(Clearwisdom.net) Mr. Zhao Guangsheng is a 37-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Guanghan City, Sichuan Province. He works as a tricycle driver. Mr. Zhao started practicing Falun Gong in March 1999 when he was on sick leave due to a traffic accident. When he read the Falun Gong book, Zhuan Falun, he found that all those intriguing questions he had about the true meaning of his life were answered, and he has been practicing Falun Dafa ever since.
On July 20, 1999, not long after Mr. Zhao started practicing, the Chinese Communist regime launched the bloody persecution against Falun Gong. In the face of this unprecedented onslaught, Mr. Zhao tried his best to clarify the truth to everyone he met. He told them the facts about Falun Gong, exposed the persecution, and explained that Falun Gong was not involved in politics, but that practitioners only wanted their constitutional right to practice their belief openly.
In June 2000, the Nanxing Police Station of Guanghan City illegally detained Mr. Zhao. Policeman Zeng Guanghua forcefully ransacked Mr. Zhao's home and slapped him in the face. The next day, the police sent him to a forced brainwashing session. After that, the police frequently tracked and monitored Mr. Zhao.
In 2001, the 610 Office of Guanghan City arrested Zhao Guangsheng and detained him as a criminal for one month in the 14th Group of the Guanghan Detention Center. They fabricated the accusation that he had disrupted the implementation of the law by organizing and utilizing an evil [slanderous word omitted].
On the afternoon of October 19, 2001, many policemen, including Zeng Guanghua and Liao Zhengfu from the Nanxing Police Station, gathered more policemen from the 610 Office, including Jiang Tianxing, and drove three police vehicles over to Zhao Guangsheng's home and forcefully ransacked his home without taking any legal procedures. They arrested Mr. Zhao after they completely turned over his home.
The policemen brought Mr. Zhao to the Nanxing Police Station and cruelly beat him with a leather-thonged whip for 3 hours. They beat him so violently that his clothes were torn and the upper half of his body was severely lacerated; his back and his feet were swollen and the soft tissue in many parts of his body was badly injured. That same day he was sent to the Guanghan Police Department, where policemen Li Jing and Jiang Tianxing kept taking turns interrogating and cruelly beating him. It was October and very cold, but Jiang Tianxing stripped Mr. Zhao's clothes off of him and threatened to force him outside so that he would freeze to death. To destroy Mr. Zhao's willpower, he subsequently tortured him even more by cruelly beating him, slapping his face repeatedly and hanging him by a rope for a long period • from 3:00 in the afternoon to 10:00 at night. After that, he sent Mr. Zhao to a detention center, where the police demanded that he sign a statement admitting that he was guilty of criminal activity. Mr. Zhao refused. The next day, the guards ordered several criminal inmates to cruelly beat him. Jiang Tianxing told the inmates that no one would be punished if Zhao Guangsheng were beaten to death and that they could continue torturing him until he died.
In the freezing cold, they once again stripped Mr. Zhao of his clothes and continuously poured cold water over him. They repeatedly doused him with cold water from 8:00 to 12:00 a.m. Mr. Zhao was so badly frozen that he had problems moving.
On October 22, the guards once again ordered several criminal inmates to violently beat Mr. Zhao. They beat his chest until he was unable to stand and he coughed up blood. During the night, the criminals found an even crueler way to torture him. They put some toilet paper between Mr. Zhao's toes and then set the paper on fire to burn him. Everyone could hear Mr. Zhao's continuous screams of pain. His agonizing screams broke the silence of the night until he passed out from the pain.
On October 23, the guards ordered criminal inmate Xiao Jiugui to strip off all of Mr. Zhao's clothes and pull out his pubic hairs one by one. Blood drops ran out with each pull. Once again the pain was so great that Mr. Zhao screamed in agony. The scene was so horrible that no one could stand watching it. Following that, the criminals were ordered to beat the lower half of Mr. Zhao's body with a plastic brush. The torture was so unbearable that he lost consciousness.
On October 24, the criminals lashed all parts of Mr. Zhao's body with plastic shoe soles, so cruelly that his entire body, including his back, to the joints in his feet were red and swollen and the soft tissue all over his body was badly injured. When Mr. Zhao's wife went to the prison to see him and saw how badly deformed her husband was, she couldn't stop crying. To save her husband from this living hell, she took every bit of her savings and borrowed money from her friends to pay the police off. Her husband was released only after she paid them 5,500 yuan.