7/14/01 (Falun Dafa Information Center) According to news sources from Hebei Province, police in Xingtai Public Security Bureau gang-raped many female Falun Gong practitioners. One policeman boasted to others that he had raped three Falun Gong practitioners.

According to news sources, the Xingtai Public Security Bureau and Xingtai Qiaodong District Public Security Branch Office had jointly established an "anti-Falun Gong special task force" to arrest and torture large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners. Police stripped female practitioners down to nothing and used bamboo sticks to beat them as well as electric batons to shock their breasts and vaginas.

Sources revealed that many female practitioners' hands and feet were cuffed and they were raped by police in the vehicles while transporting them to the detention centers. Afterwards, a local police officer even boasted about such an action during casual conversation.

A reporter had asked Zheng Shaoqin, member of the "special task force," about the case. Zheng did not deny it, but instead quickly hung up the phone.

Various materials indicate that the sexual abuse against Falun Gong practitioners by police is government-sanctioned. Officials in Masanjia Labor Camp in Shengyang had stripped naked 18 female Falun Gong practitioners and threw them into male prison cells. The Director of the Beijing Qianmen Police Station has openly raped female practitioners. Another female practitioner was brutally beaten and raped by a plainclothes police officer this May.

In China, lawyers are not allowed to defend Falun Gong practitioners. Human rights observers attributed such sexual abuse cases not only to the individual low morality but also to the government-sanctioned violence and hatred. According to internal sources from China's Public Security System, the "610 Office" (Government department established specifically to detain and persecute Falun Gong practitioners) had issued unwritten policies such as "Ruin Falun Gong practitioners' reputations, cut off their financial income, and eliminate them physically" and "Beating [Falun Gong practitioners] to death will not bear legal responsibility and the case should be reported as suicide." Many local police have openly claimed, "The policy from the leadership allows us to go beyond legal constraints against Falun Gong" and "No measure is excessive when dealing with Falun Gong; beating to death will be counted as suicide."