(Minghui.org) Mr. Liu Xitong, a renowned calligrapher in his 60s, has recently filed a criminal complaint against former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin for ordering the persecution of Falun Gong.
Because he practices Falun Gong, Mr. Liu has been arrested more than 20 times over the past 16 years. He was given a three-year sentence at a forced labor camp in 2003, and a four-year prison term in 2007.
Mr. Liu was severely tortured at Shandong Prison. Both of his legs were broken. He became deaf in his left ear. All of his teeth became loose, and a concussion led to vertigo.
Inmates were encouraged by the prison authorities to torture Falun Gong practitioners as part of the effort to force them to renounce their belief. Prisoners were rewarded with reduced sentences if they successfully forced practitioners to write statements renouncing Falun Gong.
An inmate once said to Mr. Liu: “We are a dedicated team trained to 'transform' you Falun Gong practitioners. We are even more experienced than the 610 Office or the Domestic Security Division. You'd better write the statement, otherwise we have enough torture methods to torment you to death. And we won't be held accountable for it.”
There were several times that Mr. Liu gave in under the torture and wrote statements renouncing Falun Gong. However, when he showed regret later on, the inmates applied even crueler tortures.
“I was severely injured. The mental trauma is even harder to recover from. The persecution was also a disaster to my family. When I was in prison, the police constantly came to our home to harass my wife and two daughters. My wife's health deteriorated; she almost died last year. My brother-in-law was so traumatized by the persecution that he passed away during the second year of my arrest. My elderly mom also passed away, longing for her imprisoned son,” Mr. Liu wrote in his complaint.
“In this, the most brutal and outrageous persecution in Chinese history, Falun Gong practitioners aren't the only victims. Jiang Zemin has destroyed the morality of those who took part in the persecution and has turned them into demons. Jiang must be brought to justice.”
Endless Torture
At Shandong Prison, the inmates tortured Mr. Liu with a wide variety of methods – mostly with everyday objects, including pouring salt water on his wounds and then brushing them, inserting a burning cigarette into his nose, burning his skin with a lighter, pricking his fingers and toes with a needle, wiping chemicals in his eyes, or force-feeding him with filthy water from the bathroom.
On the first day that Mr. Liu was taken to Shandong Prison, the inmates scraped his armpits with a shoe brush, beat him with a plastic slipper or with their bare hands, verbally abused him, struck his joints with a wooden stick, and pulled a toothbrush back and forth between his fingers. The torture lasted for more than ten hours.
Mr. Liu filed a complaint about the inmates torturing him, which was circulated among the inmates and resulted in escalated torture.
“They pinched my skin and twisted it back and forth, like tightening and loosening a screw. They used all their strength to torture me like this. When I screamed because of the pain, they laughed at me and continued the torture. My skin festered the next day.
“While twisting the flesh on my body, the inmates also struck my head. My eyes became red and I had knots all over my head.
“The inmates didn't allow me to sleep. They forced me into a half-squat position, with my hands placed on my knees. I was so weak that I fainted several times. But the inmates woke me up by beating and verbally abusing me,” Mr. Liu recalled.
The inmates once tied up Mr. Liu with his head buried between his legs, and his hands touching his feet. The blood drained from his face and his heart beat violently. He almost lost consciousness.
Another torment was to demand that Mr. Liu shout insults against Falun Gong, the practice's founder and his family members. The inmates threatened Mr. Liu with sleep deprivation or denial of restroom use if he didn't comply.
While tying him up in a spread-eagle position, the inmates placed a glaring light bulb in front of his face around the clock. This torture lasted for 20 days. His wrists and ankles were injured by the tightened ropes. His body shook uncontrollably and his limbs became numb.
In another variation of the tying tortures, the inmates wrapped a rope around Mr. Liu's neck and tightened it, making it extremely difficult for him to breathe. Meanwhile, they placed a metal bucket on his head and struck it repeatedly, causing deafening noise and vibrations.
The inmates supplied Mr. Liu with minimal food so as to restrict his restroom use. They sometimes tormented him by suspending a steamed bun in front of him and forcing him to grip it with his mouth.
They sexually assaulted him with a stick and humiliated him further by forcing the stick into his mouth.
After 15 days of such torture, Mr. Liu developed infections in his lungs. He was on the verge of death.
Public Humiliation
In addition to physical torture, the inmates publicly humiliated Mr. Liu as punishment for retracting the statements he'd written under pressure to defame Falun Gong.
In public displays reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, the inmates forced Mr. Liu to wear a white hat, hung slanderous signs from his neck, and pasted paper slips on his face. He was forced to bow down, with his hands hanging in front of his body. The inmates stripped him, beat and verbally abused him. They twisted his ears, hit his nose, dug at his eyes and slapped him in the face.
“The inmates were given the power to torture me however they liked. It's really hard for most people to imagine how cruel the torture was, if they didn't witness it themselves,” Mr. Liu said.
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 during 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.
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