Another Young Falun Gong Practitioner Tortured to Death in Daqing Prison in Heilongjiang Province

When practitioner Mr. Zhou Shuhai was sent to the emergency room of Daqing City No. 2 Hospital for emergency resuscitation on May 31st, 2007, he was already dead. He was skin and bones when he died. The hospital could not resuscitate him. Mr. Zhou died at the young age of 35.

Zhou Shuhai's elder brother, Mr. Zhou Shuzhang, was arrested and sentenced to prison the same day that Shuhai was arrested, without legal process. He is still imprisoned in the No. 3 section of Daqing Prison, suffering torture.

Mr. Zhou Shuhai, 35, was from Tieli City, Heilongjiang Province. He worked in the Government Policy Research Institute in Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province. On October 29th, 2005, police officers from Tieli City, including Zheng Hongde and Sun Xu, and officers from the Tieli City 610 Office¹, including Fan Guangjun and Chen Tie, arrested Zhou Shuhai and his older brother, Zhou Shuzhang. The police took them to the Tieli City Public Security Bureau's criminal investigation team. The police tried every way they could think of, including threats, to make the two brothers renounce Falun Gong. Finally, they hung the two brothers up in the air for many long hours.

On April 1st, 2006, the Chinese Communist Party's Mid-Level Court in Yichun City sentenced Mr. Zhou Shuhai to five-and-a-half years in prison--despite the Chinese Constitution granting Chinese citizens freedom of religion and spiritual belief. In June 2006, Zhou Shuhai was detained at Hulan Prison in Heilongjiang Province, where the "Intensive Training Team" inhumanly tortured him in an attempt to force him to renounce Falun Gong. The prison guards ordered prisoners Zheng Taiping and Wang Dengming to cruelly torture Mr. Zhou. In addition, Mr. Zhou was forced to stand still for long hours, was deprived of sleep, and was beaten with hard rubber tubes. Zheng Taiping and Wang Dengming also ordered new prisoners to torture Mr. Zhou. The tortures left a half-inch-long scar above his left eyebrow.

In July 2006, Zhou Shuhai was transferred to the No. 4 section of Daqing Prison. As a result of the ongoing physical and psychological tortures, he lost weight rapidly and had difficulty eating. When his family visited him in prison, he had to be carried to the visitors' room on the back of another prisoner. He was skin and bones and could barely speak.

On May 31st, 2007, Mr. Zhou was taken to Daqing City No. 2 Hospital for "emergency resuscitation," but he had already died by the time he reached the hospital. The prison authorities claimed that he died of tuberculosis. Mr. Zhou went on hunger strikes repeatedly in prison, as a non-violent way of protest. The hospital could not do anything for him because it was too late.

According to incomplete statistics, many Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured to death in Daqing Prison. Mr. Xu Jishan died there at the age of 41. On June 7th, 2005, a captain named Li Fengjiang and a disciplinary staff member named Zhang Dezhi directed prisoners to carry Mr. Xu Jishan on a board to the bathroom where they tortured him. He died before arriving at the hospital's emergency room. Mr. Yuan Qingjiang died in Daqing Prison at the age of 40 on July 23rd, 2005, as a result of prison guards' repeated torture. He was skin and bones and had an unusually swollen abdomen when he died.

Note

1. "The 610 office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/6/5/156295.html