(Minghui.org) Mr. Chen Lin and his wife, Ms. Liu Xiuqin, from Shizhuang Village, Datong City, Shanxi Province, were brutally tortured and sentenced to forced labor for their belief in Falun Gong. Their 14-year-old son almost starved to death after their arrest. The following is a firsthand account of what Mr. Chen and his wife have undergone in the past few years.

In 1997, due to poor health, my wife and I started practicing Falun Gong. We strove to live as good people by following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance as explained in Falun Gong. After the practice, we both quit our bad habits and lived a healthy and harmonious life under one roof. We improved our morality, always putting others' interests before our own. Nevertheless, since July 1999, we have been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for our faith in Falun Gong.

Beginning in July 1999, through the newspaper, radio, and television, the CCP incited public hatred of Falun Gong practitioners. It started to persecute practitioners using high pressure tactics. Because of this unfair treatment, I went to the appeals office, hoping to tell people the facts of Falun Gong. But I only met with more inhumane treatment. The police arrested and detained me. They also ransacked my house and had me fired from my job. The CCP also pressured my relatives, scaring them into not providing shelter for me. Out of fear, they didn't dare help me. When I tried to find a job, I couldn't, because the police withheld my ID card. During the bleak winter, I had no home to return to and was forced to sleep on the street or out in a field. I even had to beg for food.

One day when I was walking, I was stopped by people from the Defense Division of Shandong. They searched, arrested, and took me to Datong Detention Center, where the police ordered the inmates to hit me. I was forced to sleep by leaning against the wall in the bathroom, with no clothes on. During the daytime, I was only allowed to wear a thin shirt and was exposed to the cold.

I was transferred to Taiyuan Forced Labor Camp. After several months, I was so emaciated that I was a bag of bones. I could barely move. My organs were failing. I shivered uncontrollably and was in critical condition.

At that time, my wife was also sent to the Women's Forced Labor Camp of Taiyuan to serve three years there for handing out Falun Gong fact-clarification fliers.

After I was released from the labor camp, I was very weak. I was easily startled. It was difficult for me even to speak. I was monitored 24 hours a day by CCP personnel, who harassed and restricted my personal freedom. They often cut off the electricity to my house and ransacked it at will.

My 14-year-old son told me tearfully that after my wife and I were arrested, he was forced to drop out of school in order to earn money. He was bullied and discriminated against. He didn't have any food to eat for days and drifted around the streets, homeless and destitute. To fill his stomach, he stood next to someone's table and ate the leftover food that people left behind. I was saddened to see how filthy my son's clothes were. Our kindhearted neighbors told me, “After you and your wife were arrested, your son almost starved to death. We pitied him. We asked him to come to our house to eat. Some people who were poisoned by the CCP said, 'Stay away from him!'”

One year after I returned home, my wife was released. Pang Mingguo, section chief of the security department of the chemical plant where my wife used to work, and Fan Weiguo from the local 610 Office ordered four groups of people to monitor and harass us. They knocked on our doors and broke our windows at night. When we tried to reason with them, they said, “The CCP pays us—if it asks us to kill someone, we will do it.”

In 2008, under the pretense of improving security during the Olympic Games, the Tongquan Branch Bureau of the Datong Coal Mining Administration and Pang Mingguo again arrested my wife and sentenced her to serve two years of forced labor.

For the past 10 years, I have tried to find different jobs, but the police have sabotaged every application.