(Clearwisdom.net) My name is Gui Fenxiu, and I am a 64-year-old woman. I am a resident of Group Seven, Qiukuang Village, Shitingzi Town, Qidong County, Hunan Province. Because of my practice of Falun Gong, I have suffered inhumane persecution. In the past several years, local authorities have unlawfully ransacked my home four times, sent me to detention numerous times, and extorted over 10,000 yuan from me.
Before I took up the practice of Falun Gong, I suffered from various illnesses, including arthritis and severe kidney problems. For six or seven years, I could not eat any salt. I didn't know how much longer I could live in this world. Everyday I was in pain. Then my relatives introduced me to Falun Gong in early 1999. After a period of practice, my illnesses disappeared one by one. Since then I have often gone out with fellow practitioners to do the exercises and spread Falun Dafa. I have been practicing for over five years now, and I have never again needed to go to a hospital.
Jiang's regime started the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. As a person who has benefited from Falun Gong, how could I remain silent? Therefore I went to Beijing to appeal on February 8, 2000.
At Tiananmen Square, I was brutally mistreated by the police. On February 16, 2000, I was sent to Hengyang City's liaison office in Beijing, where I was detained for two days. On the 18th, I was taken back to Qidong Police Department.
That same night, political security division head He Zhengrong and policeman Li Wei dragged me out to the yard and beat me savagely. They beat me so hard they were sweating all over. Then they found some wooden sticks to hit my head and my whole body. Two of my teeth were knocked out. I was bleeding non-stop and in the end I passed out. Other practitioners were also beaten to varying degrees that night.
After I regained consciousness, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. Even today I still feel occasional pain in my chest. Around 1:00 a.m., I was sent to the detention center, where I was kept for over 80 days.
One day the detention center head Liu Jintian forced us to pull weeds out of the grass in the field. I took a chance and managed to escape. I went to a different town and stayed there for three weeks. Then I decided to come back to my hometown to keep clarifying the truth. Once when I was clarifying the truth to town officials Li Xiangyun and Xiao Yusheng, they called in the police and sent me again to the detention center. This time I was detained for 19 months.
In March 2001, practitioners in the detention center held a group one-month hunger strike to protest the persecution. This act shocked the provincial and municipal authorities. The higher-ups sent in some officials to Qidong to investigate. We requested that we be released. The Qidong County Police Department notified the respective town officials to come claim their local practitioners. The local officials who were supposed to come pick me up were Li Xiangyun and Xiao Yusheng. The police required each practitioner who had gone to Beijing to pay 10,000 yuan before being released. Since I live alone and didn't have any family members to send in money, they failed to extort any money from me. However, Li Xiangyun and Xiao Yusheng refused to pick me up. As a result, I remained in detention.
The police soon arrested six more practitioners and sent them to the detention center. We then shared experiences together. Policeman Zhou Youzhong grabbed a wooden stick and beat whoever was there sharing experiences. Many practitioners were beaten. I shouted, "Falun Dafa is good." Zhou Youzhong beat me savagely and poked my chest with the tip of the wooden stick. Three of my ribs were broken.
For the next several days, I had great difficulty speaking and breathing. The pain did not subside for over 10 days. When I saw words written on the wall slandering Falun Dafa, I then wiped them off and wrote, "Falun Dafa is good." Seeing this, policeman Zhou Daosheng slapped my face and Zhou Youzhong called in five thugs to beat me up.
During my 19 months' detention, they used various means to torture me. After 19 months my physical health was so poor that the detention center authorities went to Shitingzi Town and asked the town officials to pick me up. They wouldn't release me until they had extorted several thousand yuan from my two sons.
In early 2003, when I again tried to clarify the truth to Xiao Yusheng, he called in some officials to arrest me. They intended to send me to the county detention center, but the detention center did not want to accept me. Xiao Yusheng then conspired with Li Xiangyun to use about 3,000 yuan in public money as a bribe to persuade another detention center to take me. They also changed my name to Lin Guifang.
The torture I suffered in the detention center is hard to describe in words. Later I was sentenced to one year of forced labor and sent to Zhuzhou Labor Camp on June 9, 2003. When the car arrived at the labor camp, I was barely able to walk. I didn't have the strength to hold my own bag. Seeing my condition, the labor camp authorities sent me back to the detention center the very same day.
The next day the detention center officials called Xiao Yusheng several times
asking him to come pick me up. Xiao said on the phone, "Let her suffer. It's no
big deal if she dies in there..."
At one time the detention center told all the practitioners to buy prisoner uniforms saying it was center policy. I immediately stood up and said, "We don't need prisoner uniforms. They are for criminals. We Falun Gong practitioners are all good people. We're being persecuted and we can't wear that uniform." In the days that followed, we refused to cooperate with any orders they gave. In the end, they could do nothing but inform my son to come pick me up. However, they made my son to pay several "fees" before they would let him take me back. Altogether my son paid about 6,000 yuan. Then I was released.
On April 12, 2004, my fellow practitioners and I went to distribute Falun Dafa materials and hang Falun Dafa banners. Since that day was a shopping fair, there were many people. Practitioner Wu Niansheng and I were busy hanging banners when several officials (including Li Xiangyun) came up to stop us. Li Xiangyun called the county detention center asking them to detain me, but he was refused. He had to leave in defeat.
In the past several years, Xiao Yusheng and Li Xiangyun have ransacked my home four times and persecuted me on numerous occasions.