(Minghui.org) Since the Chinese Communist Party began to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, the guards at Jilin City Detention Center have actively taken part in torturing practitioners. As of now, at least six practitioners have been tortured to death in that detention center.
The guards not only torture the practitioners themselves, but also instigate other inmates to be their assistants. They often ordered the other inmates to monitor or force-feed the practitioners. Many practitioners are also forced to do hard labor without pay. They usually do not get a full meal, and the food is very poor quality.
In recent months, the detention center has stepped up its mistreatment of practitioners by humiliating them. The guards claimed that some family members complained about detainees suffering from skin diseases after returning home and ordered the practitioners to strip naked twice a day to be examined. Even female practitioners scheduled for release from the detention center were searched while naked.
Front entrance of Jilin City Detention Center
The exterior of Jilin City Detention Center
Below are some of the torture methods used by the detention center.
The Sitting Torture
Practitioners are forced to sit on small stools with their hands on their laps, their palms facing up, and their backs straight for days. If they move even a bit, the inmates beat and kick them.
Torture re-enactment: Sitting on small stools
Torture re-enactment: Practitioners being kicked in the back while sitting
Handcuffs and Shackles Connected Together
On October 15, 2004, because Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Dong Lihua insisted on doing the Falun Gong exercises, officer Li forced her to wear an inmate’s uniform and then handcuffed and shackled her. Because the handcuffs and shackles were connected, Ms. Dong had to remain bent over in an awkward position. She couldn’t stretch her legs or straighten her back and had to sit on the floor hunched over.
The guards kept Ms. Dong restrained this way for five days and wouldn’t remove the handcuffs and shackles, even when she needed to go to the bathroom, so other inmates had to carry her to the restroom and remove and put on her pants for her.
Ms. Zhang Junyun was arrested on May 19, 2004, while visiting another practitioner. She taken to the Jilin City Detention Center the next day. She began a hunger strike to protest. Detention center guard Xing Shufen, deputy director Cong Maohua, and resident doctor Zhang Shaoqing force-fed her and cuffed her hands and feet together. She was not able to stand straight to walk and couldn’t use the restroom on her own.
Torture illustration: Handcuffs and shackles connected together
Force-feeding
Any practitioner who refuses to eat is force-fed with corn paste.
Torture re-enactment: Force-feeding
In order to protest the persecution, Ms. Dong Lihua held a hunger strike and refused to eat or drink. When her heartbeat reached 120 to 150 beats per minute, the officers started to force-feed her with a substance mixed with unknown drugs. Every time they force-fed her, they rammed the feeding tube into her two, three, sometimes even four or five times, causing great pain. Sometimes Ms. Dong was almost suffocated by the force-feeding.
Guard Xing beat Ms. Yu Lixing when she went on a hunger strike and instigated other inmates to force-feed Ms. Yu. Xing also beat and force-fed Ms. Liu Mingwei on October 14, 1999.
Ms. Zuo Yan, Ms. Wang Guihua, and Ms. Sun Fengqin were force-fed in September 2003. Ms. Zhao Yingjie was also force-fed when she went on a hunger strike.
Ms. Wang Shufan, Ms. Wang Yugui, Ms. Xiao Lihua, and Ms. Xin Xin were force-fed in 2004.
Ms. Zhao Wei was arrested on November 4, 2006, and taken to the detention center next day. She held a hunger strike to protest the arbitrary detention. The detention center guards and doctor force-fed her water with hot pepper.
Beatings
Ms. Wang Minli was arrested on February 18, 2001, by officers from the Longtan District Police Department and Yushu Street Police Station. While she was in the Jilin City Detention Center, guard Xing forced her to squat motionless for six hours at a time. Xing and the inmates beat and kicked her if she made the slightest move. Ms. Wang’s eardrums were punctured during the beating and she never fully recovered her hearing.
Torture illustration: Beating
When Mr. Wang Lixin was held in the Jilin City Detention Center, guards Zhang Guanjun and Yang Zhonghua ordered inmates Lai Hongxiang and Feng Naiwu to beat him. The guards even urged the inmates on, saying: “Beat him! Beat him to death! We will take the responsibility if he dies!” Mr. Wang was indeed beaten to death.
Death Bed
Because Ms. Yu Lixin insisted on doing the Falun Gong exercises, she was tied to a death bed and could not move.
Torture illustration: Tied to a death bed
Inciting Hatred
The detention center tries to incite the other inmates to hate practitioners. If a practitioner goes on a hunger strike, all the inmates are deprived of their free time and have to sit on the bench even on Sunday, which is their break day. The inmates are not allowed visitors and are prohibited from buying food.
The food in the detention center is very poor. The corn paste is hard and black and sometimes uncooked or moldy, and the vegetable soup contains sand, mud, and flies but no leaves or oil. Each meal costs 25 to 50 yuan, and peanuts and sugar 10 yuan each. The items sold in the convenience shop are more expensive than market price. For instance, a pair of slippers that usually sells for 3 or 4 yuan costs 10 yuan, while a bottle of mustard vegetables that usually sells for 7 yuan costs 15 yuan.
Forced to Take Unknown Drugs
On October 6, 2017, Ms. Rong Tiewen, then 70; Ms. Song Guizhi, then 63; and Ms. Zhang Shuqin, then 71, were arrested for putting up Falun Gong information posters.
The police raided Ms. Rong’s home and confiscated over 100 Falun Gong books, more than 70 Falun Gong posters, and a picture of the founder of Falun Gong. The police also ransacked the other two practitioners’ homes.
Both Ms. Rong and Ms. Zhang had dangerously high blood pressure, but the police still forced the local lockup to detain them. Six days later, when the practitioners were transferred to the Jilin City Detention Center, the guards there also tried to refuse to admit them, but the police forced them to do so. Ms. Rong’s son had to pay 300 yuan for her physical exam.
The three women were stripped naked and searched at the detention center. Ms. Rong was force-fed pills that the guards claimed were to lower her blood pressure. The detention center doctor said that she had to take the medication no matter what. Ms. Rong was forced to take a white pill every day for two weeks and then a red pill every day for a month and six days.
When Ms. Rong was released on bail on November 14, 2017, after paying a 5,000-yuan bond, she was incoherent and couldn’t recognize her family. Days later, her face began to swell, her hands to fester, and her fingers to blister. Her left thumb didn’t recover even after six months.
Prosecutor Gao Jiwei of the Fengman District Procuratorate called Ms. Rong on March 27, 2018, and ordered her to renew her bail documents. Once there, she was told that she would have to go to the Fengman District Court to have the documents renewed. Ms. Rong was later sentenced and is now serving time in Jilin Women’s Prison.
Forced Labor
Practitioners who are held in the Jilin City Detention Center are made to do hard labor without pay for long periods of time. Their jobs included folding gold ingots for the dead (each person has to fold 1,500 to 2,000) or winding electric coils (each cell of 20 detainees has to produce 20,000 coils a week).
To complete the gold ingots, the detainees start with pressing the tin foil after they wake up at 5.30 a.m. Some of them are responsible for unwrapping the foil and putting a yellow paper under each foil, while others are in charge of putting the foil and yellow paper onto a plastic sheet before pressing them together. A bundle consists of 1,000 foils, and the center produces 10 bundles each day and about 50 bundles in a week.
They work until 6 p.m. every day with one off day per week. Sometimes, if the quality of the foil is poor, the detainees need to work overtime to produce the same amount and they may only have half a day to rest.
Mr. Wang Haitian was arrested on October 18, 2013, and taken to Jilin City Detention Center, where he had to work with toxic tin from 6 a.m. to after 6 p.m. with only brief breaks at mealtimes.
Mr. Liu Shengchao was detained at Jilin City Detention Center in 2016. He was forced to press 1,500 to 1,600 tin foils in four to five hours, resulting in his fingers becoming deformed. His back was so sore that he had to bend down.
Deaths
Mr. Wang Lixin was arrested on November 27, 2000, and accused by the police of “disturbing social order” for photocopying 100 copies of Falun Gong materials. He went on a hunger strike in the detention center to protest.
Mr. Wang Lixin
Inmate Feng Naiwu verbally abused Mr. Wang, wouldn’t let him use the restroom, and deprived him of sleep. Another inmate, Zhang Qun, who had practiced boxing for over ten years, kicked and punched Mr. Wang.
On the fifth day of Mr. Wang’s hunger strike, guards Yang Zhonghua and Zhang Guanjun summoned several inmates to force feed Mr. Wang with concentrated salt water.
On the seventh day of the hunger strike, Mr. Wang was very weak. He was unable to think clearly and the words he muttered were unintelligible. Inmates Feng, Zhang, and Xiaohong took turns kicking and stomping on him, while guards Yang and Zhang leaned against the window and watched. To keep Mr. Wang from screaming, they tied his hands behind his back and put a white towel across his mouth.
The inmates continued the beating next day and Mr. Wang was beaten to death after ten minutes. He was 35.
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Mr. Fu Chunsheng used to work at the Hydro-Engineering Machinery Factory. He was arrested on December 28, 2001, and died from force feeding eight days later in the Jilin City Detention Center. He was 52.
After Mr. Fu’s death, the detention center took his body to a hospital emergency room and told a doctor to fill out a death certificate saying he had died of a heart attack.
Ms. Li Chuanping was arrested and detained in the Jilin City Detention Center around July 2001. She was tortured and began to vomit blood. Fearing she might die there, the detention center authorities released her in September 2001. She passed away not long after. She was 50.
Mr. Wang Jianguo and his wife Ms. Zhao Qiumei were arrested on March 2, 2006. When Mr. Wang was held in the Jilin City Detention Center, he went on a hunger strike. When he was forced-fed, a guard inserted the feeding tube into his trachea, which caused a lung infection. He died on April 10, 2006, at the age of 30.
Mr. Wang Jianguo
When Mr. Wang’s family set up a wake in their yard on April 13, over 50 police officers descended in 13 cruisers on April 30 and removed everything except Mr. Wang’s photo. They threatened to forcibly cremate his body and arrest his parents.
Ms. Wang Minli was arrested on March 15, 2007, and held at the Yueshan Road Police Dog Base in Jilin City. The police beat her and poured a bottle of spicy mustard oil into her eyes, making her blind in one eye. They also broke one of her legs. Despite her condition, the Jilin City Detention Center still admitted her and then lied to her family, saying that she was doing very well.
Ms. Wang Minli
She was never given any medical care, and her condition kept declining. Around 2 p.m. on June 19, 2007, the guards noticed that Ms. Wang was near death, so they rushed her to the No. 222 Hospital, which is very far away from the detention center. She died on the way to the hospital. She was 43.
Related report:
Ms. Yu Quan was arrested at home on April 25, 2009. She was detained in a cage at the Zhanqian Police Station and then taken to the Jilin City Detention Center. She was sentenced to two years and served time in the detention center.
Due to the torture, she contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized on December 10, 2010. When her family was finally allowed to visit her, she was extremely thin and weak. She had severe back pain the next afternoon and passed away while being transferred to another hospital. She was 60.
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