(Clearwisdom.net) On July 16, 2008, personnel from the Tiebei Prison in Changchun City, Jilin Province, along with the Jiaonan City Police Department in Shandong Province, arrested Liu Zhaojian, a Falun Gong practitioner from Baishan City, Jilin Province. He was arrested while visiting his hometown in Haiqing Village, Haiqing Town, Jiaonan City, Shandong Province. The police told Mr. Liu's family that Mr. Liu had been released on parole to receive medical treatment, and said that he still had six months to serve on his sentence. Therefore, Mr. Liu had to return to the Tiebei Prison to complete his sentence.
Mr. Liu started practicing Falun Gong in 1997, and was employed at the Wangou Town Property Tax Bureau in Jingyuan County, Baishan City, Jilin Province. In 2000, he was illegally sentenced to forced labor because he wouldn't give up his belief in Falun Gong. In January 2001, when he was out hanging up materials that explained the facts about Falun Gong, along with other practitioners, he was arrested by police from the Hongqi Police Station in Baishan City, who at that time were closely monitoring the area. At the Baishan City police detention center, Mr. Liu was tortured in many cruel ways, including beatings, shocks with electric batons for long periods of time, being handcuffed or put in shackles and hung up off the floor, force-feed through a rubber tube, tied to a metal bed, and other brutal methods. Due to the severity of the torture, he lost the ability to look after himself. He was later sentenced to six years of imprisonment. First, in the Jilin City Prison, then he was transferred to Tiebei Prison.
During Mr. Liu's imprisonment, guards continued torturing him. They locked him up in solitary confinement and stretched his legs and arms while he was strapped to a bed. All of this was to coerce him into renouncing his belief in Falun Gong; to write three statements pledging to give up the practice. Mr. Liu held a hunger strike for eighty-three days to protest the abuse. Even when his body was extremely weak, guards still handcuffed him to a bed for many days. When Mr. Liu was close to death, personnel from the prison feared that if he died there, they would have to take responsibility for his death, so they ordered Mr. Liu's family to take him home. In May 2006, Mr. Liu was released on bail and his family took him back to his hometown for medical treatment.
When Mr. Liu Zhaojian was released, he was mere skin and bones, and unable to eat anything. Because he was critically ill, Mr. Liu's family took him to a hospital to save his life. However, because his family's economic situation was very poor and they couldn't afford the hospital fees, they had to take him back home. Upon returning home, Mr. Liu said to his family, "I want to practice Falun Gong to see whether my situation can get better." After he started practicing again, his physical condition got better and better, and later he was able to take care of himself in daily life. However, his lungs were seriously damaged and he coughed all the time. Personnel from the Tiebei Prison still came to harass Mr. Liu, and twice tried to take him back to prison. In order to avoid further persecution, Mr. Liu had to leave his home and become homeless.
On July 16, 2008, Mr. Liu returned home to take care of some issues related to his daughter's schooling, and police officers from Jiaonan City, along with guards from the Tiebei Prison, arrested him again. Apparently, they had been waiting for Mr. Liu's return for many days. Mr. Liu was detained at the Jiaonan City Police Department for three days and then taken back to the Tiebei Prison for further persecution.
