Human Rights Activist Witnesses Torture of Falun Gong Practitioners While in China

(Minghui.org) Mr. Ma Yongtao, Director of China Human Rights Watch who currently lives in the Netherlands, recently recounted the torture of Falun Gong practitioners that he witnessed while being detained in China in April 2014.

Torture and Strict Management

Mr. Ma was held at the Haidian Detention Center in Beijing. He shared the 350 square feet cell with 28 people. He noticed that Falun Gong practitioners were singled out with green vests, while all the other detainees were given yellow vests.

He said the practitioners he met were all “very kind and peaceful.” They weren’t like what the Chinese Communist Party had portrayed in the propaganda.

Mr. Ma recalled that for every cell, the guards appointed a few inmates to be in charge. In most cases, the guards wouldn’t torture the practitioners themselves, but instigated the inmates to do it.

One of the most cruel tortures was to sit on a hard wood board, while placing one’s hands on the knees and keeping one’s back straight. The victims were often forced to sit still for hours. For regular inmates, they at most got a warning if they couldn’t keep the position. But for Falun Gong practitioners, they would face severe punishment, with them being forced to stand without moving overnight in the hallway, while placing their arms on the sides of their bodies. After one sleepless night, they would still be subjected to the sitting torture the next day.

When practitioners resisted the torture, the guards would handcuff them to the shackles, leaving them unable to stand up. The guards then dragged them to visit the over 20 cells in the detention center and forced them to say to the inmates in each cell, “Don’t learn from me. I’m punished because I caused trouble in my cell.” Some practitioners were cuffed this way for two weeks, including when they had meals or using the restroom.

Torture illustration: handcuffed to the shackles

No Doubt about the Organ Harvesting

Many reports and investigations have provided creditable evidence about the ongoing organ harvesting in China. Mr. Ma said that one can draw a conclusion by asking a few simple questions. The first is, “How many death row prisoners are there in China and how many transplants are the Chinese hospitals performing every year?” If the two numbers don’t match, the gap must have been filled by other sources of organs.

For many death row prisoners, their families only received their ashes, meaning the government could do anything to their bodies. One of Mr. Ma’s friends has been trying to appeal for his son’s death sentence for over twenty years, and in the end all her got were some ashes.

Mr. Ma revealed that when he was detained, he was also subjected to physical examination and had his blood drawn, something the practitioners frequently experienced while facing appalling torture at the same time. Many human rights experts believe that the authorities collected such information to create a database for organ matching.

“From everything I’ve heard, I have no doubt that forced organ harvesting is happening in China.” he said.

Grateful to Falun Gong Practitioners for Developing Software to Break Internet Censorship

Since the onset of the persecution, Falun Gong practitioners have been using all available channels to raise awareness about the atrocities in China. “If they didn’t do it, people outside wouldn’t have known (what had happened) and it’d have been easier for the CCP to deceive the world.” Mr. Ma said.

He said that he is very grateful to Falun Gong practitioners for developing software to break through the internet censorship and giving him and numerous others access to uncensored information and see through the CCP’s lies. He said he was especially impressed when reading Nine Commentaries on Communist Party, which is a groundbreaking book that exposes the CCP’s decades of deception in great depth.

Yang Chong, one of the initiators of the Southern Street Movement, also said that Falun Gong practitioners’ efforts to spread information through radio, TV and the Internet has had a huge impact on society. Many people have begun to wake up to the CCP’s lies, thanks to the free information.

Yang has long found that the CCP is deceiving the Chinese public with its propaganda media outlets. So he began to listen to overseas radio stations and use software to browse the Internet. After he read Nine Commentaries on Communist Party, he decided to quit the Young Pioneers under the CCP.