(Minghui.org) Mr. Duan Xianghui, 55, was an employee of the Beihu District Market Supervision Bureau in Chenzhou City, Hunan Province. He took up Falun Gong in 2011. He was arrested in July 2020 for talking to his colleagues about the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong since 1999.
He was later sentenced to one year in prison and a 1,000 yuan fine. He served his term in Wangling Prison in Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province, where he was brutally tortured by inmates. He was fired from his government job after his prison release.
In Wangling Prison, the guards instructed the inmates to persecute the imprisoned practitioners, especially targeting the ones who held firm to their faith. It was the norm for inmates to beat and scold the practitioners. The tortures included pouring cold water all over the practitioners’ bodies on cold days, forcing them to do extreme leg splits which could cause injury, not allowing them to use the restroom but instead forcing them to jump or run, slapping them in the face, and depriving them of sleep. Mr. Duan endured all of the above tortures.
The inmates beat him almost every day for about 20 days, from late January to early February 2021, sometimes two or three times a day. One of the inmates, Xue Yaojun, claimed that under the request of prison instructor Liu Xiaoliang, they set out to break the practitioners’ willpower. They wanted Mr. Duan to succumb and be obedient.
Other torture methods used on Falun Gong practitioners included forcing them to sit on the tiger bench or handcuffing them for more than ten days.
Falun Gong practitioners were also forced to watch videos that defamed Falun Gong, and programs promoting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), write articles against Falun Gong every week, and sing songs praising the CCP and defaming Falun Gong before meals. The inmates beat up any practitioners who spoke up against the brainwashing.
Mr. Duan was fired after being released from prison in July 2021. Not only did he lose his income, but was also deprived of his pension for his 30 years of government service since 1984.
The Beihu District Market Supervision Bureau where he worked began to purchase pension insurance for its employees from Social Security Bureau in 2014, thus Mr. Duan was considered to have paid into the pension insurance for only six years at the time of his arrest.
According to China’s pension regulations, there must be at least 15 years of pension contribution payments before one is eligible for pension benefits when reaching the retirement age of 64. Having been fired from his job, Mr. Duan, now 55, still has to pay nine more years of pension insurance premiums before he meets the 15-year minimum contribution requirements and reaches age 64. The amount of pension benefits will be very low, compared to what he would have received had he remained employed by the government.
The staff from the Beihu District Social Security Bureau told him that this was punishment for his practicing Falun Gong.