A large number of Falun Gong practitioners in Laishui county, Hebei province have been faced with beating, arrest, detention, forced labor re-education, imprisonment, and huge fines since July last year -- just like what's been happening everywhere else across the nation.
On August 10, 2000, policemen from the Laishui detention center and the police department, along with Shiting town secretary Zhang Linjun, town head Li Yamin and the secretary of the political and legal division, Li Zhengong, went to Shiting's Beijing office to beat up their local practitioners who had petitioned there for Falun Gong.
They used leather shoes to beat practitioners' faces, and they even pulled out a handful of a female practitioner's hair. They searched and confiscated all the money practitioners had and escorted all the practitioners back to the Laishui police department. Supervised by Sun Guijie, the county secretary of law, personnel from the county court and police department took turns striking and cursing the detainees. Some beatings lasted for four or five hours and the victims were not allowed to eat or sleep. The policemen also stepped on female practitioners' legs. The severe beatings left the practitioners' lower bodies swollen and black. All of these tortures were applied to the practitioners just to make them give up Falun Gong practice. In addition, they tried to force practitioners to curse their teacher (Mr. Li Hongzhi) and write letters renouncing the practice. Later, each practitioner was fined 3,000 Yuan (about US$400, more than 3 months average salary in China) by the police department and 1,000Yuan more by the town before they were released.
The town secretary Zhang Linjun, town head Li Yamin, the secretary of political and legal department Li Zhengong, and Du Xiaodong even arrested and detained for more than 40 days those practitioners who had not gone to Beijing to appeal. They bound these innocent practitioners with ropes and brutally beat them, using triangle-shaped leather belts, wooden sticks, and bunched up electric cables as whips. Not satisfied with the above torture, Li Zhengong even used brake cables from motorcycles to whip practitioners till their bodies were full of bruises. The detainees were also fined 1,000 Yuan afterwards.
Despite all this, because of the large number of practitioners who went to Beijing to petition on August 10, town secretary Zhang Linjun, and town head Li Yamin were later fired from their jobs.
During last Fall's wheat-sowing season, the vice president of the political security department, Liu Yaohua, ordered policeman XX to bring practitioners to the detention center on the pretense that they were just going to have a conversation. Instead, they cursed and beat up the practitioners. Every town had arrested many practitioners in the name of taking them to a class, when in reality, they were taken to a place of punishment.
More than 70 practitioners were arrested during that time. In order to force practitioners to give up practicing Falun Gong, the evil people bound them with ropes, beat and cursed them, and forced them to kneel on bricks.
A female practitioner was even forced to play a so-called "pushing little cart" game; that is, two policemen each grabbed one of her feet without letting them touch the ground and forced her to use both of her hands to crawl on the ground up and down a big hill. Her shirt covered her head and her breasts were exposed. They forced her to crawl into the garbage and insulted her in front of about a hundred people, while they stood and laughed at her. They also forced practitioners to sing, shout slogans and curse the teacher. They even stripped the pants of some male practitioners who refused to give up practicing Falun Gong and then beat them. The victims' buttocks were covered with blisters as a result and they could not sit down at all. This torture was repeated many times. This is the so-called "class" offered by the Laishui county security bureau and Shiting town. The above examples are only a few cases out of many.
A Falun Dafa practitioner
November 18, 2000
