(Minghui.org) A physician who practices Falun Gong recently filed a lawsuit accusing Jiang Zemin of initiating the persecution of his spiritual belief, resulting in years of detention and ending his once-promising career.

Dr. Li Lizhuang, 42, was promoted to attending physician around the time the persecution began in 1999. When he was arrested in 2001, for refusing to give up his belief, the hospital suspended him from work without pay. Over the next decade he was incarcerated in labor camps and prisons for a total of six and a half years.

When he was last released in 2009, the hospital refused to give him his job back, or re-validate his medical license. Although he is now a free man, he cannot practice medicine and has to sell clothing to make ends meet.

Dr. Li, who is from Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, mailed his criminal complaint to the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court on June 17, 2015. He is charging the former Chinese dictator with crimes against humanity, including the crimes of torture and genocide.

Below is Dr. Li's story.

A Good Doctor

Dr. Li graduated from Harbin Medical University in 1995 and went to work at the No. 1 Hospital Affiliated with Harbin Medical University.

He started practicing Falun Gong that same year and lived by the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. He often helped his patients. When one villager couldn't pay for his surgery, Dr. Li donated 1,000 yuan, a substantial amount, since his salary was only 300 yuan per month.

Dr. Li was accepted to the part-time masters program to study orthopedic surgery in 1999. His career was about to take off.

Imprisoned and Tortured

When Jiang Zemin ordered the suppression of Falun Gong in 1999, however, everything changed for Dr. Li.

His father came to stay with him and watch him every day, fearing that he might get into trouble. Hospital administrators repeatedly pressured him to give up his belief.

When he was eventually arrested in May 2001, he was beaten, deprived of sleep, and tied to an iron chair in a detention center, unable to move for a week.

He was then given two years of forced labor. At the Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp in Harbin, he was handcuffed, electrically shocked, beaten, tied to an iron chair, and locked in a solitary cell for two months.

The camp director ordered inmates to make false claims that Mr. Li had organized a hunger strike. The local Procuratorate issued a formal arrest warrant for Mr. Di on July 30, 2002, while he was still in the labor camp.

He was sentenced to a four-year prison term on September 28, 2002, and ordered to serve time in jail before his labor camp term expired. In Harbin's new prison he was beaten again. After he was transferred to Daqing Prison in Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, he suffered more torture.

From December 2002 to April 2003, when it was 20 degrees below zero, or even colder, prison inmates, following orders by officials, stripped him naked and put him into a large bucket full of cold water. They also stuck a rubber hose up his anus.

When he reported the torture to the prison officials, they refused to address the complaints. The prison officials even hid him when representatives from the Provincial Judicial Bureau visited, so that he couldn't complain to them about how he was being treated.

Dr. Li was arrested on March 1, 2008, for telling people that the CCP staged the Tiananmen Square "self-immolation." He was beaten and his home was ransacked.

On March 24, 2008, he was taken to Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp for a year. He was shocked with electric batons and made to do hard labor until 9:00 p.m. with no breaks. He was also tied to an iron chair for eight days.

Background

In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.

The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners over the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.

Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the 610 Office, on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.

Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.