February 18, 2009 is a day worth celebrating as 50 million Chinese people have withdrawn from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its associated organizations. I congratulate them for making a wise choice.
My name is Xu Yin. Before I came to U.S. I was an associate professor at Tsinghua University’s Civil Engineering Department in Beijing. In over 13 years of teaching, my diligent work earned me many national and university awards as well as the respect from my students and colleagues.
However, in August 2008 I was forced to leave the teaching position I loved, and went to a strange new country for freedom and justice. I gave up my established career because I don’t want to be persecuted in a country where legal justice and human rights hardly exist.
I would like to take this opportunity to share my own experience of being persecuted by the CCP in China. I hope my story could help more Chinese people see through CCP’s lies, and persuade more to break away from the control of the evil party.
In May 1995, I met Falun Gong practitioners on the campus of Tsinghua University. Falun Gong’s teaching of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance” truly appealed me. Soon after, I began practicing Falun Gong. At that time, people were free to do the exercises in public, and Falun Gong books were published throughout the country.
Nine practitioners used to practice at our university’s practice site. From the very beginning, I was very public with my practice of Falun Gong, and so were many others from the faculty and the students. At that time most people knew Falun Gong is a very beneficial practice. Before 1999 when CCP started suppressing Falun Gong, over 100 million Chinese people practiced Falun Gong.
But all that changed in July 1999. Out of jealousy for the popularity of Falun Gong, former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin began a harsh crackdown on Falun Gong. Under his command, the Chinese authorities initiated an enormous media smear campaign against Falun Gong and banned the practice. As a result, over 100 million innocent Falun Gong practitioners were labeled “enemies of the state.” The most large scale and most ruthless persecution in history hence started.
The persecution deprived my dreams of being a good teacher along with my freedom. Police forces, the 610 Office and the local residential committee sent people to watch me at my door, monitoring every movement of my family and me. Our telephone and Internet access were also monitored.
On the morning of March 13, 2006, after I sent my daughter to school, I planned to prepare the national graduate student admission test. Then all of a sudden over 20 policemen broke into my house. Without any legal warrant, they started searching my home. Later, right in front of my face, they filled in the blank search warrant and interrogation order.
That day, I was detained for the posession of one Falun Gong book, a bestseller published by a state owned publishing house prior to 1999.
My request to hire an attorney (as I’m legally entitled to) was rejected because, according to the police, I was a “political criminal.” They could not charge me of any crimes only with a legally published book, but they wouldn’t release me anyway. Without any court procedures, I was sentenced to two years in prison. The so-called legal system is only a formality in communist China.
I was detained in a cell that was smaller than 18 square meters (194 square feet). At one time 36 people shared the cell. During the day, inmates were forced to hold their knees and sit on the hard floor the whole day until our muscles cramped. At night, we could only sleep on our sides, crowding tightly together like a can of sardines and pressing our faces into other people’s feet. On summer days, the cell was stifling with humid air and temperatures as high as 40C (104F).
Even less tolerable was that many people had to share one toothbrush and one towel. There were several drug users in the cell, and with so little sanitation, disease spread rapidly. It was extremely difficult to endure these conditions. When we ate, two people sat face-to-face to eat from one bowl with one spoon. All these happened in the period the CCP bragged as having “the best human rights situation.”
I was illegally imprisoned at Beijing Tuanhe Labor Camp for 16 months. During this time, I was kept in a single cell by myself for half the time as a punishment. Every day I was forced to sit on a small stool in a fixed position facing the wall for as long as 18 to 19 hours. This was a horrible torture because even sitting in this way for one hour was unbearable. When I could tolerate no more and slightly changed my body position, immediately the prison guards would loudly scold me, sometimes even beat me. Long sittings on the stool soon made my muscles deteriorate.
The wardens tortured me in various ways, including not permitting me to go to the bathroom for a long time and depriving me of sleep. Even during the very limited sleeping time, the prison guards often intentionally woke me up. The long term torture inflicted severe mental and physical damage on me.
The Constitution of China clearly states that citizens have the freedom of belief. But I, an established professor, have tasted the bitter reality of China’s “freedom of belief.”
The CCP says Falun Gong practitioners disturbed society, but the fact is that their illegal persecution hurt many innocent people. My students lost a good teacher. My family suffered more than I can describe. But the CCP blames their victims for all the pains the CCP themselves caused.
The international community honored the CCP with the right to host the Olympics, believing, as they said, it would motivate the CCP to improve China’s human rights situation. Now the world should have realized that they were deceived—again. When I was illegally arrested in 2006, the police clearly told me, “Arresting Falun Gong now is for the security of the Olympics in 2008.” Records show that during the Olympics, the CCP arrested more Falun Gong practitioners and other political dissidents than ever, and human rights in China actually worsened.
The CCP took pains to invite VIPs throughout the world to attend its Olympics. But the VIPs may not know that the gift boxes they received were all manufactured by slave labor at the Beijing Tuanhe Labor Camp during the time I was detained there. The CCP police forced us to make the gift boxes. If they knew, wouldn’t they take it as an insult to the world?
I am only one of the hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners illegally persecuted by the CCP. At Tsinghua University alone, at least 40 people, mostly my colleagues and students, were illegally detained, jailed, and sent to labor camps for practicing Falun Gong. The longest sentence was 12 years. One was tortured to death. A student of mine was tortured so badly that he went into a vegetable state, and they still would not release him.
Since the CCP seized power, it has shackled Chinese people both spiritually and physically, and brought our country nothing but disaster. It has also been deceiving and poisoning the people in the world by spreading toxic products and terrorism to the free world.
In November 2004, The Epoch Times published a series of editorials known as the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” which thoroughly discloses the evil nature of the CCP. Since then, over 50 million Chinese people have openly announced their withdrawal from the CCP, its Youth League and Young Pioneers Team. This is something worthy of celebration. I truly hope more and more people can read this transformative book that has sent the CCP shivering and trembling.
China once created the most magnificent civilization in the world, but we have no future unless we desert the evil CCP as soon as possible. It is my hope and my belief that China will be prosperous and civilized again soon after the evil CCP is eliminated.
Read original article in Chinese.
