The Situation at the Laiwu Iron & Steel Corp. of Shandong Province

(Clearwisdom.net)

Since July 1999, the owners of the Laiwu Iron & Steel Corp. (hereinafter "LISC"), of Shandong Province, Jiang Kaiwen of LISC (party secretary), Zhang Wende (deputy GM of LISC), Zhang Canguo (person in charge of the 6-10 Office), Zu Lixin (director of Yinshan PSB), Liu Peisheng (deputy director of Yinshan PSB), Ding Qiang (director of Nanling Police Substation), Jiao Yuqi (section head of Politics and Security Department of LISC) have been diligently following the Jiang Zemine Regime's directives in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners.

Soon after our practitioners' appeal at the State Council appealing office on April 25, 1999, they played high decibel rock music to disrupt practitioners' morning exercise, sprayed water and dug up practice sites to plant trees. They followed and monitored practitioners daily calling it "attendance recording". Practitioners who showed up at the practice sites regularly got punished the most. Even in the face of the continued persecution, Dafa practitioners still reported our situation and spread the Fa to all levels of leadership with great kindness and compassion in accordance with Teacher's requirements. However, these people were determined to persecute. With no alternatives, on July 20, more than 70 LISC Dafa practitioners went to appeal at the provincial capital. All appellants were arrested after the persecution escalated. After the former LISC contact person, Wang Deixan, and his son were arrested, they were placed under forced surveillance and not allowed to return home. They were detained in separate rooms at LISC for over a month. During that period, they were guarded by police and people from their workplace, and were forced to watch more than 10 hours of loud TV news slandering Dafa. By depriving them of sleep and using other mental torture, the police tried to force father and son to renounce their practice of Dafa. Qi Jianhua of LISC's Public Security Department once said: "An order came from above, it doesn't matter how we do it, as long as they write the 'guarantee letter'". Once they tried to force a female practitioner to attack Dafa on TV. She cried out: "if you force me, I will jump off the building."

Due to the escalating oppression, at the end of December 1999, 38 LISC Dafa practitioners were forced to go to Beijing to appeal. LISC had established a special representative office in Beijing. Everyday Jiao Yuqi and Sun Dongsheng strolled in Tiananmen Square to cut off Dafa practitioners who were there to appeal. Each working place assigned its own personnel to guard these practitioners, with some held as long as six months. They demanded their salary and accommodations be borne by practitioners. They forced Dafa practitioners to give up practicing Dafa and extorted 5,000 Yuan (Chinese dollar, the average monthly income of urban areas is about 500 Yuan) from each of their families. But the money had long been split privately among members of the police force. Six practitioners had their salaries suspended. The rest were left with only with about 200 Yuan for living expenses. They were forced to write a "guarantee letter." A female practitioner remained in custody at the police division, because she refused to write the "guarantee letter."

At the same time a male practitioner was also detained. There was no bedding. From morning to night, he could only sit on a broken sofa and was not allowed to speak, and was served one inadequate meal a day. The practitioner had to pay 10 Yuan for each meal. The male practitioner was starved until he became lightheaded, emaciated and his face had a bluish tone. His father could not bear to look at him. Even worse than that, the police only allowed practitioners to use the toilet three times a day. The restriction on toliet use caused the female practitioner's legs to swell, constipation and anal fissure and bleeding in her stool. Because they endured these conditions for three to four months, they have not yet recovered.

The hearts of these two rock solid Dafa practitioners have shocked their captors. Practitioners outside also helped them.

Practitioners in LISC jointly wrote an urgent appeal and requested an immediate stop to the inhuman torture against Falun Gong practitioners. The letter says: "If the persecution against them is not stopped right away, practitioners of LISC will again go to Beijing to appeal and ask for justice from the Central Government." Jiao Yuqi, the section head of Politics and Security Department did not forward the letter to the proper authorities. Seeing no hope for a solution to the unlawful persecution, close to 40 practitioners of LISC went to Beijing to appeal again in the early May of 2000. Police officers, Leng Dong, Zhang Dukun, and Li Li struck practitioners forcefully and repeatedly about their faces. One female practitioner's face was struck more than 40 times causing it to swell into a misshaped mass. They also made body searches of these practitioners and confiscated a large amount of cash and Dafa books. Policewoman Li Li stripped searched all female practitioners. For more than an hour she forced these women to stand naked in the interrogation room. Policemen Leng Dong and Zhang Dukun stripped male practitioners and searched them as well.

Practitioners were kept at the people's police division in different factories. However, practitioners refused to come to terms, refused to cooperate and went on a hunger strike together. Two other practitioners detained by patrol forces joined their hunger strike. In the end all practitioners defeated the authorities and went home with dignity. One practitioner's experience lasted 9 days in total; from the day heading to Beijing, being detained, going on a hunger strike, and being released. But his experiences did not end there; he was illegally detained another three times. But this practitioner refused to react saying: "Being irreverent to me is to be irreverent to Dafa. If my actions could wake you up, I would die with no regret." Then he rammed his head against a wall. The police became scared and soon after released him.

July 6, 2000, marked the beginning of another round of persecution. They adopted a closed-door intensified "brainwashing class", originally scheduled for three terms. The first batch of 9 practitioners was held at the old office building of smeltering plant. Every practitioner refused to write the "guarantee letter", and collectively they went on hunger strike. The party officials including party secretary Jiang Kaiwen repeatedly came to conduct the brainwashing job. None of them succeeded. Although practitioners endured much, forced injections, force-feedings, and forcible hospitalization, because their hearts remained unaffected, they were able to handle all situations. Practitioners were all released unconditionally after 35 days on a hunger strike. The following two terms of brainwashing classes failed too. The authorities had no choice but to admit another failure. During this period, a male practitioner had been passing much blood in his stool. His pants were often soaked with blood but they would not release him.

Facing the Dafa practitioners who had been on the hunger strike for so many days officer JiaoYuqi was furious: "I will never let you die here. When you become half dead because of hunger, I will send you back and let you die in your own homes.

Because 7 out of 8 people in practitioner Wang Dexian's family are practitioners, and because Wang himself is a key assistant, he suffered from more serious persecution. A security officer Sun Dongsheng from Wang's working unit (Shandong Laiwu Iron & Steel Corp) and Jiao Yuqi led several armed policemen and illegally broke into Wang Dexian's home and kidnapped Wang and his son. At the time of the kidnapping, they were tied up tightly and thrown into the police van like two pieces of luggage. Wang Yong (his son) was only wearing a pair of shorts and slippers at the time, yet he was not allow to put more clothes on. The onlookers were all stunned by the scene. Their whereabouts remained a mystery for two months before it was discovered that they had been illegally sent to Wangcun Labor Camp.

On Feb 21, 2001, the perpetrators used rooms in the company dormitory to detain arrested practitioners, one practitioner per room. Everyday, 4 or 5 "reformed" practitioners (those who had renounced their practice) surrounded one practitioner and tried to "persuaded" him to give up practicing, by not allowing the practitioner to sleep. Those practitioners who were firm with their belief were then sent to labor camps. Because most were steadfast in their belief only very few were forced to write the so-called "guarantee letters" against their wills. They repented afterwards and declared null and void everything that they said and wrote against Dafa when they were not in their right minds due to intense persecution.

In the middle of May, the officials became even more vicious: they arrested 7 practitioners together and sent them to the Wangcun Labor Camp to persecute them. Those solid practitioners were then sentenced to labor camp terms. They arrested a total of 13 practitioners. In Wangcun Labor Camp, they used electric batons, forced drugging, and not allowing practitioners to sleep in order to force the practitioners to give up their cultivation. A female practitioner had very high blood pressure during this time (200 mm Hg), and the staff was afraid that she might die, so they asked the LISC to take her back. But LISC refused to take her back resulting in her continued torture.

During this time of intense persecution, 9 practitioners were forced to become homeless to escape the persecution. But the authorities pursued them. It was said that they had spent over 100 thousand-Yuan just to capture one female practitioner. In the past several months, officials at LISC have escalated their efforts in finding practitioners who have left their homes. They also harass the families of Dafa practitioners by hiding around their homes waiting for the practitioners or keeping the families under surveillance. Security staff Li Wenlong, Nie Lihua, Su Haiwei, and Sun Dongsheng from within the company have formed a special team dedicated to hunting down Dafa practitioners. In order to look for a male practitioner, the team went to his children's the school and followed the kids for days. To look for a female practitioner, they went all the way to a town where a relative of the practitioner lives. They followed the relative for several days, during which time they even changed the license plate of their car in order to disguise their activities. In another case, a female practitioner's father had just died. Security from LISC and the father's workplace worked together and laid in wait for the practitioner to come to her father's funeral. The practitioner did go to her father's home for the funeral, and the guards followed her to the crematorium. However, employees of the father's workplace discovered them. The workers were filled with indignation: "Don't you also have fathers?" Facing the angry workers, the team from LISC had to leave. The practitioner said to the people around her, "I have a son who will take a college entrance exam soon. I wanted to go home very much, yet they forced me to leave my home, and even coming to the funeral for my father is so difficult."

The people from LISC have sent 15 practitioners to Wangcun Labor Camp, and dismissed 11 practitioners from their jobs. They laid off, stopped the pension or salary of over 30 practitioners (some practitioners were forced to work without pay). Right now, 6 practitioners were forced to leave their homes to avoid further persecution. Because of their belief in "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance", were they treated like this. However, the practitioners are all very strict with themselves using the standard of Dafa practitioners under brutal persecution and did not give in despite the great suffering.

Jiang Zemin proclaimed, "there will be no punishment for torturing Falun Gong practitioners to death. Practitioners tortured to death will be recorded as suicide cases." "Do not identify the body. Cremate locally." "There will be no punishment for torturing Falun Gong practitioners to death." are only words of self-deception from Jiang and his associates. The heavenly principle "Due retribution of good and evil" applies to everyone. Security officer Liu Yonglu persecuted Dafa practitioners actively and acted as Jiang Zemin's accomplice. On Nov 10, 2001, he was hit and killed by a cargo truck by the front gate of LISC. The driver responsible said later that he never saw anyone on the road while hitting Liu.