(Clearwisdom.net) I am a practitioner from Beijing. I obtained the Fa in August of 1997. I was a very successful accountant and vice division head of the company. From the time I obtained the Fa until July 20, 1999, the managers of the company and my co-workers all said that I had become a new person since I started practicing Falun Gong. I improved both mentally and physically. I could handle all sorts of tribulations that came up in my work. Many times, I refused to take gifts from the officials of our subordinate company. They said, "We know that Falun Dafa is wonderful!" Some of the bookkeepers exclaimed, "It would be truly great if all of our leaders practiced Falun Dafa." Since I started practicing Falun Dafa, I have never needed to take any sick leave. Who could have imagined this happening to me? I was so sickly before that my face was always pale and gaunt.
Of all the practitioners, who did not benefit the same way I did? Through cultivation, we understood the meaning of life and what we should do with it. Just like Teacher said in "A Brief Statement of Mine," "I am just teaching people how to practice cultivation. If one wants to practice qigong well, he/she must be a person of high moral standards. In actuality, I have achieved this -- more than 100 million people have become good people, or have become even better people. As a matter of fact, I had not intended to do this, but when the morality of cultivators is upgraded, it really has brought benefits to society."
However, on the night of July 20, 1999, everything turned around. My supervisor laid me off in order to investigate me and forced me to turn in my Dafa books. I couldn't understand it. I was still me. One day there was praise everywhere. The next day I was cast down, never to get up! It's the same person; it's the same Fa (law, principle). Yet what was a right one day, became an evil act the next, just because of an order from a dictator!
The incident was so sudden. The practice site's contact person and the assistant contact person were arrested. Their houses were ransacked. The practitioners that practiced outdoors were arrested as well. A new practitioner, who came to practice yesterday, did not dare to come again. This pained me terribly. Dafa is so great; it gave me a new life and changed me forever. As someone who benefited from Dafa, I wanted people to know the truth. They should not be fooled by evil propaganda. Dafa should not be persecuted and treated like this! I needed to tell people the truth, and to tell the related government agencies the truth.
I. Appeals on July 20
On the morning of July 21, I rode my bike to the street where the State Council's appeals office was located. A lot of soldiers, policemen and undercover agents were already there, and there were many police vehicles. Some of the policemen publicly stopped passersby and took their bags to search them. When they found a Dafa book, the police ganged up on the owner, beat him, and manhandled him. By 8 a.m., the number of practitioners present had grown very large. Most of them came to appeal about the current situation. The streets to the appeal office were heavily blockaded. The police arrested everyone who approached the office. They filled the trucks with practitioners and took them away. All we wanted to do was to appeal to the government. We just wanted to tell them that they should not persecute good people. We hoped that they could rationally view the situation from the standpoint of benefiting the country and the people, and take back the wrong decisions they had made. Instead, they took away our rights as citizens. They turned the Constitution into a piece of paper filled with empty promises.
We could not get near the appeals office on Fuyou Street. Someone told us that another office was nearby, and that we could go there. There should be a place for citizens to appeal! The practitioners went down the street to the Houku Appeals Office. Around 10 a.m., there were 5 to 6 thousand practitioners standing on both sides of the street as one body. It was like what people saw at the April 25 incident. Hordes of military and police vehicles arrived. The police forced the practitioners to one side of the street. The armed police surrounded us on all sides. In front of us were police. Behind them stood the steel helmet-wearing anti-riot police with guns and live ammo. We were surrounded. The police and military vehicles blocked off the street, with one vehicle parked next to another. The police kept bringing in extra-long public buses. The undercover agents slowly panned their video cameras across the faces of the practitioners. The situation was extremely tense, yet the practitioners were dignified and calm. We recited "Lunyu" over and over. Our voices were resounding to the sky. The calm faces of practitioners created a strong contrast to the tense faces of the soldiers, police, and undercover agents who were all standing prepared to commit violence and wrongdoings.
The fellow practitioners kept on clarifying the truth to the young armed police, who did not know the truth. We told them that Falun Dafa is indeed good, that it teaches people to be better then mere good people, and that they should read Zhuan Falun as soon as they had a chance. Some of them nodded their heads. Then an older police supervisor came by. Someone from the practitioners' group said to him, "Falun Dafa is a good cultivation practice. It teaches people to be compassionate." He said, "I know." Then someone else said, "Then you shouldn't arrest people!" He did not answer.
At around 11 a.m., the soldiers and the police started arresting the practitioners in a frenzy. The young male practitioners stood in front. Behind them stood 7 to 8 rows of women and elders. We linked arms. The practitioners from behind locked each other's elbows while their hands grasped the practitioners in front. The practitioners formed a steel-like wall. We shouted, "Protect the constitution! Don't arrest the innocent!" The voices shook the whole universe.
After this incident, an older man, who accompanied his wife because he worried about her going to appeal, said that he was amazed to see that the practitioners were emitting gold light, and that the bodies of the police were emitting dark clouds. He said that he saw scenes from heaven. He finally believed in Dafa and started practicing.
(To be continued)