(Minghui.org) Mr. Wang Zexuan from Chishui City, Guizhou Province, was arrested on August 9, 2023 for telling people about the persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been targeted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1999.
Mr. Wang Zexuan is currently held in the Zunyi City No. 3 Detention Center. Details about his arrest are not clear.
Mr. Wang, a native of Hejiang County, Sichuan Province, worked as a teacher and also opened a photography studio and a restaurant. He took up Falun Gong in 1997. He credits the practice for helping him quit many bad habits, including smoking, drinking and gambling.
Two months after the persecution started in July 1999, he was arrested and detained for more than ten days. He was arrested again in early May 2000 and detained. For the next two decades, he faced frequent harassment and arrests. He served two labor camp terms and a prison term totaling 7.5 years.
Two Labor Camp Terms
For making informational materials about Falun Gong, Mr. Wang was arrested in March 2003 by the police in Chishui City, Guizhou Province, about 60 miles from his hometown in Hejiang County. The police gave him two years at the Guizhou Province Men’s Forced Labor Camp. The guards ordered the inmates to beat him, causing him to lose consciousness.
After Mr. Wang was released one year ahead of time, he moved to the northeastern city of Shenyang in Liaoning Province, about 1,700 miles from his hometown, for work. The Hejiang police followed him there and frequently harassed him. Pressured by the police, the factory he worked at fired him, and he was forced to return to Hejiang.
Mr. Wang was arrested again in the winter of 2005 by the police in both Chishui and Hejiang. At the Chishui City Detention Center, the guards tied him to a tree and whipped him with a leather belt. He was taken to the Guizhou Province Men’s Forced Labor Camp in March 2006 to serve a three-year term.
Three guards, including Wang, Tu Zhongjiu and one whose name was unknown, beat Mr. Wang on May 16, 2007, attempting to force him to renounce Falun Gong. His body was covered with injuries and bruises. To prevent him from shouting, the guards taped his mouth and continued to beat him. When they became exhausted from the beating, they grabbed a kettle of boiling water and emptied it over Mr. Wang. He was severely burned and was hospitalized for two months.
Torture reenactment: Boiling water poured over a practitioner
Mr. Wang was released in November 2008. He stayed in a deserted house in Hejiang, while he continued to face police harassment.
Sentenced to Three Years and Seven Months in prison
Mr. Wang was arrested again on June 7, 2012, for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong in Luzhou City, which has jurisdiction over Hejiang. He was held at the Naxi District Detention Center in Luzhou. The Naxi District Court held a hearing on his case on January 10, 2014. His family confirmed in late July 2014 that he was sentenced to three years and seven months. He was transferred to the Jiazhou Prison on November 5, 2014.
Since 2006, the Jiazhou Prison has been used to incarcerate male Falun Gong practitioners in Sichuan Province. Practitioners held there suffered a variety of cruel torture methods. In the past 17 years, at least 24 Falun Gong practitioners were persecuted to death in the prison or died shortly after they were released.
In one of the torture methods, practitioners were only given 20 seconds to eat. The practitioners were forced to sit in the double-lotus position and were not allowed to lift the bowl off the ground. They had to lower their heads and eat like animals. After a prison guard counted from 1 to 20, the practitioners had to immediately stop eating.
Other torture methods included long hours of standing, sleep deprivation, electric shocks, beatings, and being forced to do arduous unpaid labor. Practitioners were not allowed to talk with one another and were ordered to write “thought reports” and “guarantee statements” to renounce their faith. Those who refused to follow orders were placed under “strict management,” sprayed with pepper water, or tortured by other inmates. Sometimes the guards placed motorcycle helmets over the practitioners’ heads, right after pepper-spraying them. The guards called this torture “riding a motorcycle.”
After Mr. Wang was released, he moved from place to place to hide from the police. Unable to find him, the police often called his family and harassed them over the phone. When the Hejiang police called his family again in 2021, they claimed that as long as he returned home and promised not to practice Falun Gong, they would not harass him. It’s not clear whether Mr. Wang complied.
Related reports:
Three Practitioners Facing Illegal Sentence for Possessing 34 Shen Yun DVDs
Torture Used by the Chinese Communist Regime: Scalding with Boiling Water
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