(Clearwisdom.net) In the dismal Lianhu District Custodial Center, one group of Falun Dafa practitioners after another has been inhumanly persecuted. Many of the practitioners are typically between fifty-six and sixty-six years old. Some have been detained in the Custodial Center for as long as six months. Others are sent to the provincial female labor camp, even though it is a rule that people over sixty should not be accepted there. In Lianhu District Custodial Center, practitioners are not allowed to practice Falun Gong, promote Falun Dafa or cultivate. Those who attempt it are punished by being abused, beaten and/or forced to work extended workdays of about fifteen hours each. Criminal prisoners were ordered to monitor the practitioners around the clock. If anyone were found practicing Falun Gong, all the prisoners in the same cell with the practitioner would be beaten, or forced to remain standing, as a form of sleep deprivation torture. The wicked police incite the criminal prisoners to willfully beat and persecute Falun Gong practitioners, persecute Falun Dafa and slander the Teacher.
A practitioner over sixty years old was pulled outside and beaten dozens of times with 2 inch diameter rubber tubes, simply for saying, "It is impossible not to practice Falun Gong."
When a practitioner said, "The self-immolation incident was fabricated," he was put in shackles.
The police yelled, "You must not cultivate Falun Gong! You must not practice Falun Gong! Anyone who practices will be beaten to death!" On April 6, a twenty-nine-year-old practitioner from Guangdong Province was slapped across her face a dozen times by wicked Policewoman Yuan, simply for refusing to answer her questions. Soon afterwards, a male prisoner was allowed to cruelly beat her twenty six times with a heavy rubber tube.
On May 30, 2001, trustee prisoner Shi Ying beat up a fifty-five-year-old woman, just for practicing Falun Gong. Later, heartless Policewoman Yuan personally slapped this practitioner's face back and forth several times, to make an example of her. Supported by the complicit police, an incident occurred in another prison cell on the same night, in which prisoners beat three Falun Dafa practitioners, whose ages were sixty three, fifty two and twenty nine.
In another serious situation, a fifty-two-year-old practitioner was in critical condition after she had been severely beaten. The blood vessels in her head had begun to bleed into the surrounding tissue, and she had also sustained a large bump on her head. She suffered internal injuries to her chest and ribs, and had wounds all over her body. All the Falun Dafa practitioners in that prison cell demanded to examine the injuries of the practitioners who had been beaten. The police not only refused to punish the criminals who had beaten the practitioners, but shackled the five practitioners who had been beaten. This emboldened those criminals to become even more barbaric and, one after another, three more incidents occurred in which practitioners were beaten. Two of the practitioners who had incurred internal injuries from their beatings requested medical check-ups, yet the police ignored their requests.
In order to resist the persecution imposed on Falun Dafa, and to request the unconditional release of all Falun Dafa practitioners held there, three Falun Dafa practitioners began their hunger strike on July 13. Six days passed, and then nine days, but the evil would rather break the law than to release even a single Falun Gong practitioner. On August 1, Zhou, the head of the Lianhu Police Substation, personally led a group of police to handcuff the three practitioners who had been on individual hunger strikes for ten, fifteen and twenty days, and sent them to the provincial female labor camp. On their way to this labor camp, the practitioners refused to cooperate with their sinister requests, so Zhou personally beat them. Even while the eyes of the public were fixed upon him, he grabbed the practitioners by their throats, slammed their heads into the wall, pushed, pulled and beat them down to the ground. When the three Falun Dafa practitioners were forcibly dragged into the labor camp, they sent forth righteous thoughts together. Under the effect of the righteous thoughts, they later walked out of the labor camp through the gate, in an upright and dignified manner.
