The Facts of the Persecution of Falun Gong  -- May 17, 2007

Issued by Clearwisdom Net




  • Recent Incidents of Cruelty against Falun Gong Practitioners in Suihua City Forced Labor Camp, Heilongjiang Province

  • After Three Years of Torture in Forced Labor Camp, Mr. Qi Mingli Is Transferred to Fushun City Brainwashing Center in Liaoning Province

  • The Women's Prison of Shandong Province Uses Unknown Drugs on Ms. Meng Lijun



  • Recent Incidents of Cruelty against Falun Gong Practitioners in Suihua City Forced Labor Camp, Heilongjiang Province

    On March 14, 2007, because practitioner Mr. Peng Shuquan from Bamiantong Town, Muleng City, Heilongjiang Province, persisted in cultivating Falun Gong after being imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party at the Suihua City Forced Labor Camp, the guards tortured him with the "Handcuff Hanging Torture" (1), sealed his mouth with adhesive tape to silence him, inserted three boxes of lit cigarettes as well as garlic and hot pepper in his nose, completely burned all of his pubic hair, burned his finger with a lit cigarette and a cigarette lighter until it was completely charred, and also shocked him with electric batons.

    Before the Chinese New Year (February 18, 2007), because practitioner Mr. Wang Dehai from Xunke County, Heilongjiang Province, persisted in cultivating Falun Gong after being sent to the camp, the guards forced him to sit on the iron chair, shocked him with electric batons, and stabbed his abdomen and penis tip with a cactus thorn.

    The guards (all male) who tortured the above mentioned two practitioners included Gao Zhonghai, currently the political instructor of the 1st Group, Diao Xuesong, the leader of the 2nd Squadron of the 1st Group, Wang Wei, the deputy leader of the 2nd Squadron of the 1st Group, criminal inmatesMa Dacheng and Sun Yajun.

    On April 16, 2007, because practitioner Mr. Qi Wenbin from Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province, persisted in cultivating Falun Gong and refused to write a guarantee statement, repentance statement or exposing and criticizing statement slandering Falun Gong, the guards shocked him with electric batons, pummeled and kicked him, and tortured him with the Handcuff Hanging Torture. The participating guards (all male) include Diao Xuesong, police officer Jin Qingfu, and Wang Wei.

    On April 6, 2007, practitioner Mr. Zhou Hongbo from Taikang County, Heilongjiang Province was shocked with electric batons by the guards for not singing. Those who participated in the persecution included Diao Xuesong, Jin Qingfu, and Gao Zhonghai. Diao Xuesong yelled at the practitioners who were tortured, "Do you konw why we jailed all the Falun Gong practitioners in Suihua? Just because this place is more evil than others."

    Notes:

    (1) There are two versions of the "Handcuff Hanging Torture:" (a) With both hands cuffed behind the back and only toes touching the ground, the victim is hung by a rope that is tied to a metal window frame. (b) One hand of a practitioner is cuffed to one bunk bed and the other hand to another bed, and the two beds are pulled in the opposite directions. It is extremely painful when the beds are pulled apart. See illustration at /emh/articles/2004/11/17/54624.html


    After Three Years of Torture in Forced Labor Camp, Mr. Qi Mingli Is Transferred to Fushun City Brainwashing Center in Liaoning Province

    Mr. Qi Mingli is a practitioner from Liaoning Province. After detaining him in a forced labor camp for three years, the police transferred him to a brainwashing center located in the Luotai Mountain Retreat area of Fushun City, where those in charge continue to torture him. Due to the persecution, Mr. Qi became disabled long ago and his vision is getting worse and worse. He is only able to see things within a range of less than two meters (6.5 ft).

    On May 1, 2004, the day before his scheduled wedding, about a dozen police officers from the National Security Bureau of Jinzhou City and the National Security Group of the Police Department of Jinzhou City broke into his home and arrested him. Four or five officers dragged him from his bed, handcuffed him, beat him, and trampled on his face. During the process, the police didn't show any identification or documents to Mr. Qi's family. Quizzed again and again by Mr. Qi's family, the policemen repeatedly lied to them, claiming that they were from the 610 Office.

    In detention, the police beat Mr. Qi and injured his knees, broke his leg, and damaged his ligaments. But the Police Department of Jinzhou City colluded with the Police Branch of Taihe District and sentenced Mr. Qi to forced labor for three years.

    Once in the forced labor camp, the guards tortured him by locking him on the iron chair for three straight days. From then on, Mr. Qi suffered from scabies. The guards and anyone they could goad into assisting frequently beat him and tied him to the iron chair. Oftentimes, four or five people beat him together and did not stop beating him even when his face was covered with blood.

    One of Mr. Qi's legs was disabled, he suffered from scabies, and his vision became very poor. To put an end to this torture, his family went to Jinzhou Forced Labor Camp again on November 1, 2005, and asked the police to release him, but the police just tried making things difficult for them.

    On November 18, 2005, Mr. Qi started a hunger strike. On December 6, when he was on the verge of death, the police sent him to the hospital emergency room. When his mother and mother-in-law went to the hospital to visit him, the police refused to let them see Mr. Qi and asked his mother to pay the medical costs. They told the two women that they would not continue the medical treatment for Mr. Qi if his family did not pay. The police also pushed Mr. Qi's mother-in-law to the ground repeatedly. They threatened two ladies with arrest if they tried to visit Mr. Qi again.

    In May 2006, Jinzhou Forced Labor Camp started another round of torture of Falun Gong practitioners in an attempt to "transform" them. The guards implemented many means of torture. They even put an unknown drug in the practitioners' food. The drug caused strange behavior. Mr. Qi was one of those who suffered the most.

    On March 1, 2007, Mr. Qi's term expired. About two weeks earlier, his family questioned the forced labor camp about his release and were told that they would release Mr. Qi on time. But at about 9:00 a.m. on April 29, 2007, Mr. Qi was called to the administration office and didn't return.

    On the afternoon of April 30, a person who claimed to have internal information called Mr. Qi's family and told them he had been transferred to the brainwashing center at Luotai Mountain Retreat. On May 1, 2007, the family went to the forced labor camp and asked those in charge to release Mr. Qi. The camp authorities told them that officers from the Nanhu Police Station of the Heping District in Shenyang City had taken Mr. Qi away and that policeman He (last name) was among those officers.

    When the family called policeman He atof the Nanhu Police Station, he admitted that they did take Mr. Qi to the brainwashing center, but shifted the responsibility to the 610 Office by saying, "The 610 Office required us to take him there."

    Now Mr. Qi has now been detained for three years and is still in the brainwashing center of Fushun City. His family and friends are very worried about his well-being. His right leg has been disabled and his vision is very poor.


    The Women's Prison of Shandong Province Uses Unknown Drugs on Ms. Meng Lijun

    Ms. Meng Lijun is from Xifanliu Village, Guanzhuang Township, Zhangqiu City, which is located near Jinan, Shandong Province. At the age of 14 Ms. Meng contracted rheumatoid arthritis, which spread to her heart. She was unable to go to school and despite many rounds of treatment, she still had swollen joints all over her body. She couldn't do any housework or work on the farm.

    In 1998, she got a copy of the book Zhuan Falun. She finished reading it in four days, and all the pain in her body disappeared. She found Falun Gong to be miraculous. Her body felt light, and she could do housework and farm work from that point on. This also helped her to have a better temprament. 

    In 1999, the Jiang Zemin regime started the persecution of Falun Gong. On December 13, 1999, Meng Lijun and fellow practitioners went to Beijing to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong. Before they even got to the Appellate Office, The policemen from Beijing City Police Department arrested them in a hotel and then sent them back to Zhangqiu City. They were held at the detention station there.

    The police tortured her using all sorts of methods. To start with, they instigated her husband to slap her in the face, and then they started assaulting her themselves. They forced her and several other practitioners to take off all their clothes except for their underwear, and then left those practitioners outside in the cold. They made the practitioners stand in the back of a truck with signs hanging from their necks while they were driven to various towns and villages to be paraded around and publicly humiliated. At the time it was eight or nine degrees below zero, and they were paraded around like this for more than six hours. When the truck got to Puji Town, they held what was called a "public trial." One day Deputy Director Ma of the detention center spoke to Ms. Meng and then savagely beat her. Once, police handcuffed one of her hands and hung her from some metal wiring, leaving her feet barely touching the ground. She was hung like that for three or four hours. Her face, hands, and feet all changed color. One young policeman came and put a charge of electricity into the metal wiring from the electric baton he held. When Ms. Meng was taken down, she couldn't stand and felt nauseaus. When she and other practitioners did the Falun Gong exercises, the police discovered them. Policeman Yu Baohai and another policewoman took Ms. Meng to a small room and shocked her for a long time using an electric baton. Her neck and face got red and swollen. Finally, the local police station and the detention center extorted 3,000 yuan from her for what they called "bail"and then released her.

    At noon on June 27, 2000, Meng Lijun was at a practitioner's home when the local police showed up. They handcuffed the practitioners and took them to Guanzhang Police Station. They put her in a small room, where five policemen had her sit on the ground and handcuffed her hands together, with the backs of her hands facing each other. Then they hooked up electricity to her thumbs. She was trembling all over because of the electrical shocks and was unable to speak. They paused a while and then shocked her again. She sweated heavily all the way through and didn't know how long it went on. It wasn't until somebody from the city government came that they stopped shocking her. One director from the city government came and grabbed her hair and then proceeded to punch and kick her. He beat her for a long time and then took her out of the room and handcuffed her to some parallel bars in the yard. By this time it was dark and the policemen went to have dinner. After they came back, they took her to another room and sat her down on the ground, handcuffed her, took her shoes off, tied her feet and hands with electric wire, and began to shock her. The three policemen in the room were from the city government. They shocked her for a while, beat her, shocked her again, and then resumed the beating. They asked her where she got her truth-clarifying materials, but she refused to answer them.

    It is not known for how long they beat and shocked Ms. Meng. They sent her to the detention center in Zhangqiu City at around 11:00 p.m. At the detention center, the police savagely tortured her. She went on a hunger strike to protest and was then force-fed. She was illegally detained at the detention center for over a month. The police didn't release her until they had extorted 11,000 yuan from her family.

    When the CCP was holding the two national conferences in March 2001, the 610 Office of Zhangqiu City Police Department arrested dozens of practitioners and sent them to the brainwashing center in the City Militia Training Base. They were forced to watch TV programs and read materials that slandered Falun Gong and were forced to write statements denouncing Falun Gong. Meng Lijun's husband wrote the statement for her and she was released.

    In 2003, police from the Wangcun Police Station in Zibo City arrested a practitioner and then tortured her. She couldn't bear the torture and told the police that she got her materials from Ms. Meng. The police then forced their way into Ms. Meng's house after climbing over the courtyard wall. They took her to the police station in Wangcun. When she didn't cooperate with them at all, the police had to send her back home. Shortly afterwards, however, the police from Tianqiao District, Jinan City, suddenly broke into her home and took her away, leaving her son at home. This time, she was detained at the detention center in Jinan City. Police forced her to sit in a torture device called the iron chair for long periods of time. She went on a hunger strike to protest, but she was sent to the prison hospital and force fed. This led to life-threatening organ damage. The authorities didn't release her until they had extorted 5,000 yuan for what they called a "nursing fee" from her family. Her husband had to carry her on his back from the hospital.

    Ms. Meng was still in recovery when the police went to harass her repeatedly. Her family lived a life of fear. She was forced to leave home and became destitute to avoid further persecution.

    In December 2004, she was arrested again by the police in Tianqiao District, Jinan City, and was later sent to the detention center in Jinan City. She went on a hunger strike as soon as she got there, and she was even more severely persecuted. The police cuffed her arms and legs to the four corners of the bed, which was called the death bed. She was left there like that for two days and nights. She was menstrating at the time but she couldn't go to the toilet at all. She was force fed. They inserted a tube through her nose into her stomach. If they couldn't insert the tube the first time, they would try a second or third time. She almost suffocated but the police said to her, "Don't you want to die? Then you could die now."

    When they took out the tube, the whole tube was full of blood and the blood splashed onto the prison doctor's clothes. They said to her mockingly, "This doctor is trying to save you, yet you splash blood all over her?"

    Ms. Meng was on hunger strike for 46 days. A hospital examination revealed internal organ damage. She went from a weight of about 70 kilograms to 35 kilograms. After she came home, she recovered quickly through practicing Falun Gong. However, soon afterwards the police went to harass her again. She was unable to spend the Chinese New Year with her family and had to leave home again in a hurry.

    On September 27, 2005, Ms. Meng was arrested in Qihe County, and the following day she was sent to the 610 Office of Tianqiao District Police Department. Yu Jinyuan, the leader of the detective group, was in charge of her case. She was sent to the detention center, and her mother and the rest of her family didn't get this news until after more than ten days. They requested to see her but were refused. Her family insisted, and finally the leader of the Fifth Team Lu Ping and other medical staff told them that Ms. Meng had gone on a hunger strike in prison and had suffered a mental collapse due to all that she had had to endure. Her family then went to see Yu Jinyuan and requested to see Meng, but Yu sent them to get more approvals before being able to see her.

    In order to see her daughter, Ms. Meng's 80-year-old mother traveled several hundred miles with her family again and again to the detention center, but couldn't see her even once. Her mother fell ill over her daughter's plight and became emotionally distraught. She often sat up at night staring blankly.

    Ms. Meng's case was transferred to Tianqiao District Procuratorate and then to the courts. At the end of December 2005, the CCP's court secretly opened the trial and didn't notify her family. They only allowed her husband into the courtroom and barred anyone else from entering. Ms. Meng was incoherent at the time and was carried to the court. She was unable to defend herself. From the time she was arrested to the time she was secretly tried, police from the 610 Office and the local station used various means to threaten her husband, who didn't dare to speak out under such pressure. She was illegally sentenced to ten years in prison.

    It was not until March 2006 that her family was allowed to visit her in prison. She had swelling all over her body and suffered from amnesia. She didn't know how old her own child was and asked how a deceased relative was doing. She also didn't know how long she had been in prison. She kept asking the same questions again and again, and cried from time to time. After each visit, she would wail for quite some time.

    The family learned that after Ms. Meng was put in prison, the police didn't stop torturing her. They put unknown drugs into her food and water. Later on she told her family that she didn't know if she could survive until her release date, but if she died, her family should find out why she had died. When her family questioned the police about why they used drugs on a healthy person, they didn't deny it and claimed that she had a mental problem because of practicing Falun Gong and that she had contracted the mental illness before her imprisonment.