July 20th: ‘It was World War III against Falun Gong’

As Jingwen Wang headed to the park through the warm streets of Beijing early that summer morning, she had no idea that she would be spending the day detained in a gymnasium. Even less did she know that this day would see the start of a campaign of horror that would see her friends tortured in labour camps, and that ten years later leaves her still unable to return to China.

It was July 20th 1999. The persecution against Falun Gong—a spiritual discipline which advocates truthfulness, kindness and tolerance—had begun.

“Like any normal day I went to do Falun Gong exercises in Yuyuantan Park in the centre of Beijing at 6 a.m.,” says Jingwen, a Cambridge resident for the last nine years.

At the time an estimated 100 million people practised Falun Gong and news of a crackdown quickly spread amongst those who had gathered for their regular early morning practice in groups of hundreds in parks across every city in China.

“I heard the government would ban Falun Gong, so I decided to appeal,” says Jingwen.

As she and thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners headed for the nearby Appeals Office in central Beijing, the Chinese nation was waking to a barrage of anti-Falun Gong coverage across the state-run media. Whether they believed the negative 24-7 coverage or not (and many, many did) they all knew one thing: a political campaign the likes of which hadn’t been seen for decades was under way. Association with Falun Gong was now life-threatening. The fear and mechanism of obedience instilled by past political campaigns kicked in.

“My husband said it was really like the Cultural Revolution,” says Fengling Zhou, 58, now residing, like Jingwen Wang, in Cambridge, England.

“Like most Chinese people, my husband knew very well how brutal the Chinese Communist Party could be when dealing with their ‘enemies’. So he decided to limit my freedom so as to ‘protect’ me. He asked my daughter to stay home to watch me, and told my workplace that he did not allow me to go out.”

World War III Against Falun Gong

Frank Zhu, a Falun Gong adherent who now lives in Birmingham, England, recalls feeling frightened and confused. Only a teenager on that day in 1999, he still had haunting childhood memories of the Tiananmen Square massacre ten years earlier.

“I was shocked I didn’t know what to do. The atmosphere was like World War III against Falun Gong or something. The only comparison I can find is the massacre of 1989.”

For the tens of thousands in Beijing that day who ignored the threat to their lives and headed to the appeals office and Tiananmen Square to appeal, the police were ready and waiting.

Hundreds of Beijing public buses had been commandeered, ready to ship the practitioners to gymnasiums, halls and stadiums across the city.

“Before we got on the coach, police searched our clothes and bags,” says Jingwen. “One policeman found a Falun Gong book in my friend’s bag and confiscated it. She tried to protect her book and I saw the police hit her in the face.”

“After driving a long time, we arrived at Shijingshan gymnasium. We were asked by police to write down our name, home address and workplace. There were already about 4,000 practitioners there. It was very hot, about 37 degrees centigrade, thousands of people stayed there without any water, food or fresh air for the whole day.”

Other Falun Gong practitioners were rounded up into stadiums.

Frank’s mother had gone to Tiananmen Square that morning to appeal. “They were taken to four big stadiums in Beijing, each of which can take tens of thousands,” says Frank. “If you don’t obey them they beat you. My mother was beaten up by the police.”

And so the battle lines were drawn for the ensuing months. Practitioners would go to Tiananmen Square to publicly call for the right to practise, and the authorities would beat them, detain them, monitor them and use every conceivable means to “transform” them.

Torture and Labor Camps

Stories of practitioners being beaten on arrest paled in comparison to the chilling tales that began to emerge from the labour camps.

Helen Jiang now lives in the safety of the UK, having endured years of persecution in China. She was arrested the day after the persecution began, July 21st, when she went to appeal in Beijing. But like many who stepped out to appeal, the arrest was just the beginning.

“I was sent back to my school in Shanghai where I was a fine arts teacher and locked up in a small classroom. I was not allowed to see anyone for over a month. Five to six policemen took turns interrogating me every day. They deprived me of sleep for a fortnight whilst forcing me to watch videos slandering Falun Gong.”

“The 610 office [a Gestapo-like organisation that specifically oversees the persecution of Falun Gong] made my school assign two teaching staff to watch over me every day. Although the teachers knew it was wrong they dared not to disobey them. The police also harassed my family. When my elderly mother heard that I might be given an eight-to-ten year prison sentence, her hair turned grey overnight. They also threatened my brother and sister, who tried to make me give up Falun Gong.”

Helen did not go out to appeal again until 2002 when she heard of 18 female Falun Gong practitioners stripped naked by prison guards and thrown into a cell of male criminals.

Upon appealing, Helen was detained once again, and tortured.

“They forced me to continuously stand for over ten hours on each of the three days. I was given a small amount of food which was drugged, causing me to dribble uncontrollably and feel constantly hungry. On the seventh day, I started to hallucinate and became very weak, drifting in and out of consciousness, until I collapsed on the floor. The police splashed cold water on me to wake me up. My body was swollen all over and I could hardly walk. They tried to persuade me to betray other Falun Gong practitioners for a shorter sentence. I refused.”

Helen was then taken to a labour camp.

“I was tortured mentally by being forced to watch videos and read books slandering Falun Gong. I was not allowed to rest and soon I became mentally exhausted. I wished for only a single second’s peace. ”

After two years of torture and detention Helen was finally released in 2004.

Jingwen was luckier. She was released after her appeal on July 20th 1999, and soon returned to the UK, and to safety. But she still feels the effects of the persecution in China: over the years, accounts of friends being detailed, jailed and tortured have steadily come in.

“A former colleague of mine, Mr Mingli He, was sentenced to 13 years in prison,” says Jingwen. She says he was jailed for “disclosing state secrets”. In reality she says this means he had emailed her about the case of a Falun Gong practitioner, Zinyan Wei, who was raped in detention.

“I heard in order to torture him to give up his belief, police pierced his feet with wire,” says Jingwen.

The Falun Dafa Information Centre (FDI) has over 3,200 documented cases of death by torture. Falun Gong practitioners say the real number may be many times higher. FDI estimates put the number of Falun Gong practitioners in labour camps at 100,000.