(Minghui.org) This is a story of how Mr. Qu Yanlai, a native of Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, became a respected figure in prisons and among the locals.
Mr. Qu is an energy engineer and also a practitioner of Falun Gong, a meditation practice that has been persecuted in China since July 1999. He is currently serving five years for upholding his faith.
He once said that he had no hatred toward the men who tortured him, “They will eventually pay for their bad deeds. What they did to me will in fact harm them. I regret not being able to stop them from committing the crimes.” What he went through also reveals the details of how the authorities torture Falun Gong practitioners in China’s prisons that are unknown to the public.
Mr. Qu Yanlai
First Prison Term
The police from Putuo District Police Department in Shanghai arrested Mr. Qu on September 30, 2002. He was working in Shanghai at the time.
A judge gave him five years in Tilanqiao Prison. He refused to comply with prison rules and renounce his faith. He went on a hunger strike and refused to put on the prison uniform. The guards beat him and force fed him, causing his stomach to hemorrhage several times. He was on the verge of death a few times. The 5’10’’ tall young man went from being healthy to bedridden and needing a wheelchair.
“Being tied to the bed with five ropes is extremely painful. Words can’t describe how horrible I felt. Even getting by one second is difficult. I asked myself to hold on for one more second. Then I will persevere second by second until the day the persecution ends.” Mr. Qu once recalled.
The authorities even sent a provincial level official to the prison to torture and brainwash him, but to no avail. One day the provincial official told Mr. Qu in an interrogation room, “I respect you, and I give up. In two days I will tell the provincial government that you can’t be transformed. You can have this computer, and it will give you access to information of Falun Gong.” He then unlocked the computer, and said, “Go ahead and read all you want. I will take you back to the prison after you are done.”
Second Prison Sentence
Mr. Qu’s second arrest took place on November 9, 2018 when officers from Dongguang Police Station and Daqing Domestic Security Office in Heilongjiang Province broke into his home with the assistance of a locksmith. They ransacked his place and took him to the Daqing City Detention Center. He did not yield or renounce his faith despite the unspeakable abuses he suffered. A guard who witnessed what he experienced went home and told his family that Mr. Qu was “a man of steel and unwavering.” Inmates who came out of the detention center also praised him out of respect for his firm belief in Falun Gong.
A judge later sentenced him to five years in prison after a hearing on June 14, 2019. Before he arrived, the guards in Hulan Prison learned that when he was at the detention center, he refused to renounce Falun Gong and put on the uniform. As soon as he arrived at the prison, a guard sprayed his eyes with pepper spray and beat him. They broke his finger, and called it “cracking the whip.” The guards dragged him into the intensive training unit in the beginning of 2020.
Every second seemed like an eternity during the two months he was in the intensive training unit. “I did no wrong for practicing Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. In an environment without freedom and nowhere to complain, I could only go on a hunger strike to protest the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution,” he said in a letter he later wrote.
After two months of hunger strike, he became severely emaciated. His family couldn’t even recognize him.
Two months later he was transferred to the 9th Brigade. Since he only had a thin shirt on, a practitioner there helped get him a coat. Inmates in other wards knew that he would not wear the prison uniform and admired his courage. One day he walked down the hallway toward the workshop. An inmate threw him a wool hat and another inmate gave him a pair of cotton gloves. At the workshop an inmate gave him a pair of cotton shoes. The kind acts ensured that he stayed warm that winter.
When the guards forced the prison uniform on him, he would quickly take it off. He refused to comply with the guards, and insisted that he did nothing wrong despite the beatings. Not only did he refuse to wear uniform, he also openly did the Falun Gong exercises. The head guard reported this to the warden and requested the warden’s permission to put him in solitary confinement. The warden did not approve of the request, and wrote “handle it yourself” on the report. The head guard told the other guards, “Leave him alone. Whatever he wants to do, let him.”
As for why the warden refused to sign and approve the request, he later told his subordinates that he kept receiving calls from overseas. People on the phone told him why the persecution was wrong and should be stopped. A person said to him, “The world may not know where Heilongjiang Province is, but they all know that there is a Falun Gong practitioner named Qu Yanlai. If he died in your custody, you will be tried for your criminal conduct. By then your career would be over.”
It appeared that the armed police stationed in the prison knew that Mr. Qu’s case was well-known overseas. A day before the Chinese New Year, the armed police entered the prison cells to search for prohibited items. One of the officers quietly asked, “Which one is Qu?” Someone pointed him to a person meditating. Several of the officers quickly moved toward Mr. Qu to take a good look at him. The head officer tried to keep the order and said, “Don’t crowd over there,” “Let others take a look too.” The armed police have all read about him on the Falun Gong fliers, and wanted to see him in person.
Related report:
Heilongjiang Man Imprisoned for His Faith Held in Solitary Confinement and Force-Fed
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