Dear classmates, First I would like to apologize for disturbing you while you are busy studying. However, I hope you can take some time to read this letter, since many people have risked their lives to bring it to you. I am a college student at the moment. My teachers and friends say I am a good student: I have received many awards from my school, the city, the province, and the country. Once I was even interviewed by a TV reporter. I am telling you this not because I want to show off--I only want to show that I am not a wicked person. On my birthday last year, our department volleyball team entered the finals in the university league matches. However, I was not happy on that day at all, and I wept all night with tears running down my face continuously. The reason for my tears was that I had just run into an old friend who was also a practitioner of Falun Gong. He told me his story. He went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. He was subsequently arrested and sent to a detention house. If someone in a work unit goes to Beijing to appeal, his unit will be fined. I heard that at our school, the fine is 10,000 Yuan [Chinese money, the average monthly salary in urban areas is 500 Yuan ($60)] per person. The manager of the work unit will also be punished, and could even be fired. Since my friend did not want to get people around him into trouble--including his family, his work unit, and his local police station--he decided not to tell the police his name and address. In the freezing cold weather, the police ripped off all my friends' clothes, poured cold water over him, and then shocked him with electric batons. They even beat his fingertips! We all know how painful it would be, since the fingertips are very sensitive. He went on a hunger strike, but the persecutors force-fed him through his nose (practitioners stomachs have been pierced by this treatment, and some have died from the complications). These tortures lasted for more than 20 days, but they could not make him give in. From the beginning to the end, he did not fight back when beaten or sworn at, and he used his compassion to tell them the truth about Falun Gong. However, he told them his name and address in the end, since he could not bear the sight of his fellow female practitioners being stripped and thrown into prison cells with male criminals. I simply cannot describe the feelings I had when I heard his story. Previously, I had also heard a story from one of my alumni friends. The friend is now a teacher, and she told me about one of the female students in her school. The girl had gone to Beijing to appeal and was arrested. The police stripped off all her clothes and beat her. Thinking they were not stripping her quickly enough, they used scissors to cut off her underclothes. Since she would not tell them her name, the persecutors did not allow her to sleep for several days, and interrogated her when she was in a sleep-deprived stupor. Another female practitioner known to my family was also arrested. In the detention house, police tried to force a plastic water bottle into her vagina. I am a young girl, and I know that sometimes virginity is more important to a woman than her life. I also know that a woman would rather die than be humiliated in this way. Everyone has friends and families. Don't the persecutors have sisters, wives, and mothers? Everyone has feelings and sentiments. I don't want to make any further comments, in fact, I don't know what else to say. By now, you are probably wondering what indeed is Falun Gong? I want to tell you some experiences from my cultivation over the past 6 years, and also, some facts that I have learned. Since I was very young, I had been sick all the time, suffering from many diseases. I suffered the most from heart disease. Every time I became ill, I thought I would die. I also had a very bad temper. I was grumpy, moody, and narrow-minded. After I started to cultivate Falun Dafa, I changed. I became a very happy and broad-minded girl. I also wanted to be a noble person from the bottom of my heart. I was born and raised by my parents, yet they could not give me a healthy body. My teachers made me knowledgeable, but if I had not learned Falun Dafa, I would never have known what I am living my life for. Falun Dafa revealed the truth of life to me and made me a whole new being. I know a lady who suffered from vitiligo. After she practiced Falun Gong, her skin became rosy again and her white hair turned black. A 78-year-old female practitioner had menstrual periods again, and patients with cancer have recovered. I cultivated Falun Dafa for 6 years, and have many experiences and stories to tell you. You may want to ask me this question: "If Falun Gong as good as you say, then why would the government want to ban it?" Throughout history, many good things have been treated unjustly. Couldn't this also be a case of injustice? What the Chinese government has broadcast on TV is all lies. Why shouldn't we practitioners appeal? Lawyers are not even allowed to take practitioners' cases. With no other options, practitioners go to Tiananmen Square. They go there to say three words: "Dafa is good!" Do you know the price they have to pay for saying these three words? Some have lost their party memberships, been expelled from school, or dismissed from their jobs. Others have been sent to detention houses or labor camps and treated with brutal torture, while suffering from the pain of losing their family members and their homes. On Oct 26, I finally put down my attachment of fear and went to Beijing. What follows is what I saw and heard. Arriving at the Beijing South Train Station, I immediately saw many plain clothed policemen. They were asking travelers whether they were practitioners of Falun Gong, and whether Li Hongzhi was a good person. Some practitioners were arrested before they even walked out of the station. I was not stopped. In the city, there were countless policemen, either in uniforms or in plain clothes. Alleys were turned into parking lots for the police vehicles. In front of the Military Museum near Tiananmen Square, there were 10 military trucks, 15 big buses, which can carry 100 to 150 people each, and many police cars. They were all there for transporting Falun Gong practitioners. Inside the Military Museum, there could be an army of armed police. I simply felt a suffocating pressure in Beijing. On one side of the Square, there was blue sky, white clouds, flowers, and the waving flags of our nation; on the other side, there was the bloody suppression:
- A bus passed by carrying many practitioners. An old lady opened a window and stuck her head out In order to say something to the people outside, but an armed policeman forced her back in by pulling her hair.
- A police car drove by in front of me. The windows on the vehicle were covered with black curtains, but through the windshield I saw a policeman waving his baton.
- A policeman forced a practitioner into a car as if he was handling a piece of baggage.
- A young female practitioner peacefully opened a paper banner that said: "Falun Chang Zhuan" (Falun revolves constantly). Several policemen rushed to her like hungry wolves and viscously beat her. She faced the choice of life and death with a smile.
- A woman in her 40's spread a handful of fliers and declaimed: "Falun Dafa is good!" After the policemen grabbed her, she said again: "Falun Dafa is indeed good!" Her tone was not very sharp, but it powerfully shook my heart. I don't think I will ever forget her voice. After she was dragged to a car, the policemen beat her again.
- A middle-aged man opened a banner that said: "Falun Dafa is good!" He was knocked to the ground by a young armed police officer. I could not bear the scene any more.
- A foreign visitor took some pictures, and he was immediately taken away by the police.
- A man (not a practitioner) was hit several times by a policeman, and he shouted back with many dirty words. The policeman immediately apologized to him, knowing that he had made a mistake--a practitioner would never curse back.
- A cleaning vehicle came and cleaned the ground really well; even the bloodstains were scrubbed away.
- After beating practitioners, some police were chatting and laughing with each other, including a pretty-looking policewoman.
- Gu Zhiyi, a Falun Gong contact person in her 60s from Chongqing city, was arrested on July 19, 1999. In jail, she was subjected to 24 types of inhumane torture devices, including the "Tiger Stool" (thighs are lashed to a bench and then the legs are bent in the opposite direction by adding bricks under the heels), piercing through the fingers with sharp bamboo sticks, electric chair, and electric shocks created by connecting the head and anus, etc.
- Even pregnant women cannot avoid the inhumane torture. According to news reports, of the more than 800 practitioners detained in Changchun City on October 3rd last year, some were pregnant women and some had young babies with them. One eyewitness said: "A police officer kicked one pregnant woman's stomach. The pregnant woman's face was twisted in pain, and the sweat covered her face from the pain..."
- Even more shocking is the case of Lu Yunzhen, 31, from Jiangsu Province, who was pressured to have an abortion just because the police wanted to keep her in a detention for a longer period of time.
- At the beginning of November 1999, 12 people who were being held in the women's division of the Tangshan Kaiping labor re-education camp were handcuffed to trees because they dared to practice the exercises. The officials grabbed their hair, bashed their heads against the trees, and pulled dirty rags out of the garbage cans to stuff in their mouths. One of the labor re-education personnel had not bathed for almost a year, so they took her underwear, which was stained with menstrual blood, and her socks and stuffed them in the practitioners' mouths. After this, they gave them several rounds of beatings.
- A reporter from the Hubei Woman's Newspaper, Wang Li, went to Beijing to make an appeal. After she returned to Wuhan, on February 18 of this year, she was taken from her home in the middle of the night without reason and locked in the Wuhan No. 2 Detention Center. The guards handcuffed her and left her hanging from the window for three days with her feet just touching the floor. They also stripped her and had her lie spread-eagle on a wooden plank for 11 days. She could only urinate and excrete lying down.
- In the Masanjia Prison of Shenyang, Liaoning province, the debased prison guards stripped the clothes from 18 female Dafa practitioners and put them into the male prisoner's jail cells. The resulting abuse they suffered was disgusting and terrifying.
