Tears streamed down Bin Li’s face as she shared how she was tortured in a Chinese forced labor camp because she is a Falun Gong practitioner. Her voice cracked when she told how she could smell her singed skin as her captors burned her back with electric batons.
Li eventually gave in to the torture, but said it was the worst decision she ever made. She said it was bad for China because it rewarded them for unconscionable acts and bad for her because her spirit died, she lost her conscience and she no longer knew who she was.
Kathy Ford, the Amnesty Group Coordinator at last weekend’s Amnesty International event for victims of torture looked around and saw that the eyes of every audience member were glued on her. Many also cried.
Bin Li was one of three speakers at Amnesty International’s 17th Annual Walk Against Torture held in Oceanside, California, telling an audience of over 350 people of their torture experiences.
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Le Ly Hayslip, 55, now living in Escondido, was 16 when thrown into a torture camp during the Vietnam War. Her innocent childhood was destroyed by torture, rape and starvation. Hayslip tells her experiences in her books, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, and Child of War, Woman of Peace. She became the subject of the Oliver Stone movie Heaven and Earth and founded the Global Village Foundation to help rural and poverty stricken areas of Vietnam
Nestor Fantini, 52, of Northridge, was a 21-year-old student leader when he was arrested in Argentina. He was tortured as a political prisoner for four years. Amnesty International took up his case and eventually got him released.
Amnesty issued the Digna Ochoa award to Kathi Anderson, executive director of the San Diego-based Survivors of Torture International, recognizing her for her work helping torture victims living in the area. She co-founded the group.
After the speeches each audience member took a candle and the picture of a torture victim and walked to the end of the Oceanside pier in honor of the victim they chose. People came from all over San Diego County, from Los Angeles, and even from Arizona just for this event. Ford said they ran out of candles.
A large sign bespoke the purpose of the event, “Stop Torture Now.” At one point the audience shouted in unison three times, “Stop Torture Now.”
Ford expressed Amnesty’s purpose in putting on the event saying, “We hope to educate people about the issue of torture, and that it is real, that it has a horrific dehumanizing impact with devastating consequences for everyone involved. We planted a lot of seeds. Sometimes it takes a while to germinate, but whoever was here will view torture differently from now on. We hope that more and more people will take a stand and do whatever they can to stop it.”
Feeds