(Minghui.org) Mr. Huo Yanguang, 34, a rising satellite scientist, filed a criminal complaint to the Supreme People's Court and Procuratorate on July 21, 2015 against the former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin for two wrongful imprisonments and his being expelled from school for his belief in Falun Gong.
Mr. Huo was a brilliant, energetic young man in 2004. He had just graduated from Chinese Geology University with an outstanding academic record and was recommended to be accepted at the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications of the Chinese Academy of Sciences–the most prominent laboratory in the country.
In his hometown, a small urban area in the northern plateau province of Shanxi, this was big news. Mr. Huo quickly became well-known, and his parents were inundated with congratulatory messages.
A Crucial Choice
With a life of great possibility before him, his future was just as quickly snuffed out. Mr. Huo was arrested a year later for talking to people about the persecution of Falun Gong.
“This was a hard choice,” he says. “With the persecution in full swing, I knew I might end up losing everything if I chose to speak out."
“As I read horrific persecution accounts, I told myself that I couldn't remain silent. The world needs to know what's happening.”
With every information channel strictly censored by the communist regime, he went to Tiananmen Square to protest. He held up a banner saying “Falun Dafa is good” and was immediately arrested.
The police detained and tortured him in a forced labor camp for almost two years. He was expelled from school shortly after he was released. The authorities deprived hundreds of staff members a year-end bonus as punishment for allowing a Falun Gong practitioner in the school.
Blacklisted for his belief, Mr. Huo lost many job offers once the employer, who feared guilt by association, found that he practiced Falun Gong.
He was arrested again in 2008 for giving out informational DVDs about Falun Gong and sentenced to two and a half years of forced labor.
While Mr. Huo was detained, his parents were terrified by widespread misunderstandings about Falun Gong in their city. People who used to respect them now pointed fingers and made comments behind their backs as they walked down the street. This added more anguish to their already devastated hearts.
“With the pressure from the persecution, my father’s hair turned gray, my mother suffered from depression, and my sister’s academic performance dropped significantly.”
“My parents lived a frugal life in order to save money to travel to Beijing to visit me. If they couldn’t come, they would let my sister, who was attending college in Beijing, visit me. Every time she came to see me, she had to get up at 3 am to catch the bus. After several transfers, she arrived at the labor camp before 6 am to sign up for a visitation slot.
“My grandparents passed away while I was detained in the labor camp. It pains me that I couldn't see them for one last time.”
After he was released in 2011, Mr. Huo was still unable to find a job. He is now in poor health from unremitting torture at the labor camp. “I often experience twitching in my left hand and face. I also have frequent headaches, especially at night. For many nights, I couldn't fall asleep because of the headaches.”
Turn for the Worse
Shortly after Mr. Huo's arrest at Tienanmen Square in January 2005, he was taken to Dongcheng Detention Center.
The guards often beat him, hit his head against the wall, or stomped on him if he didn’t follow their orders. Knowing that he cared for the well-being of other inmates, the guards threatened to deny food to other inmates if he refused to renounce his belief.
After four months of detention, he was transferred to Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. The guards forced him to sit on a tiny stool without moving for more than ten hours every day. The inmates would beat him if he relaxed even a little.
Mr. Huo was deprived of sleep and wasn’t allowed to use the restroom. The guards once held him down on the ground and stuffed a mop cloth into his mouth. “It was so painful. It felt like my mouth was burning,” he wrote in his complaint.
Force-Fed Unknown Drugs
Guards at the labor camp forced him to take unknown drugs. When he refused, they forced his mouth open. One inmate placed his fist into Huo's mouth while guards dropped in the drugs.
“My mouth and jaw were in excruciating pain,” Mr. Huo said.
As the drugs took effect, he fell unconscious. Guards tied him to a bed and held his mouth down with a strap for a month. Moving or changing positions became a luxury for him. Inmates were told to cover him with a heavy winter comforter on hot summer days. He was not able to eat or drink water. He was emaciated.
“Sometimes when I woke up, inmates would slap me in the face or beat me with a stick, mostly on the sensitive parts of my body, such as fingers or the inside of my thighs. My face and fingers were swollen most of the time. The torture was extremely painful.”
His mouth festered from the mouth strap. Unconscious most of the time, he was incontinent, and the bedding was not changed. Sometimes inmates forced him to drink his own urine.
When Mr. Huo was conscious yet extremely weak, the guards forced him to write statements renouncing Falun Gong.
During his two years of imprisonment at the labor camp, he was forced to perform hard labor every day after he was released from the bed. When he refused, guards would strike him on the head.
“The guards at the labor camp had undergone special training. They are extremely good at manipulating people. They receive huge monetary rewards for torturing us. Some of them treated it as a pleasure and tremendously enjoyed it,” Mr. Huo stated.
He fell unconscious again in November 2006. A month later, the guards released him on medical parole.
Second Imprisonment: Force-Feeding
Despite everything that had happened to him, Mr. Huo didn't stop telling people about the persecution. He was arrested a second time while distributing informational DVDs about Falun Gong outside a university on April 17, 2008.
Security personnel pushed him into the trunk of a car and took him to the security office. “I heard them talking about not letting me run away, because each of them will get 500 to 1,000 yuan reward for arresting a Falun Gong practitioner,” Mr. Huo said.
He was taken to a detention center and embarked on a hunger strike to protest the arrest. Under the guards' direction, four inmates held him down in a chair while a nurse inserted a feeding tube down his nose, into his stomach. He was force-fed with extremely salty milk.
“There was already a lot of salt in the milk, yet the guard told the inmates to put even more salt into it. It tasted salty, bitter, and pungent. The pain was excruciating. After the force-feeding, my nose bled.” Mr. Huo described the harrowing torture at the detention center.
On one occasion, the nurse inserted and pulled out the tube repeatedly to increase his suffering. “The pain was so excruciating that I quit the hunger strike at that point,” he recalled.
Because he did Falun Gong exercises in his cell, guards put heavy chains on his hands and feet.
Beatings and Other Torture
Before transferring him to the labor camp, inmates tied him to a bed, with his ankles and feet hanging in the air. They put a small stool on his ankles and sat on it. At the same time, others beat him all over his body, especially on his face and hands.
Inmates would often kick and stomp on his head, face, arms, and feet, which resulted in long-term injuries. He began to experience difficulty talking and walking.
At Tuanhe Labor Camp, he was subjected to many forms of torture, including standing for a long time, hard labor, and being detained in solitary confinement. The guards often confiscated the money sent to him by his family.
Mr. Huo was released on October 16, 2010 after two and a half years.
“My parents were always anxious, distressed, and terrified. They often shed tears when no one was around,” Mr. Huo related his parents' agony during the four years and five months of his two wrongful imprisonments.
The police continued to harass him after he was released. Since 2011, the police required him to report to them every month and to the neighborhood committee every three months.
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 in 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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