Name: Liu Qingwei (刘庆威)
Gender: Male
Age: 32
Address: Unknown
Occupation: a former college student, majoring in piano studies
Date of Most Recent Arrest: December 2, 2000
Most Recent Place of Detention: Tailai Prison (泰来监狱)
City: Qiqihar
Province: Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered: Forced labor, brainwashing, illegal sentencing, beatings, imprisonment, solitary confinement, torture, extortion, expulsion from school, physical restraint, home ransacking, interrogation, detention, sleep deprivation
(Minghui.org) Mr. Liu Qingwei used to suffer from poor health but became much stronger and more energetic after he began the practice of Falun Gong at the age of 16. A music lover since a young child, he took piano lessons from the age of ten. He became one of only 40 students out of 2,500 candidates in 1998 to be admitted to the highly competitive piano studies department at Harbin Normal University’s Music School.
Mr. Liu was arrested in 2001 when he was 21 years old for telling people the facts about Falun Gong. He was subsequently sentenced to twelve years of imprisonment. The authorities first held him in Harbin Prison, before later transferring him to Tailai Prison, from which he was released in 2010. During his nine years of incarceration, he was subjected to mental torment and physical torture. Moreover, both prisons frequently made him do hard labor for more than 14 hours a day.
Mr. Liu Qingwei
Expelled from School for Appealing for Falun Gong
Mr. Liu went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in November 1999. After discovering his absence from campus, school officials dispatched his adviser Liu Feng and security section chief Zhang to look for him in Beijing. The two men brought Mr. Liu back to school and kept him under “dorm arrest.” Numerous school officials, professors, classmates and even his family members tried to pressure him to give up his cultivation, but he held firm to his belief. In the end the school agreed to let him resume his studies. However, they made sure he was closely monitored.
Despite the tight surveillance, Mr. Liu managed to travel to Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, to attend an experience sharing conference organized by practitioners. Unfortunately, police seized him and locked him up in the Tianhe Detention Center in Guangzhou. In December 1999, Xiangyang Police Department Chief Cui Rongli in Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province sent policemen Sun Fuli and Li Jun to fetch Mr. Liu in Guangzhou. Cui demanded Mr. Liu’s family pay 6,000 yuan to cover the two policemen’s travel expenses. Sun and Li had already taken possession of the more than 1,000 yuan in cash that Mr. Liu had with him. They kept him at Jiamusi Detention Center for one month and didn’t release him until his family was extorted and paid another 3,000 yuan.
After returning home, Mr. Liu learned that his school had already expelled him. When he went back in April 2000 to request a reinstatement of his student status, the school demanded that he write a guarantee, promising to never practice Falun Gong again. Mr. Liu firmly refused the demand and has since been deprived of his opportunity to finish college.
Tortured at the Daowai Detention Center
On December 2, 2000, Li Changfeng and Gong Gu from the Jiamusi University Security Section deceived Mr. Liu into following them to their school and illegally detained him there. Not long after that, they transferred him to Xiangyang Police Department, which also sent agents to ransack his home. A Daowai Police Office agent surnamed Gao in Harbin City later took Mr. Liu to an unknown location. After going through much trouble, his family finally learned that he had been sent to the Daowai Detention Center.
The detention center officials subjected Mr. Liu to numerous interrogations. Each time the guards blindfolded him and covered his head with a black hood before leading him to an off-site hotel. They pulled one of his arms over his shoulder to meet his other arm, twisted behind his back, before handcuffing both hands together. To make him suffer more, they inserted a club in between the handcuffs and his back, and kept twisting and pushing it around.
Torture Re-enactment: Back Handcuff
Mr. Liu developed scabies because of the harsh conditions at the detention center, and his whole body felt extremely itchy. Once his right knee had a scrape, and the broken skin soon got infected. His kneecap was so swollen that it looked even thicker than his thigh. The skin was dark, and he faced the risk of amputation. The guards, however, still forced him to sit still for more than ten hours a day. Often the wounds that had just scabbed over the night before broke again the next day. With more than 50 people crammed into a tiny cell, nobody could even turn over in sleep. The guards kept Mr. Liu in such conditions for about ten months before eventually arranging for him to live in a cell by himself, for fear that his infection might be contagious. Only until then did his wounds gradually heal.
The guards demanded Mr. Liu’s family wire money to him so he could buy necessities. In eight months they had his family send in 4,000 yuan, yet he didn’t see even a penny. The guards simply pocketed the money. Detention center officials forbade families from delivering food and necessities, and demanded that detainees purchase these items from the center store, at an inflated price 4-5 times higher than regular stores. When families did manage to send in some food, the cell head confiscated it.
The Nangang Court convened a trial of Mr. Liu and six other practitioners (some of whom being professors and students from the same school) in July 2001. He was sentenced to 12 years of incarceration, and others from 12-15 years. All of them were sent to Harbin Prison.
Mr. Liu Brutalized and Forced to do Hard Labor at Harbin Prison
When Mr. Liu was transferred to Harbin Prison on February 24, 2002, he was first made to stay in the Intensive Training Team. He refused to recite prison rules and wrote, “Falun Dafa is good,” and “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” everywhere in the blank spaces on the rule book. In response, the guards sent him to solitary confinement. After they finally let him out more than ten days later, he was reduced to a skeleton-like condition.
The prison next moved Mr. Liu to Division Four, where they assigned two criminal inmates to monitor each practitioner around the clock. All practitioners were forced to read newspapers and watch videos that defamed Falun Gong. Moreover, the prison demanded that practitioners write down their thoughts afterwards and take tests with questions attacking Falun Gong. If any guard failed to “reform” practitioners, he would have his salary and bonus reduced and his position demoted. The 610 Office head Chen Shuhai offered to reduce inmates’ terms if they beat practitioners. As of April 2004, three practitioners were confirmed to have died from brutal beatings.
The prison officials also forced all detainees to do 14-15 hours of hard labor every day. In order to cover up the crimes, the prison hung a sign on its gate reading Harbin Xinsheng Switch Factory.
(1) Foundation Job
When the prison was busy putting up new infrastructure, all detainees were tasked with digging foundations, pushing brick carts, and loading and unloading charcoal. At the end of each work day everyone had charcoal particles in their ears, nostrils, mouth and esophagus. Their teeth looked dark, and so did everything else on their body. It often took several days of coughing for their phlegm to go from dark to clear. Despite the demanding physical labor, the prison only supplied one uniform and didn’t provide detergent for detainees to wash it.
During the process of putting up reinforcing bars, the detainees actually had to manually transport or weld steel plates and steel channels (some even as long as 50 meters). It was commonplace to have scrapes, bruises and bloody blisters all over. Some people developed pneumonia and pulmonary edema.
(2) Handicraft Jobs
In addition to the foundation job, the prison also ordered detainees to work on numerous kinds of handcrafted items, including flax car seat cushions, tiny locks, decorative glass necklaces, artificial diamonds and eyelashes.
While sewing the car seat cushions, many people got cuts on their hands. Since they had to use toothpicks to work on tiny items, their fingers often got pricked and infected. The locks contained lead and other heavy metal; yet, the prison didn’t even give detainees time to wash their hands before meal time. As a matter of fact, they often had to rush back to work before they could finish their meals.
The glass beads and artificial diamonds came in various sizes and different shapes. Some were as big as soybeans, while others were even smaller than grains of rice. The beads and diamonds usually had 6-32 sides; each of the sides required baking under strong lights and polishing with soybean oil. The amount of work required was enormous. Many people shed tears as soon as they stepped inside the workshop full of toxic smells, and their hands cracked after holding toxic materials for too long. The eyelashes needed to be picked up one by one with tweezers and then glued to the base.
Anyone who failed to finish his quota had to work overtime to get his job done.
Mr. Liu Imprisoned at Tailai Prison for Six More Years
After practitioner Wang Dayuan died of torture at Harbin prison, the officials simply cremated his body right there. To further cover up their crime, Heilongjiang Judicial Bureau officials directed the prison on July 2004 to transfer all 78 detained practitioners to various locations. After going through much trouble, the practitioners’ families learned that their loved ones were sent to the Mudanjiang Prison, Daqing Prison and Tailai Prison, respectively.
Mr. Liu was sent to Tailai Prison. He was first held in the Intensive Training Team and later moved to Division Eight, where the prison grouped each practitioner with four criminal inmates. If anyone violated the prison rules, all four other group members would be punished as well. If these criminals were able to persuade the practitioner to give up his practice of Falun Gong, they would get their terms reduced or receive other incentives.
The guards used all means possible to make practitioners miserable. One extreme torture was usually done in the hot summer. The guards would place a steel plate under the scorching sun and tie the victim to the plate. In no time the victim would experience severe burns. To make him suffer even more, the guards would next throw him into a tub filled with ice water.
Another torture was to prop the victim up at the chest with his head and four limbs hanging down. Soon the victim felt pain and numbness, and often lost consciousness.
Similar to Harbin Prison, Tailai Prison authorities also abused detainees for financial gains. A sign outside its gate read, Tailai Automobile Company. A typical work-day went from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m.
(1) Fixing Machine-woven Flax Fabric
Flax fabric was first woven by machine. Then detainees must manually fix any imperfections, including stains and fuzz balls. They needed to pick out tangled threads with tweezers and wash off stains with detergents. Each piece of fabric ranged from a dozen meters to more than three hundred meters long, and took several attempts to get it flattened and cleaned. Even though detainees all wore masks, the dust and particles generated by the production process still led many people to develop pulmonary diseases. In order to squeeze out as much work time as possible, the prison delivered lunch right to the workshop, where detainees had to eat their food in a dust-filled place. Anyone who failed to finish his quota was handcuffed and shackled.
(2) Punishment when Making Artificial Diamonds, Eyelashes and Necklaces
Similar to the job at Harbin Prison, detainees at Tailai Prison were made to do the same thing. Those who failed to finish their job on time not only had to work overtime, but also were handcuffed to a metal gate after they returned to the cell. If they continued having trouble finishing their quota, they would be handcuffed and shackled before being paraded through the entire sleeping quarter. To further humiliate them, the officials also placed them right at the gate of the sleeping quarter for one week, so everyone knew they couldn't keep up. If they still had difficulty getting their job done, the prison kept them handcuffed and shackled around the clock.
(3) Weaving Seat Cushions
To do this job, one had to work on a wooden frame whose edges were covered with nails and use crochet hooks to weave cushions. They needed to use threads of various materials and must follow certain patterns. If they made a mistake they had to re-do everything. Many people had blisters on their hands. There was dust everywhere, and a lot of detainees developed pneumonia and other pulmonary diseases.
(4) Making Flower Pots and Christmas Trees
Detainees had to work with a special kind of toxic glue to make these flower pots and Christmas trees. This glue was highly volatile; its smell disappeared shortly after opening the glue container. Detainees ended up inhaling the toxic fumes. To finish off these products, detainees also had to spray white paint on the surface before the prison shipped the items to Western countries.
(5) Digging Foundations
When Mr. Liu was first transferred to Tailai Prison, the facility was building a new dormitory. He was forced to work digging a foundation. One wall of the prison collapsed in the summer of 2008, so he and other practitioners were made to lay out the foundation again.
(6) Psychological Torment
In order to wear out practitioners’ will, Tailai Prison authorities invented a new tactic, namely, forcing practitioners to play Internet games non-stop. The guards removed all unnecessary keys on the keyboard so the only thing that could be done with the computer was play games. They kept the machines on around the clock. Practitioners had to play games non-stop. No one was allowed to step out of the computer room. They had to eat and even relieve themselves right there. The only time they could have a break was on Tuesdays when the system shut down for a few hours of maintenance.
Knowing that playing games was addictive, the prison hoped practitioners would eventually lower their guard this way. The long-time game playing soon led many practitioners to develop anemia, high blood pressure and neck problems.
In the summer many lost consciousness after suffering heat stroke.
Family also Suffers amidst His Ordeal
All these years Mr. Liu’s family suffered psychologically and financially along with him. They went to visit him almost every month. Each time they had to change trains or buses six times before reaching the prison. Their travel expenses amounted to more than 100,000 yuan during the past nine years. On top of that, they were extorted huge sums of money by the prisons and lived lives of deprivation.
