(Minghui.org) Ms. Li Jingxia, in her 80s, lives in Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province. She was arrested four times between 2000 and 2005 for refusing to renounce Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime.
The retired teacher was brutally tortured during each of her detentions. Officer Niu Gang once told her, “I’d have raped you had you been younger!”
The following is Ms. Li’s personal account of her ordeal.
Why I Refuse to Renounce Falun Gong
Before I started practicing Falun Gong, I had many illnesses. Falun Gong helped me to gain mental and physical health. It also teaches me to follow the “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” to be a good person.
Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched its persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, however, it has slandered the practice. I went out to talk to people to help them learn the truth of Falun Gong and the persecution. I was thus incarcerated and severely tortured.
Police Incentivize Criminals to Beat Practitioners Together
We were planning to appeal for Falun Gong to the central government in Beijing in December 2000. As we entered the train station in Changchun, I witnessed a policeman hitting a practitioner, who fell and rolled on the ground. The policeman continued beating the practitioner.
We were stopped from boarding the train and detained with other practitioners in a small room in the train station. A guard told a thief detained with us that if he beat a practitioner, they would set him free. The thief went on a spree of hitting us along with the guards. The practitioner who came with me fell to the ground, and the thief and guards stomped on her face. They kicked and bruised my legs. All the practitioners detained there were brutally attacked.
Policeman Xia Zelin, who later died in an accident, forced me to pay a fine of 10,000 yuan. He wrote the following note as a receipt, which lacked an official stamp or seal:
Officer Xia Zelin’s “receipt” dated 12/19/2000. It reads: “Ms. Li paid a fine of 10,000 yuan.”
Skull Deformed from Beating
Some practitioners in Changchun intercepted government TV networks in 2002 and broadcast programs countering the government’s propaganda against Falun Gong. After that, the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, issued an order to arrest all practitioners who refused to renounce their faith in Falun Gong. Changchun launched a massive operation to arrest of Falun Gong practitioners. The Qiqihar Political and Legal Affairs Committee mandated that each police station must arrest a minimum of 15 practitioners.
Torture re-enactment: covering the victim’s head with a plastic bag
Three policemen from Anshun Road Police Station arrived at my door after ten o’clock in the evening. As soon as they entered my apartment, they confiscated my books and other personal belongings, and then took me to the local police station.
As I entered the building, I heard miserable screams from practitioners who were being tortured. The sound of suffering chilled my bones in the quiet of the night.
Policeman Liu Dayi interrogated me: “Why do you practice Falun Gong?”
“For good health.”
He cursed at me and covered my head with a plastic bag. He cuffed my hands behind my back and struck my head very hard with a club, which deformed my skull.
I was moved to the No.2 Detention Center, where I was detained for 15 days. There, I saw a practitioner who had been tortured: her entire body was covered with bruises, her face was completely deformed, and her legs were swollen.
Another detained practitioner was in her early twenties and from the countryside. Her entire family practiced Falun Gong. Her parents were incarcerated. The grains they harvested that year were confiscated by the village Communist Party committee. Their local police removed the roof from their house. She was arrested at work and had no clothes to change into.
Hands Cuffed Behind the Back and More Beatings
On a spring day in 2003, station commander Lin Tian came to my home with four policemen and one policewoman to take me to the police station. At that moment, my son called. Tian snatched my phone from me and yelled, “We’re taking your mother to Anshun Road Police Station!”
I resisted, so two of them forcibly carried me down the stairs of my building and into the police vehicle. I was locked up in a small room at night that held various instruments of torture.
I was detained in the No.1 Detention Center for four months. One day, while practitioners were sending forth righteous thoughts, the head of the detention center (named Hao) kicked practitioner Ms. Wang on her head, bouncing her against the concrete wall. When confronted by Ms. Wang that it was illegal to torture practitioners, Hao gathered more guards to drag her and another practitioner into the hallway and brutally beat them. After that, the guards tied their limbs together behind their back. They were then carried back to the cell, but they could not sit or lie down.
Torture re-enactment: handcuffs and shackles connected in back. Kneeling, the victim's hands are handcuffed behind the back and then connected to the shackles from the back, where the hands and feet are tightened up to extreme limits.
Brutal Torture I Suffered in Police Custody
I put a copy of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party in my office one day in 2005. My action was caught on surveillance cameras.
Police knocked on my door that same day. Commander Sun asked whether I had given copies of the Nine Commentaries to others. They claimed that they had video to prove that I did. They then searched and ransacked my residence.
I told them that they should videotape the scene of my house then. I said that no human being would have done anything like this to anyone, and that they should know very well what Falun Gong is and what kind of people Falun Gong practitioners are. I asked, “Don’t you want your descendants to remember anything nice about you?”
They wanted to take me away, but I refused to comply. Deputy commander Niu Gang assured me that they would not hit me. However, as soon as we arrived at Anshun Road Police Station, Niu Gang covered the window and began to torture me. After midnight, they used the “extreme body stretching” method on me: my arms were stretched to their limits, my feet were tied, and a bed rail was pressed directly under my chest–all while I was being interrogated and beaten.
Re-enactment of a torture: “flying the airplane”
Because I refused to cooperate with them, Niu Gang tortured me with a method called “flying the airplane:” I was made to bend my back in front of a wall with my arms stretched out to touch the wall. It was excruciating. Niu slapped my face and forced me to tell him where I got the books.
When he got tired, he tied my hands behind my back and used an electric lighter to burn my ears. When I turned away from the fire, he circled the fire around my head to burn me. My ears were severely burnt, and oil flew out of the burnt skin and flesh.
He removed my shoes and socks and then stomped on my feet, not stopping even as my feet bled. When he was tired, he opened up the Nine Commentaries and read a section on scoundrels. “Scoundrels? I am indeed a scoundrel. If you were younger, I would have raped you right here.” Then, he put his feet on my belly and kicked it. He took off my belt and whipped my body and face so hard that the belt cracked.
My head was swollen, and my face was deformed from the torture. After midnight, Jiao, the head of the police station, said, “We’ll take you to a good place to rest.” They took me to the stairway between the first and second floor, where they made me stand on top of a stool and tied my hands to a heating pipe. They removed the stool so that my feet dangled over the stairs.
Niu watched me. I gritted my teeth the entire night to endure the excruciating pain. My shoulders and arms were numb after they let me down the next morning. To this day, I have no feeling in my thumbs.
Perpetrators’ contact information:Anshun Road Police StationAddress: #61 Anshun Road, Longsha District, Qiqihar City, 161005.Phone: +86-452-2812398
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Category: Torture of Women
