(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Li Hongkui was serving a seven-year prison term at the Daqing Prison. His term was to end on September 21, 2012. However, he passed away on August 28, 2012 as a result of brutal persecution, just 20 days before his scheduled release. Mr. Li was 61 years old. He was an engineer at the Harbin Post Office, and he was the coordinator at the Harbin Falun Gong practice site.
Mr. Li strived to live up to the standard of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance once he began to practice Falun Gong. He was named “Model Worker” and “Advanced Worker” at the provincial level several years in a row. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to persecute Falun Gong in July 1999, Mr. Li was illegally arrested three times and sentenced to prison twice. In total, he spent ten years in prison and suffered torture.
Mr. Li's second prison term was to end on September 21, 2012. The Daqing Prison notified Mr. Li's family on the evening of August 13 that Mr. Li had had a brain hemorrhage and was sent to the Daqing No. 4 Hospital for an operation. Mr. Li passed away at 5:14 a.m. on August 28.
Mr. Li was born in July 1951, and he attended the School of Posts and Telecommunications in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, and the Harbin Institute of Technology. He worked as an engineer at the Harbin Posts and Telecommunications Administration. Mr. Li was involved in a technological innovation project at the Harbin Post Office, Daowai branch, in 1976, and he worked on automation for two years. His work was highly regarded.
Mr. Li worked on another automation project at the Harbin Post Office, Dongli branch, in 1978 and was transferred to the Harbin Post Office. Mr. Li took his job seriously and responsibly, he never complained when he had to work overtime, and he was very considerate of others. For 14 consecutive years, from 1978 to 1991, Mr. Li was recognized as an “Advanced Worker” at the Harbin Post Office, and he was also recognized as an “Active Participant” at the city-level workers union. During that time, Mr. Li constructed self-turning billboards, television monitors for mail transport, wireless intercoms, parcel sorters, and other innovations.
Mr. Li began practicing Falun Gong in May 1994. Following the principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, he became even more dedicated to his job and achieved harmony with his colleagues. He was highly praised by people around him and was recognized as a “Model Worker” and “Advanced Worker” at the city level for several more consecutive years.
Mr. Li attended Master Li Hongzhi's Falun Gong lecture series in Harbin on August 5, 1994. Mr. Li became the coordinator of the Harbin Falun Gong practice site in early 1999.
On July 19, 1999, the day before the CCP began openly persecuting Falun Gong, Mr. Li was arrested by the Harbin Police Department and he was detained for 35 days. In October of the same year, he was arrested again and sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison; the term lasted from June 19, 2000 to December 18, 2003. He was held in the Harbin No. 3 Prison.
The Harbin 610 Office and the Harbin Police Department conducted large-scale arrests of Falun Gong practitioners on September 23, 2005. Mr. Li and many other practitioners were arrested, detained, and sentenced.
Mr. Li was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Harbin Daoli District Court. He was sent to Ward 4 of the Daqing Prison before the 2007 Chinese New Year (February 15). To protest the persecution, Mr. Li refused to wear a prison uniform, and as a result he was brutally tortured many times at the Daqing Prison.
Ward 4 deputy chief Chu Zhongxin at the Daqing Prison initiated a so-called “tidying-up” on February 17, 2009, when he directed punishment upon four practitioners in Ward 4: Mr. Zhai Zhibin, Mr. Li Chao, Mr. Li Hongkui, and Mr. Liu Guifu. The practitioners were forced to participate in morning and afternoon “training,” which was actually corporal punishment. They refused to participate and were immediately beaten by Ward 4 personnel Chu Zhongxin, Liu Guoqiang, and Li Jinhao. As a result, Mr. Zhai's head was swollen and bled profusely. Mr. Li and the other two practitioners also sustained serious injuries on their arms, legs, and hips.
For nearly all of 2009 the prison withheld meals from practitioners who refused to wear prison uniforms. Mr. Li was severely beaten numerous times until he was bedridden for many days, unable to care for himself. During this time, Mr. Li's wife was in very poor health, and upon learning that her husband was subjected to nine rounds of brutal beatings within five days, she went with her son to the Daqing Prison and the Daqing Bureau of Justice to request a meeting with her husband and to ask the authorities to address the beatings. However, the Daqing Prison gave various excuses to prevent Mr. Li's family from visiting him.
Over a dozen Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered at the Daqing Prison. Mr. Xu Jishan, 41, was tied to a wooden board and carried into a bathroom by criminal inmates, who tortured him there under the instruction of group leader Li Fengjiang and counselor Zhang Dezhi. By the time Mr. Xu was brought to the emergency room, he had already passed away.
Mr. Yuan Qingjiang, 40, passed away on the night of July 23, 2005, after years of cruel torture and abuse at the Daqing Prison. Mr. Yuan was so thin that he was only skin and bones and had severe ascites (extreme accumulation of fluid in the abdomen).
Mr. Zhu Hongbing was an employee at the No. 7 Oil Extraction Plant of the Daqing Petroleum Administration Bureau. He suffered seven years of persecution at the Daqing Hongweixing Prison, and he was in critical condition when he left prison on December 29, 2008. He passed away on June 18, 2009.
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