(Minghui.org) Mr. Yi Tiezheng, 57, suffered damaged vision while serving a three-year prison term for not renouncing his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1999.
Two years after he was released from the prison in January 2017, his vision still hasn't recovered.
Below is his own account of the imprisonment.
My name is Yi Tiezheng. I was a driver for Liaohe Oilfield Water Supply Company in Panjin City, Liaoning Province. I started to practice Falun Gong in 1998.
I was on my way to work on the morning of January 24, 2014 when I was arrested by four plainclothes officers from Panjin City Domestic Security Division. They took me to my house and ransacked my place with several officers from Xinglong Police Station. They confiscated a computer, Falun Gong-related materials, and tens of thousands of yuan in cash.
I was taken to the Panjin Police Department and interrogated until 6 pm. The police then took me to the hospital for a physical examination before taking me to Panjin Detention Center.
The detention center accepted me despite my high blood pressure. I was detained there for two and a half years before being transferred to the prison.
During that period, I appeared in Xinglongtai District Court three times, on December 5, 2014, February 13 and October 30, 2015.
I was given three years in prison at the last hearing. I appealed the sentence to Panjin Intermediate Court, which ruled on May 13, 2016 to uphold the verdict.
I was taken to Jinzhou City Prison on July 11, 2016 and then transferred to Kangjiashan Prison in Shenyang City one month later, on August 19. I was assigned to No.4 Ward.
After lunch on the first day, four inmates took me to a bathroom, where no surveillance cameras were installed. They forced me to sit on a small plastic stool with my face facing a wall and then tried to split my legs wide apart so that my body would lean toward and eventually touch the wall.
When the attempt failed due to the awkward position, they hit me with my belt and kicked me on the back, neck, and head. They also scraped my ribs with a sharp wooden stick. They poured cold water on me from the head down.
The torture continued until 6 pm. My body was covered in blood. To cover up their crimes, the inmates brought in clean clothes and told me to put it on. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even stand up, so they didn't force me to change clothes.
Then the ward chief Qi Gang, who instigated the inmates to torture me, came in. He kicked me in the head to see if I really could not get up.
Seeing me collapsed on the ground, he had someone measure my blood pressure, which had dropped to nearly zero. He immediately sent me to the hospital to give me some oxygen and an IV infusion.
I was taken back to the prison around 8 pm, where they continued to torture me. The four inmates who beat me earlier were assigned to watch me again. They forced me to sit on a small stool without moving and then pricked my fingertips and head with toothpicks. One inmate even put a plastic bag on my head and blew smoke in my face.
My buttocks festered because of the long hours of sitting. The inmates also applied salt on the wounds to aggravate the pain.
Later on, the guards frequently shocked me with electric batons. I went on a hunger strike to protest the torture and was force-fed.
From the frequent beatings, I lost most of the vision in my right eye, which hasn't recovered to this day.
After I was released on January 23, 2017, my former employer fired me, leaving me in a dire financial situation.
Officers from Xinglong Police Station harassed me at home during the CCP's 19th National Congress in 2018. They rifled through my home and videotaped my photo of Master Li, the founder of Falun Gong. They threatened to monitor me for another five years.
Wang Fong (王峰): presiding judge, Xinglongtai Court: +86-427-2907707Qi Gong (荠刚): chief, No. 4 Ward, Kangjiashan Prison: +86-024-89551603Zhang Hanzhi (张汉志): warden, Kangjiashan Prison: +86-024-89551603Ma Sin (马鑫): prosecutor, Panjin Intermediate Court: +86-427-2825091