(Clearwisdom.net) I started practicing practice Falun Gong in 1997. Prior to practicing I had a bad temper and could not maintain a good relationship with my family members. In addition, I suffered from many kinds of diseases. After I practiced Falun Gong I came to understand the reasons for being human, and my relationships with family members, as well as my physical health, greatly improved. Falun Gong is so good, and I made up my mind to cultivate for the rest of my life.
After Jiang Zemin's regime started to persecute Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, I went to Beijing to clarify the truth to the authorities. Plainclothes police were everywhere. Many practitioners from other places also came to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. I saw many police vehicles full of practitioners who had been arrested, and the roads to the Appeals Office were under surveillance by police from all over the country. I went to the Appeals Office along with a fellow practitioner, but we were stopped by police on the side of the road before we reached it. They first asked me where I was from, and when I responded they knew from my accent where I was from, and arrested me, then detained me at the Provincial Office of my province in Beijing. I was later sent back to my hometown and was detained in the local police station for three months. After that, I was illegally sentenced to three years of forced labor. I would like to expose the mistreatment to which I was subjected during my imprisonment in the Shayang Forced Labor Camp in Hubei Province.
In the labor camp the guards were rewarded with bonuses for "transforming" Falun Gong practitioners, or forcing them to give up Falun Gong. Guard Wang Jing was specifically assigned to persecute Falun Gong practitioners, with the assistance from prisoners who were drug addicts. She ordered three drug addicts to watch each practitioner around the clock. The practitioners were forbidden from talking to other people and were under close monitoring even when they went to the toilet. Practitioners were also forced to recite the prison rules and other rules. If they refused to do so they were deprived of sleep for long periods of time. The practitioners are forced to do heavy labor, like harvesting peanuts, hoeing weeds, carrying soil and bricks, and planting farmlands. The duration of the labor was very long. If they failed to finish their assigned work quota, they were forced to do military training and undergo physical punishment after they returned to the labor camp.
The labor camp constantly played videos slandering Falun Gong and forced practitioners to watch them. They also forced practitioners to sing the songs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which said that the labor camp was the place where Falun Gong practitioners give up their belief. Steadfast practitioners were mistreated cruelly in various ways like being forced to sit on a low bench or standing straight against the wall for a long time, staying in the so-called "flying an airplane" or "backing a sword" positions for long periods, as well as exposure to the scorching sun, intense military training, and being shocked with electric batons. Some victims were unable to walk after being subjected to tortures lasting one or two days. Some had injuries on their foreheads from being forced to stand straight facing the wall with their forehead touching the wall. I constantly heard the sounds of practitioners being beaten, including heartbreaking screams when they were cruelly beaten in the middle of the night.
The rules implemented in the labor camp were intended to apply tremendous pressure on detainees. Some practitioners were tortured until they suffered a mental collapse. I even heard of some who died, and some were disfigured because of the torture they suffered. If practitioners refused to do what the prison guards wanted, the drug addicts abused and beat them viciously, preventing them from sleeping, and torturing them with electric batons. Wang Jing, head of the prison guards, usually gathered the drug addicts for meetings to teach them how to make the practitioners suffer. The drug addicts using the cruelest tortures on practitioners were rewarded with reductions in their sentences. One drug addict told me that they didn't need to work and were incited to beat and abuse practitioners whenever they wanted. As a reward for their cruelty in mistreating practitioners, the prison guards shared the food that they left with the most ferocious drug addicts, so they were always provided with good food like carrots, cabbage, white gourds and eggplant all throughout the year. The whole system is like an underground society, as the labor camp and its subgroups cooperate to violate the law flagrantly, with brainwashing and violence.
Many practitioners staged hunger strikes to protest their mistreatment, and I was among them. Prison doctors were called upon to pry open my mouth, and I was fed salty water, so violently that my mouth bled. Despite all the suffering, I knew in my mind that Dafa and Teacher were being treated unjustly and what the perpetrators did is exactly the manifestation of their evilness.