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What Can We Do When Fellow Practitioners Die From Torture and Abuse

Nov. 8, 2009 |   By Dafa Disciple from Weifang City, Shandong Province

On June 13, 2009, National Security agents abducted Dafa disciple Li Xiuzhen from the Anqiu City apartment she had taken to escape harassment in her family home. Police broke in and ransacked the entire place. More than a month later, her family members found out that Ms. Li had been imprisoned in the Anqiu Detention Center. To protest, she underwent a hunger strike and was subjected to force-feeding by the authorities. Thereafter, she was sent to the Anqiu Party School to be brainwashed. She was brutally beaten repeatedly.

In the month that followed, her whereabouts were lost once again, until several days after she died as a result of torture in Jinan Prison. Her family members were allowed to see her corpse in early October, minutes before she was cremated against the family's wishes.

In Weifang, the number of practitioners who have died as a result of the persecution has grown to approximately 2.5% of all Dafa practitioners, or roughly 1 in 40. This must be somehow related to the local cultivation environment overall. What have we done to clarify the truth? Many practitioners have been arrested, imprisoned, sentenced, sent to brainwashing and labor camps - have we really treated their things as our things? A small number of practitioners working at the forefront have been flooded with information related to practitioners being persecuted, wanting to help but lacking the energy. Other than sending forth righteous thoughts, there didn't seem to be any other way. Even then, how many practitioners can truly send forth strong righteous thoughts like Master has asked of us?

Li Xiuzhen remained steadfast in her belief of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, trying to become a better person. For this, however, she was arrested nineteen times, sentenced to seven years of imprisonment in a labor camp, and force-fed six hundred and sixteen times, not to mention dozens of other tortures.

Under such inhumane torture, Ms. Li never wavered in her beliefs. She refused to be "transformed". Even when the police beat her with electric batons, she continued to clarify the truth to them, until the executers themselves grew tired of beating her. She was often beaten five or six times a day. She responded with hunger strikes. The evildoers would then force feed her through plastic tubes down her nose. She was deprived of sleep for twenty-eight days. Even when she was brutally beaten by four or five people, she continued to shout, "Falun Dafa is good!".

In late 2002, she was persecuted to the extent that she became emaciated and could not even walk, her weight was down to forty kilograms, and was on the brink of death. When her thirteen year old daughter saw her mom sent home on the brink of death, she almost fainted.

Over the years that Ms. Li was persecuted, her non-practitioner family members were both harassed and threatened. This is par for the course in communist China. Perhaps practitioners who knew Ms. Li and could have spoken more with her family members so that they could have better understood what was happening, and so that they would have demanded her release.

We should all work together in cooperation, taking other practitioners' things as our own things, regarding other practitioners' families as our own families, and helping them with care. At the same time, we should use wisdom to gather information about everyone from the 610 Office, Public Security Bureau, Procuratorate, courts, detention centers, brainwashing centers and prisons who have participated in the persecution - their names, ages, workplaces, phone numbers, addresses and other information, and send them to Clearwisdom. At the same time, we should also clarify the truth to local citizens.

It is a rule of the universe that good shall be rewarded and evil shall meet with retribution. We should send forth righteous thoughts more frequently to help evildoers learn from their mistakes. We cannot allow them to live freely above the law and continue their heinous crimes. This is the greatest compassion to them.