(Clearwisdom.net) My name is Lu Yutao. I was the dermatologist-in-charge in a hospital. I started to practice Falun Gong in 1997. Since then my family has become more peaceful and harmonious. Falun Gong has benefited my whole family, so my parents also started to practice and their illnesses were healed.

On July 20, 1999, Jiang's regime violated China's own constitution and started to madly persecute Falun Gong. As have millions of other practitioners, I also suffered from the persecution. Over 20 organizations have participated in persecuting me. I was deprived of work, forced to go into exile to escape the persecution, illegally arrested, detained, sent to forced labor and have experienced various tortures.

1. Obtaining the Fa

In 1992, I married and began working in the Linzi District People's Hospital. In 1997, my relationship with my parents-in-law was extremely bad. I walked on a lonely path both at work and in my family life, and was looking for the true meaning of life.

In April of that year, one of my relatives came to the hospital to see me and said, "There is a book about cultivation and it is written in terms of modern science! As soon as you read it, you'll understand."

I went to this relative's home right after work and read the book Zhuan Falun from start to finish without stopping. This book discussed all the questions that I had been asking for most of my adult life, but I had thus far not found the answers. Master told us that the objective of life is "to return to one's original, true self"! One who holds jealousy, envy and resentment against others must let those things go.

I decided to visit my mother-in-law and would no longer complain about or hold hatred towards her. I went into her home, and gradually my family relationship became peaceful. After my mother had learned Falun Gong, her long-term arthritis, which she developed during the cold winter in northeast China, disappeared completely. She no longer needed the medicine that cost thousands of yuan and could walk as freely as a teenager. My father's angina also disappeared, and for four years he no longer needed to take the medicine he used to take. Though he was in his sixties, he could climb to the top of Taishan Mountain without assistance. Falun Dafa clearly pointed out the purpose of life for me, and I started my true life.

On July 20, 1999, Jiang and his regime started to persecute Falun Gong. Like millions of other practitioners, I suffered from endless persecution and all sorts of torture. As early as May and June 1999, Linzi District Hospital administrators deprived me of work because of my peaceful appeal for Falun Gong. On July 22, 1999, Zhang Ping, chairman of the Hospital Union and others came to my home to monitor me. Soon they sent me to a brainwashing class at the paper mill and detained me there for ten days.

The secretary of the political and legal committee from the Linzi District repeatedly attempted to force my father to give up his belief in "Truthfulness-Compassion- Forbearance." My mother was also detained and taken to the brainwashing class by persons from the Lushan Town Police Station, and was not allowed to go home. The persecution further involved my friends and other family members, including my husband and mother-in-law, who were forced to obey orders and watch me every day. Under pressure from their superiors, Chief Yu Youde and Party Secretary Bian Peirong from the Linzi District Hospital and others removed me from my position as a physician. They reassigned me to the supply section to wash syringes for re-use.

2. Sent to a psychiatric hospital

However rampant the persecution is, the righteous belief of a cultivator is never shaken. In February 2000, I went to Beijing again, along with a fellow practitioner, to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong. Early in the morning on February 20, 2000, just at daybreak, as soon as we arrived at Tiananmen Square, plainclothes police detained us. In a rented hotel room, they handcuffed our hands behind our backs, with one hand pulled up from back and the other one down from above the shoulder. A strong young man in his twenties violently slapped us on the face until he got tired, however, we still refused to tell them where we came from. This lasted until about 1:00 p.m. The police felt that arresting us was actually an encumbrance since they had no place to detain us. So they pocketed the 1000 yuan that they had extorted from us and dropped us off at the railway station.

We had a discussion and thought we should not go back without accomplishing our mission, so we decided to go back to Tiananmen Square. We went to Zhongnanhai, where the Central Appeals Office was located. As soon as we arrived at Zhonghuamen, a plainclothes police officer stopped us. Hearing that we came to appeal for Falun Gong, they brought us into the police van parked nearby, reported our names to Zhongnanhai, and then notified the staff of the Shandong Province Liaison Office in Beijing. The people from the Liaison Office violently abused us, "You've broken the rules! For over two weeks we've not reported any names to the leaders. You dare to go to Zhonghuamen! Since you dare to make trouble for us, we will have you lose your jobs!" (According to orders from of the Jiang's regime, each governmental department is forced to watch their people. If the practitioners from a certain area go to appeal, the officials from that area will get in trouble. This resulted in officials of all levels exhausting all means to prevent people from appealing.)

After being sent back, I was detained for 15 days at the Linzi District Custodial Center. At that time, local practitioners were locked in each of the rooms in the custodial center. At rest time we shared with each other. Police put a practitioner into a cave filled with ice for two hours after he was arrested in Beijing. When he was taken out of the ice cave, his whole body was blue, but he still refused to tell them his name. In the end, policemen from his hometown who were sent to Beijing recognized him. I was very touched and thought to myself: As long as the persecution continued, I would not stop appealing for Dafa.

In order to avoid the trouble Jiang's group made for them because of Falun Gong and to keep their own positions, the Linzi District Hospital administrators sent me the dismissal statement on the third day of my detention, after they got the approval from the Linzi District Medical Authorities and had further reported to the Linzi City Personnel Department. I thus lost my job and livelihood.

On day 15 of my detention, Qu Guangming, chief of the political and security section, the Linzi District Police Department, came to ask me my opinion about Falun Gong. I told him, "If there is only one person who still practices Falun Gong, that person will be me, Lu Yutao!" He felt it was impossible to change my belief in Dafa, so along with Sun Zhenrong, chief of Xuegongbei Police Station from the Linzi District, he forced my mother-in-law, Wang Shuzhen, and deceived my father, Lu Fengrui, into signing a document for me. As soon as I was released from the detention center, I was sent into the Linzi District Qiling Psychiatric Hospital.

What I faced in that hospital were patients with blurred vision and drooling mouths. Ingesting and being injected with drugs used for mental patients has blunted their minds, and their facial complexion also lost the luster of normal people. I said to the staff of the mental hospital, "Your job is supposed to be noble, as you are supposed to heal the wounded and revive the dying! How can you treat normal people as mental patients? Don't be taken advantage of by politics! I won't take your medicine, nor will I take your injections!" They said, "This is just a show. There is no drug in the infusion. The medicine you are supposed to take are vitamins. You were sent here by the government. If we don't make a show, we'll lose our jobs." I replied, "The people from the government are not doctors. How can they judge whether one is ill or not? Furthermore, isn't the drug Chang Yading you prescribed for mental patients?" They answered, "Chang Yading is to help you sleep. We are afraid you won't sleep well." I told them, "I sleep better than any one." In the end, the doctor-in-charge said, "I won't take part in politics." After that, they no longer forced me to take medicine or injections; instead, they just monitored me.

The patients here are allowed to go shopping once a week, accompanied by their family, but the head of the hospital made a special regulation that I was not allowed to go out. This finally awakened my father, who realized that the objective of the police was to force the mental hospital to persecute me. Because of my father's strong protest, my mother-in-law approached the police station and the police department. After 21 days, the power of Dafa helped me get away from the control of the mental hospital. However, my mother-in-law was forced to pay the hospital 2,100 yuan as a so-called "special treatment fee." While I was locked up in the mental hospital I kept practicing the Falun Gong exercises and reciting Master's Hong Yin. Under Master's protection my belief became firmer, and my confidence in cultivating Dafa became even stronger.

3. Forced to leave home and clarifying the truth

Because of the pressure from the political and security section from the Linzi District Police Department and the Xuegongbei Police Station, my mother-in-law and my husband worried that I would involve them in trouble again later on. For this reason, they didn't take me home, but sent me directly to my mother's home after I came back from the psychiatric hospital.

In late September, the extremely hot summer weather continued. The persecution of Dafa continuously accelerated as well. We had heard that the authorities would arrest a great number of Dafa practitioners during the "October 1" period (China's National Day), and that anyone who did not renounce their belief would be sentenced or sent to a forced labor camp. To avoid further persecution, I had to leave my aged parents and my hometown, going alone to the unfamiliar Qingyun County in Shandong Province.

Practitioners from Qingyun County and Leling County in Shandong Province and from Yanshan County in Hebei Province did much truth-clarification work in the year 2001. In one night, 40 thousand truth-clarification flyers were distributed, reaching every home. "Falun Dafa Is Great" was spray-painted on the huge steel doors of the police department, the prosecutor's office and courthouse. The police discovered them in the daytime. By the time the police cars scurried on the road, they were unable to catch a single practitioner.

In the Lunar January of 2001, some practitioners from Qingyun County and I, four persons altogether, went to Beijing to protest the injustice against Dafa. We became acquainted with a practitioner from Hainan Province at Tiananmen Square. We decided that we would make a Dafa banner and hold it up at Tiananmen Square the next day. Unfortunately, the hotel manager reported us. This time, police officers took me to Jilin Province. Personnel from each local authority came to Jilin City's police department to take the practitioners back to their places of origin. The local government had to pay a fine of five hundred yuan for each practitioner that police in Beijing caught; of course, the practitioner would be forced to reimburse this fine. I was taken to the Shulan County Detention Center. At noon on the same day, I was able to free myself from the handcuffs, walk out of the yard, and become once again involved in the powerful current of Fa-rectification.

Shortly after, a fellow practitioner and I were arrested at the fellow practitioner's home in Qingyun County, and sent to the Qingyun County Detention Center. For refusing to give the police my name, the fellow practitioner was beaten. That person's entire back swelled up. The perpetrators were personnel from Qingyun County Police Department, who had used a rubber police baton.

We went on a hunger strike to protest and demanded an unconditional release. The hunger strike lasted 14 days. Personnel from the Qingyun County Police Department took me to the old Qingyun area, now governed by Hebei Province, to look for someone to identify me. They got the detained practitioners from that area out and asked them to identify me. I told the police officers, "I don't know anyone here." The fellow practitioners there understood what was going on, so none of them were fooled into revealing my identity.

They took me back to the detention center after their trap failed. The second day they took me directly to the Police Department in Yanshan County, Hebei Province. Through a clandestine agreement and maneuvering, the Yanshan County Police Department agreed to accept me. Thinking that I was too weak to escape handcuffs, they cuffed me in the police building and left to go eat. Once they left, with Master's merciful care, I got the handcuffs off again. I put on an on-duty uniform and then walked out of the police department, open and above board.

4. Unlawful forced labor

Although I was clarifying the truth diligently, I began to slack off in Fa study. The mentality of doing things, the emotions between fellow practitioners and my strong ego and other things caused irrevocable losses to Dafa.

On June 10, 2001, after the Laiwu Experience Sharing Conference, the police arrested us on our way back. Xiao Li and I were held at a detention center in Tai'an City. Someone from the local authorities took Xiao Li away. After not reporting my name, I was forced to have my photo taken. My local police authorities identified me from a photo on the Internet.

After having been on hunger strike for five days at the Tai'an City Detention Center, I was taken to the Xuegongbei Police Station in Linzi District. I was handcuffed to a chair for three days. The police station chief and others in turn attempted to force me to give up my belief in Dafa. They only permitted me two to three hours of sleep. Three days later, Qu Guangming, chief of the political and security section of the Linzi District Police Department, took me via two police cars to Wangcun Forced Labor Camp in Zhoucun District, Zibo City. When they arrived at Zhangdian, Zibo City, Qu went to the forced labor examination and approval center and got a document stamped. Thus, he sent me to the forced labor camp without any legal process, and he didn't notify my family.

I was held in a storage room in the Second Team. I was not permitted to leave the room as long as I refused to renounce my belief. I was forced to sit on a little metal stool and not allowed to sleep day or night. Police in the camp and the collaborators whom the persecutors had "Reformed" tried to brainwash me with slanderous lies about Falun Dafa. Because I had not studied the Fa sufficiently for a long time, and because of my attachment to human thoughts, I was "reformed." I justified my actions with the excuse of not fighting with ordinary people, and thus brought shame on Dafa and myself and caused irretrievable loss.

In order to get a larger bonus, police officers in the forced labor camp enslaved Dafa practitioners. They overloaded practitioners with work on a daily basis. The practitioners in the Second Team in particular were forced to work for 14 to 16 hours. In addition, the lies, deception and methods of the collaborators deceived the other practitioners. All of this seemed to be the reason that the practitioners developed different kinds of illnesses to some extent. Even so, the workload was not reduced. On the contrary, the workload was even increased. Working hours were no less than 14 hours daily. Besides exploiting the practitioners' manpower, the more basic purpose was to have a demoralized target for brainwashing.

After that I was put into the Seventh Team and forced to do some work with toxic materials without any protection. Every practitioner in the team had irritated eyes that would tear up and endlessly running noses. My eyes were so swollen they were mere slits. The mucous membranes in my mouth, nose and trachea became red and swollen. I felt so stuffed up that I almost suffocated.

My father at home was also arrested. The culprit was Sun Qimin from the Lushan Police Precinct. He did this by unlawfully breaking into my home in the middle of the night. They did not allow my 64-year-old father to sleep. Their abuse caused him to develop a heart problem. Six months later my father passed away on November 8, 2002.

5. Correcting myself and rejoining in the powerful stream of Fa-rectification

On July 19, 2003, after a 25-month incarceration in the forced labor camp I came back home and saw my daughter, whom I haven't seen for four years. When I started in exile, she was still in kindergarten. Now she is a third-grade elementary student. After I came home, my husband didn't say a word to me. He only gave my daughter and me 200 yuan each month for food. In order to avoid being persecuted, he has been preparing to divorce me.

In the first quarter of the year 2004, I solemnly announced: "Under the high pressure of the persecution in the forced labor camp, whatever I wrote, said and did when I was not in my right mind, anything which was not in accordance with Dafa, have all become null and void. I will doubly make up for the loss that I caused to Dafa and do well the three things that Master requires."

When I had just begun to get involved in the Fa-rectification again, my family conflicts suddenly became severe. My husband requested an immediate divorce. I made up my mind: No matter what circumstances I have to face, I will persist in cultivation, and be Master's disciple. So I told my husband, "Divorce is your choice. What I want is to cultivate with dignity." My husband replied, "We'll start the process in two days," but the divorce ended up not being finalized.

To start cultivation all over again, I knew I must study the Fa first. As soon as I picked up the book Zhuan Falun, before I even opened it, there was a phone call from police station and someone asked, "What are you doing at home?" I answered, "I am doing the thing that I want to do." The caller said nothing in return and hung up. My mother-in-law's surveillance and interference of me weakened as well from then on.