Roy’s Story: Forced Out of My Teaching Job and Into Labor Camp
I am Roy Manning, and my Chinese name is Ziqiang Yu. I was born in Shandong Province, China, on August 8, 1971. In July 1996 I graduated from Shandong Finance University and two months later started teaching economics in Jinan Vocational College, and then college English and IELTS between 2005 and 2011.
A Life-Changing Practice
I began to practice Falun Dafa in December of 1996. Based upon the essential principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, Falun Dafa is an advanced cultivation practice of both mind and body. It is exceptionally effective in healing and fitness. During the past 20 years of cultivation in Falun Dafa, I have never been ill, and never even caught a cold. Therefore, I’ve always been energetic and upbeat at work and in daily life.
More importantly, Falun Dafa elevates people’s morals. It has revealed to me the real purpose of human life — to become through cultivation a better, more selfless person, and to finally return to one’s original, true self rather than seeking and struggling for fame and fortune.
Before practicing Falun Dafa, I was to a certain extent misled by the Communist Party’s ideology of struggle and violence. But as a student of Falun Dafa, I have abandoned the distorted mentality and re-started my life in a much purer way. Guided by Falun Dafa’s principles, I became an excellent employee, being kind to others, having no enemies, caring little about self-interest. When I was teaching in college, most of my students considered me a kind and competent teacher.
Persecuted for My Faith
The Chinese Communist Party came into existence and maintains its power based on violence, lies, and struggle, which are totally opposite the principles of Falun Dafa.
Back in 1999 when the then-Chinese head of state Jiang Zemin was in power, official statistics estimated that there were about 100 million Falun Dafa practitioners—an amazing number given that Falun Dafa was made public in 1992. Notably, this was a larger number than that of CCP members.
Upon hearing the statistic, Jiang got jealous and decided to eradicate all Falun Dafa practitioners. He thus colluded with the CCP and launched the persecution of Falun Dafa and its practitioners in July 1999. I myself have been directly persecuted three times.
Seeing that countless Dafa disciples were being persecuted and the situation was getting even worse, on October 1, 2000, I went to Beijing to protest the persecution. That day I was illegally arrested at Tiananmen Square and detained in Fangshan Police Station in Beijing for a day, during which I was interrogated quite a few times.
Later I was transferred to Qianfoshan Police Station and then Shunyunan Police Station in Jinan. There, they interrogated me non stop. On October 2, 2000, two male cops and one female cop cuffed me to a chair in a room and then to a wire fence in the yard. They kept beating me with batons, until my thighs and bottom were bruised all over. I was in so much pain and did not recover in half a month. While beating me, the policewoman even threatened to smash my genitals with a baton. And one of the two male cops went on slandering and cursing Falun Dafa in order to make me give up my belief. At that moment, I was in an abyss of indescribable agony and despair.
They didn’t release me for two weeks. And the police harassed me quite a few times after I returned home. The experience left an extremely painful memory.
In the summer of 2011, I got a U.S. travel visa and planned to visit the States. On July 12 while getting ready to board the plane at Jinan Airport, I, together with nine other friends, were unexpectedly stopped at the customs by the police and people from 610 Office (the governmental office formed specially to persecute Falun Gong).
It turns out that by wire-tapping international phone calls and other means, they got some information about our travel plan and feared that we would, during the stay in the US, tell the international society about what they are doing to people in mainland China.
I was again illegally detained, this time in a so-called law training center which used to serve as a brainwash center persecuting Dafa practitioners, and was interrogated and forced to admit that my intention for traveling to the U.S. was to expose the persecution. But I insisted that it was merely to travel, and thus they got no excuse but release me 13 days later.
Right before releasing me, a bunch of cops illegally searched my home and confiscated some of my property: a laptop, two printers, and some materials related to Falun Dafa. Knowing very well that what they did to me was illegal, they refused to offer any proof that I was detained by them. The 610 Office kept on harassing me, attempting to gather more information about our travel plan. Under the pressure from the evil CCP, the college where I was working in asked me to resign, but I refuse to because I did nothing wrong or illegal. Yet the school did not arrange lessons for me to teach anymore and I consequently did lose my job.
On October 23, 2011, while checking up on a friend and fellow practitioner, I was illegally taken to a police station, interrogated, and then detained in Beijing Changping Detention Center for 35 days before being sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment in labor camp. On November 29, 2011, I was put in Beijing Xinan Labor Camp, and then on April 25, 2012, transferred to Liaoning Chaoyang Labor Camp. Under the pressure from the rest of the world, China’s infamous labor camp system in mainland China had to be abolished in early 2013, hence I was unconditionally released on April 27, 2013 although I firmly refused to give up my belief.
During the one and a half years of imprisonment, I was not physically attacked, but forced to keep seated on a small hard stool, about 15 hours a day for over half a year, which caused my bottom to be badly wounded. And then I was forced to do labor work, weaving patio chairs which were to be exported to other countries including the United States.
In the detention center and the two labor camps, I was subjected to 4 blood tests, without being told the purpose nor the results. And the last blood test in Chaoyang Labor Camp repeated 3 times in just several weeks for reasons unknown to me. Looking back now, I am still horrified. If my blood type had been what the CCP regime wanted eagerly, I could’ve been killed for my organs. A huge number of Falun Dafa practitioners have been murdered for their organs on demand. Judging by the unbelievably large scale of forced live organ harvesting that Chinese hospitals have done on Dafa practitioners, my blood type was surely in demand. The reason I was not killed for my organs, I am really sure, is that there were many other Falun Dafa practitioners illegally jailed who had the same blood type as I do, and were killed for their organs.
In America
I came to the United States on August 15, 2013 and was granted asylum status in April 2014. Here I can freely cultivate in Falun Dafa without any fear or illegal interference. And now I am leading a normal life and working as a tour guide in Salt Lake City.
But in China there are still huge numbers of Dafa practitioners who are being illegally harassed, arrested, detained, jailed, tortured, and killed. My younger brother was illegally arrested and then detained in Jinan City, China for about 20 days in October 2014 when he just seriously started practicing Falun Dafa. And the fellow Dafa practitioner who was illegally arrested with my brother has been detained in Jinan for 2 years now and has still not been released.
Among those Dafa practitioners who have been killed, the number that has been verified as reported in the media and presented in some independent documents might not even amount to the tip of the iceberg. Compared to them, and within the unprecedented large-scale persecution and massive genocide, the sufferings I have been through are actually just one drop in the sea.
As one of the survivors, I have the obligation to urge people of conscience to stand up against the persecution and killing in China. The sooner we can put an end to the inhumanity, the fewer regrets we will have, knowing that we did the right thing.