Retired Army Officer Dies as a Result of Persecution

Name: Liu Xinnian
Gender: Male
Age: 57
Address: Insurance Company Family Housing in Tianwei Street, Qingyuan County, Baoding City, Hebei Province
Occupation: Office Chair of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Discipline Committee in Baoding Branch of China People's Assets Insurance Share Limited Company
Date of Death: April 20th, 2009
Date of Most Recent Arrest: June 2003
Most recent place of detention: Baoding Forced Labour Camp
City: Baoding
Province: Hebei
Persecution Suffered: Electric Shock, Forced Labour, Beatings, Torture, Extortion, Fired from Workplace, Physical Restraint

Key Persecutors: Baoding Forced Labour Camp guard Zhang Qian

Mr. Liu Xinnian was born on January 15th,1952, and served as a battalion commander in Qinghai Province before his retirement. He was honest and very reliable and worked in a good company. He was brutally shocked with an an electric baton in Baoding Forced Labour Camp, which led directly to his death on April 20th, 2009.

Mr. Liu Xinnian

Mr. Liu served in the army. His troop was assigned to Qinghai Province in the 1980s. Working in the highlands of a long period of time caused him to have high altitude heart disease, a hiatus hernia, and an ulcer, which resulted in his retirement from the army. From 1985 until 1997 he often had chest pains and always hit his chest to feel better. He was hospitalized three times, and it was well known at work that he was in poor health.

In October 1997, Mr. Liu began practising Falun Gong, and amazing things quickly happened. His illnesses disappeared and he gained weight, from130 to170 pounds. He felt great both physically and spiritually by following Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance. When the persecution started, he went to Beijing to appeal on July 20th, 1999, but he was arrested, taken back to Baoding City, and confined in a brainwashing centre held in Qingnianlu Nursery School by the Beishi District 610 Office¹. On the fourth day, his employer bailed him out but put him under house arrest in his company for10 days and made him go through brainwashing.

On New Years Day in 2001, he went to Beijing to appeal again and was once again arrested and detained in Chongwen District Detention Centre. He was cursed, beaten, and slapped until he could not hear or see anything. The guards also stripped him in the toilet, and poured a dozen buckets of cold water on him. The 15-day detention caused him to go back to being very thin, and he became weaker and weaker.

Mr. Liu was transferred to Baoding City and put in the Zhuozhou City Brainwashing Centre. He was very weak when he entered the centre and had low blood pressure and blood sugar symptoms. He had to go through brainwashing daily, do physical labour, and did not get enough food. He spent another three and half months there, living a miserable existence. When he was released he dragged his weak body home. He later said when recalling his story, "I first had a toothache and swollen gums, and my cheek bone was in pain if it was touched. Later my shoulder blades and arms hurt, and I could not move them freely, and I was in extreme pain when I did move them. I could not sleep in peace due to the pain."

The Baoding City 610 Office extorted 30,000 yuan² from his employer, because he refused to give up his practice. His employer pressured him to retire early and then deducted 30,000 yuan from his retirement compensation.

In June 2003, Qingyuan County Domestic Security agents stormed into Mr. Liu's home, arrested him, and took his Falun Gong books, motorcycle, copy machine, computer, and some printing materials. They even took his wife's handbag and other supplies, valued at more than 26,000 yuan. They have not yet been returned to his family. They detained Mr .Liu for 15 days in the Qingyuan County Detention Centre, where he was beaten and tortured. He was covered with purple bruises. By the time he was taken to the labour camp, his health had deteriorated severely, and he had serious heart problems to the extent that the Baoding City Labour Camp officials refused to accept him. He was taken back to the Qingyuan County Police Department. The officers once called his family, and they seemed to want to release him, but several days later, they took him to the labour camp for a two-year sentence.

Upon entering the labour camp, he was brutally shocked with electric batons by guard Zhang Qian. Zhang shouted, "Stand by the wall and don't move!" He glanced at Mr. Liu, who was about the same age as Zhang's father, and used an electric baton with 20,000 volts to shock Mr. Liu all over his body. He knew Mr. Liu had heart problems, so he was careful not to cause a heart attack, but he shocked the most painful area, his private parts. Mr. Liu struggled in pain and cried out, twitching until Zhang got tired and the baton was out of power. After this episode, Mr. Liu felt his whole body was in pain and numb, and his gait changed due to the pain in his private parts. He walked with his back bent forward and his legs apart.

Instead of being reprimanded, Zhang Qian received a bonus as "reward" for torturing Mr. Liu. The First Ward of Baoding Labour Camp was given the first merit group award, First Warden Li Dayong (on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police "Forbidden to Enter" list) was given the first merit person award and promoted to camp vice director the next year, and CCP director Liu Yuesheng also received the first merit person award.

Many inmates saw Mr. Liu in extreme pain, and he often pinched his own legs and would hit his chest to reduce the pain. One practitioner remembered when he first saw Mr. Liu at the camp, he thought that he was looking at a detainee from a WW2 concentration camp. He was a tall man, but his body weight was around 110 pounds. When his family asked him if he was beaten in the camp, he never wanted to talk about it, so we do not know the details of how he was tortured besides the shocks from the electric batons. We hope the people who know the facts will help uncover them.

Mr. Liu did not receive any treatment at the camp, and his health did not recover even after being released home, where he died on April 20th, 2009. The community administration frequently harassed and threatened him at home, causing him great mental stress.

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.

2. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/8/28/207303.html