Li Qinghuan, 50, of Benxi City, Liaoning Province Dies as a Result of Gross Abuse under the Persecution

Mr. Li Qinghuan was a Falun Gong practitioner from Benxi City, Liaoning Province. He started practising Falun Gong in 1996. After the onset of the persecution in 1999, he was harassed on numerous occasions. Police arrested him on September 18th, 2004 and sent him to the Weiningxing Forced Labour Camp in Benxi, where he was subjected to the "stretch torture" (described below) for seven days in a row. His health deteriorated afterwards and never got better. Following his release in 2006, he was under constant surveillance. He died on April 5th, 2009 at the age of 50.

A brief description of the stretch torture: Two single beds were put together side by side. The victim was made to lie in the middle of the two beds with his limbs tied to the four far corners of the beds. The guards initially used handcuffs to secure the victim's limbs. When they subjected practitioner Wang Xuefei to the torture device, the handcuffs cut into his flesh and left visible marks. To cover their crimes, the guards switched to ropes to fasten practitioners' limbs. Every once in a while, the guards would stretch the practitioner, meaning they pulled the two beds apart and filled the gap in between the beds with bricks. Every time, they put more bricks between the two beds. This torture resulted in excruciating pain.

Chen Zhongwei and Liu Shaoshi were the two chief culprits that tortured practitioners at the labour camp. They first tried to deceive Li Qinghuan and Zhang Shupeng into giving up their practice of Falun Gong. When that tactic failed, they resorted to barbaric violence. Under the directive of guard Ding Huibo, Chen and Liu made the two practitioners double-cross their legs while sitting on the ground, and then they tied their legs with rope. They did the same to their arms behind their backs, and designated a person to sit on their backs and push downward extremely hard.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/4/22/199420.html