October 28, 2001

(Clearwisdom.net) The No. 2 Detention Center of Cangzhou City, Hebei Province, is a hell on earth. The guards, though in police uniforms, ignore the Party's rules and the country's laws. They have lost their consciences. They have inhumanly persecuted Dafa practitioners with brutal force and tortured them at will. It was here on October 20^th, 2001, where Yang Mei, a beautiful 23 year-old Dafa practitioner, was tortured to death.

Yang Mei, female, was a staff member of the Xiaowangzhuang Branch of Cangzhou City Suburban United Credit Union in Hebei Province. She was illegally arrested and incarcerated in June of this year. At the jail, the guards cruelly tortured this innocent and kind girl. They locked her on a metal bed with handcuffs and shackles for one month. (This torture device is notoriously called the "Dead Man's Bed"; the four limbs are stretched out and tied to the four corners of an icy-cold metal bed. The victims cannot move at all, nor are they allowed to get up to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom. This type of torture causes severe damage to practitioners both mentally and physically.) They force fed her by inserting a tube into her stomach, then left it there during the whole month except when they took it out once every five or six days. As a result, Yang Mei lost control of her urination and bowel movements. Her legs and feet were so severely swollen that her legs became thick and her feet deformed. Several layers of her skin peeled away. Someone had seen her condition on September 2^nd and reported that her rubbed off skin had not grown back at that time.

Demanding only the basic right to live as a human being, Yang Mei and Wei Shuqin (female) started a hunger strike on October 10^th. Han Shuzhen, Xu Qujing, Zhang Hong, Zhang Jing and more than ten other practitioners joined them afterwards. Every one of them was cuffed onto the Dead Man's bed with handcuffs and shackles. The handcuffs and shackles they put on criminals awaiting the death penalty were wrapped with cloth-strips; however, the ones put on Dafa practitioners were bare. During the hunger strike, the wicked police ordered an old cook with no medical knowledge at all to be in charge of the force-feeding. None the tools used were sanitized. The food consisted of icy cold salt water, flour paste, or diluted milk. The quantity and thickness of the force-feeding solution depended on their moods at the time. Practitioners' whole bodies trembled from the coldness after each force-feeding. The experience of each force-feeding was like passing through the gate of hell. During force-feedings, a practitioner was locked into a tiny cell and handcuffed to a metal bed or metal chair (in order to intensify the persecution, the wicked police expanded the number of tiny cells and purchased 6 more metal chairs exclusively for persecuting Dafa practitioners.) They ordered the inmates to hold down the practitioners' heads and pinch their cheeks and noses, which often tore the skin in the process. This way, they force fed the unclean, nutritiously deficient, unsafe icy cold liquid into practitioners' stomachs like dumping trash, without caring about a person's life or death at all. Yang Mei was killed this way. The force-feeding was performed in the afternoon of the 19^th, and she passed away at around 6 o'clock in the morning of the 20^th. Thus, a healthy, beautiful, pure and innocent girl was tortured to death within a short period of 4 months.

The police strictly blocked the news after Yang Mei was murdered. When Yang Mei's parents went to visit her in the morning, the police lied to them, not mentioning Yang Mei's death at all. At 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon, after finishing their arrangements, the police informed the parents of Yang Mei's death and asked if they had any requests. Officials from both the city government and police department showed up and admitted that they were responsible for not saving Yang Mei's life promptly. On the morning of the same day, Zhang Guowen, the director of the No. 2 Detention Center, was hospitalized after receiving the phone call about Yang Mei's death. We do not know whether this was a temporary punishment or if he was trying to shirk responsibility. The government used both hard and soft tactics to try to settle with the family members privately and not to let it be known to the public. They demanded that if the family wanted an autopsy, they must cremate the body immediately afterwards. They also monitored and controlled Yang Qingshuang, the mother of Yang Mei, not allowing her any outside contact. A police car and plain-clothes policemen were monitoring her house. This unfortunate elderly lady could not even see her daughter before the cremation. After the news about the murder of Yang Mei was revealed, when her family members requested to have an autopsy, the wicked officials showed their true faces and replied hatefully, "You can have an autopsy, but you must cremate the body immediately." They also instigated Yang's father's work unit to put pressure on him, and ask questions like, "Who sent the news to the Minghui Net? How come all of our words are published there? Who leaked the news to them? How many flyers have you printed?" Under the circumstances, they did the autopsy and cremated the body immediately on the afternoon of October 25^th. Such an autopsy only serves as an excuse for some kind of false legality and to deceive other people. Under their control, although the report has yet to come out, the results should not be hard to guess.

From an on-sight inspection of Yang Mei's body, one could see bruises on her chest, red spots all over her body, and both hands were swollen. The police told Yang's father that they were not responsible, that he had better not look into this matter, and that any damage compensation was out of consideration.

Currently there are still more than 50 Dafa practitioners being detained in the No. 2 Detention Center. They inhumanly torture and persecute these good people who believe in Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance and anyone who dares to speak out the truth. Presently Wei Shuqin, Han Shuzhen, Zhang Jing and more than 10 other female practitioners are still on hunger strike. They are in a critical situation and could be killed anytime. Due to the blockade of news by the police, the practitioners in the detention center still do not know about the murder of Yang Mei. Since the 20^th, the wicked police have not allowed any practitioner's family members to visit; rather, they have lied in all different ways to deceive them. Han Shuzhen has been tied up since October 13. Her family members were prohibited from seeing her when they visited, and the police told them that she was in good shape and that they would be informed when visits would be allowed. Many family members have been refused at the gate.

The crimes of the police mentioned above are merely the tip of the iceberg. The more vicious and cruel persecutions have yet to be revealed. We hope people with a conscience can stand up to stop the persecution and uphold justice. In order to prevent another innocent woman like Yang Mei from being murdered, we call all kind-hearted people to pay attention to this matter, to stop the persecution, and to seek justice. We request that all illegally detained Dafa practitioners be released unconditionally, and that all murderers of Dafa practitioners be punished according to the law.