been forced to be homeless for almost two years. In the detention centre, us Falun Gong practitioners started a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Guards and prisoners dragged us out while beating and kicking us and force-fed us. We were pressed down to chairs with our arms twisted behind our backs. It felt as if my arms were about to break. Prison doctors held mouth-opening devices, pinched our noses, and force fed us highly salted corn gruel, which spilled all over our heads and bodies. Some fellow practitioners were injured to the extent that they vomited blood and some lost consciousness.

Fangzheng County police arrested Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Wang Zhige from Yilan County and detained him. They savagely beat him and brutally force-fed him, which resulted in blindness in his left eye. The court later slapped him with a three-year sentence and sent him to the Hulan Prison. He was forced to stand from 5:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. daily for ten days. Guards incited inmates to violently beat him.

Ms. Chen Jingyu is a Falun Gong practitioner who suffered gross mistreatment in the local police station, detention centre and labour camp. She details her plight, as follows:"As soon as I arrived at the labour camp, the guards attempted to "reform" me. I knew deep in my heart that there was nothing wrong for me to practise Falun Gong, so I firmly refused to listen to them. They then found several "helpers" who were sent in by 610 Office agents. They forced me to watch videos slandering Falun Gong. One "helper" talked to me day and night, trying to get me to practise other beliefs. These guards and "helpers" ordered practitioners to write "four statements to denounce Falun Gong". Everything they used were deceptions and intimidations, which they didn't dare to reveal to the public.

Mr. Li Jianqian and Ms. Li Xiaoyun are husband and wife in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province. Mr. Li was a public servant, and Ms. Li was a school teacher. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong, Mr. Li was sentenced to seven years in prison, and Ms. Li was forced to leave home and go from place to place. The last time they saw their son was four years ago, when he was three years old. Ms. Li said in a statement: "In the past several years, my family's phone and mobile phones have been tapped and they are constantly being monitored. My family members and my supervisors at work were in trouble because of me. They have suffered tremendous economic loss and mental pressure"

Ms. Li Yuqin recounted in this article the torture she suffered at Dabei Prison, Liaoning Province, beginning with describing the injuries she suffered: "My buttocks were covered with wounds. Some were still bleeding while others festered. All I had was toilet paper to cover the wounds, which then stuck to them. Despite being barely able to sit, I was forced to sit on a small stool, one of the many tortures used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, for fourteen to fifteen hours daily. After twenty days, my wounds changed from festering to bleeding again. When I went to the toilet, blood dripped all over the floor. The guards said that after I renounced Falun Gong their 'task' would be accomplished and only then would I be no longer tortured."

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Dang Huiying had been successively held at the Baoding Forced Labour Camp, the Shijiazhuang Women's Forced Labour Camp and the Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp, and persecuted for six years just for speaking out for justice for Falun Gong to the government. She said about her experience: "In Shijiazhuang Women's Forced Labour Camp, I was forced to be "transformed". The guards force fed me with chilli mixed with essential balm, alkali and salt, which hurt so much that I couldn't help yelling. I once saw the guards pry open the teeth of Ms. Zhang Rongjie. She refused to open her mouth, so the guards pulled four of her front teeth out with pliers. Blood filled her mouth; her screams spread throughout the whole women's labour camp."

Mr. Li Shaotie, 56 years old and a Falun Gong practitioner has been arrested several times because he didn't give up practising Falun Gong. Three of his four immediate family members were imprisoned. Mr. Li Shaotie recounts: "While I was detained in the Jiamusi Forced Labour Camp, police officers and detainees beat and cursed me frequently. Officials in the labour camp used several torture methods and one of them was called the "iron chair." Once, I was tortured this way for three consecutive weeks. When they released my arms and legs, I couldn't even walk. In the labour camp, practitioners were constantly subjected to all kinds of torture, such as electric batons, the iron chair and the "dead person's bed.""

Because I practise Falun Gong, the police arrested me in 2000. I was eventually given two years of forced labour. Dalian City Forced Labour Camp guards repeatedly tortured me to give up Falun Gong. I was forced to bend down in painful positions and tortured to the point where my whole body was covered with scabies. I had bloody urine and developed a fever. Doctors at the hospital said I would die soon so the labour camp released me. Later I was sent back to the labour camp. Because I refused to recite the labour camp rules they locked me up in a small metal cage. The guards pulled my hands as far away from my body as physically possible and handcuffed each of my hands to the metal cage. Because of the intense physical pain I lost control of my excretory functions.

On August 20th, 2008, I went to distribute flyers about Falun Gong near Jilin Prison. I met a guard from the "joint defence." The guard was about 60 years old. I explained the facts about Falun Gong to him. Instead of listening, he beat me. As a result, my face was injured and turned black. There was a big bump under my left eye and my mouth bled. Three policemen held my arms while the other grabbed my hair. They dragged me and threw me against a wall from a distance of five metres. I heard a "thud," and the back of my head hit the wall firmly, making me dizzy. They threw me against the wall repeatedly, four or five times. I was so dizzy that I could not stand up. They ripped out clumps of my hair.

On June 22nd, the flight from Beijing to Frankfurt was delayed for two hours. For Guo Jufeng, who had waited for 17 months, two more hours of waiting were not the end of the world. Guo is an engineer. He was tortured in China for practising Falun Gong. He came to Germany 17 months ago and was granted refugee status in Germany. That day he was waiting for his wife, Ms. Yu Hailing, a medical doctor, and his son, Guo Fangzhou, whom he had never met. After most of the passengers on the Beijing flight had disembarked, Guo finally saw his wife and their son. She was holding him in one hand and the baggage in the other. Tears ran down his face. As he reached for his son, the boy dodged, for Guo was a complete stranger to him.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began its persecution of Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. I went to the Beijing to appeal for justice and was arrested. I had to read lie-filled literature. Guards kept me from sleeping. The constant threats and brainwashing confused me, and I wrote a guarantee statement to give up Falun Gong. An official told me to talk to the media to restore my work unit's reputation. Thinking that I could explain the facts about Falun Gong to the journalists, I agreed. I told them truthfully that I became a good person because I practise Falun Gong. An article published in Modern Scientific Living lied and said how the regime had "reformed" me. It also said that I "attacked" Falun Gong.

My name is Lai Zuhua and I am 64 years old. I live in Chengdu City. On May 14th, 2004, I took leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong and went to Yulong Street to distribute them. When I had just handed out two flyers, I was captured by police and taken to the nearby Xiyuhe Police Station. From 10:00 p.m. on May 14th to 6:00 a.m. on May 16th, the police did not allow me to go to sleep. They shone three 200-watt electric light bulbs on me and put me in handcuffs. These policemen kept interrogating me about the source of my materials. Later I was taken to a detention centre.

Ms. Shi Lanfang, in her 70s, was arrested and taken to a brainwashing centre on on April 23rd, where she was held for 42 days. This is Ms. Shi's own account of what happened: "I was about to go grocery shopping when I saw five or six police officers in front of my house. One female officer called out to me and said that she wanted me to accompany her to the community centre to 'have a talk.' I told her that I did not have time. At that point, the police officers dragged me into the car and took me to a place called the 'Law and Order Centre' in Xinjin to try to brainwash me."