(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioners are treated quite differently from ordinary convicted criminals when they are sent to prison. Criminal inmates first get three months of training on the rules, drills, and prison labor.
Practitioners are put directly in solitary confinement to try to force them to give up their belief. They are humiliated, beaten, and abused while handcuffed.
Torture illustration: Suspended by handcuffed arms
This report documents four cases of Falun Gong practitioners who were persecuted in Yunnan No. 1 Prison from 2010 to 2015.
Mr. Zhang Liang
Mr. Zhang was sent to prison in 2012 for three years and was first held in solitary for three months. He could not bear the intense abuse and wrote a statement renouncing his belief.
In 2014, he reflected on what he had done. After he was released from solitary, he declared his statement null and void and said that he would continue to practice Falun Gong.
The police then ordered four inmates to handcuff him from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. in a metal cage used for violent inmates. With only his toes touching the ground, his hands were handcuffed behind his back with two sets of handcuffs.
From 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next morning, Mr. Zhang was tied to a metal death bed with handcuffs and shackles. This continued for three days until he was incontinent and delirious.
Torture illustration: Death bed
Mr. Mao Danxin
Mr. Mao, in his 40s, was sentenced to prison for four years near the end of 2012. He was placed in solitary confinement for four months. For 15 of those days, a leg was shackled and both hands were handcuffed in a position where he was forced to remain standing.
He was sworn at, beaten, starved, exposed to the cold, not allowed to wash his clothes or bathe, and had no access to drinking water and his access to a toilet restricted.
He was forced to sit on a small stool for three days and 14 hours without moving. This ended only after he was severely debilitated and he could not digest any food. He was still held in solitary until his sentence ended.
Mr. Ma Xuyong
When Mr. Ma was sentenced to prison in 2012, he resisted his incarceration by going on a hunger strike and was force-fed. In 2015, after he was transferred to another part of the prison, he was locked in solitary confinement and tortured. He was forced to do hard labor every day from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next day.
Mr. Gao Zemeng
Mr. Gao was subjected to so many different forms of torture and abuse after he was sentenced to prison in 2014 that he lost the will to live. Mr. Gao used the blade of a pencil sharpener to slice an artery in his neck, but the blade was too small to sever the vessel and he lived. [Editor’s note: Committing suicide does not conform to the principles of Falun Gong. Practitioners should not use this excessive response to persecution.]
He then sliced a vein in his left hand. An inmate realized the next day that Mr. Gao had attempted suicide when he did not get out of the bed. Mr. Gao was taken to the prison hospital for his wound to be disinfected and treated.
After Mr. Gao was discharged from the prison hospital, the police ordered five inmates to handcuff and shackle him and lock him in a metal cage. His right hand was handcuffed to a bunk bed inside the cage, and he had to wear the shackles at night while he slept.
Eventually Mr. Gao could not endure the abuse. Against his will, he wrote a statement giving up his belief.
The shackles were removed, leaving only his right hand still handcuffed to the bed. Later, he was locked in a small room until his release.
All content published on this website is copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
