Xi'an Police Deceive Poet Mr. Tu Teng and Send Him to a Forced Labour Camp

Three Falun Gong practitioners—the chairman of the Chinese Laurel Poets Society in Xi'an City Mr. Tu Teng (a.k.a Tu Songshan), Mr. Li Xiaohui, and Ms. Xie Jing—were arrested by police on August 13th, 2012, and have since been imprisoned at the Beilin District Detention Centre in Xi'an City. The Domestic Security Division of the Beilin District Police Department deceived them and sentenced them to forced labour.

On September 10th, visiting day at the detention centre, the family members of the three practitioners went to see them, and were given notes claimed to be written by the three practitioners. The notes stated that Li Xiaohui and Xie Jing acknowledged that they had signed a contract to do forced labour at the detention centre. On September 13th, the family members went to the Domestic Security Division of the Beilin District Police Department to demand the practitioners' release, as their detention terms had ended. They were notified by the director that the division intended to subject the three practitioners to forced labour.

The family members saw only one document, which was full of false information. For instance, the document stated that the three practitioners, who were all college graduates, were all junior high school graduates. All three had jobs under contract but the notice stated that they were each unemployed.

The family members demanded a copy of the notice but were told that they could not take the paper document. According to the notice, the forced labour terms were 13 months, beginning August 14th, for Tu Teng because he made and distributed Falun Gong CDs exposing the persecution of Falun Gong, and 12 months, beginning August 14th, for Li Xiaohui and Xie Jing, because they distributed Falun Gong CDs.

On September 25th, more than 40 days after their arrests, the practitioners were still imprisoned at the Beilin District Detention Centre in Xi'an City. According to their family members after visiting them, they were told to sign a “no hearing” notice inside the detention centre. Tu Teng and Li Xiaohui had already signed it, as they were told that by signing this document they would be exempt from forced labor. In fact, the “hearing” was just a procedure by which the police department handles a forced labour case, similar to the trial of a sham court. Tu Teng and Li Xiaohui had apparently been misled and deceived by personnel inside the detention centre. Furthermore, in the notes they had written to their family members, the practitioners mentioned that they would be allowed to be released on bail, and they asked their family members to arrange for the funds. However, when their family members went through normal procedure to bail them out, the Domestic Security Division turned down their request.

During the development of this case, Tu Teng's fiancé Ms. Zhao Xiaomeng submitted several letters to multiple organisations in Xi'an City exposing the evil acts of Zhao Yuegang and Zhang Shenggang, which angered Zhao Yuegang. When Yuegang talked with the families of the three practitioners, he deceived them by telling them that Zhao Xiaomeng's actions directly resulted in forced labour terms for the three practitioners. It is a pity that a police officer would do such an underhanded thing. Furthermore, Yuegang and others threatened Zhao Xiaomeng multiple times by telling her that she was under their investigation, and they monitored her phone line continuously as well as investigated the people around her. Their actions severely violated a citizen's personal freedom and violated the law.

Tu Teng is a well-known local artist. The police started monitoring Xie Jing in April 2012. In June 2012 the police attempted to arrest Tu Teng and other practitioners. At that time the Arts Festival (titled “The Fourth Chapter – Random Arts Expression - Xi'an Station” and initiated by artists including Ai Weiwei) was being held in Xi'an City and organised by Mr. Tu Teng's Chinese Laurel Poets Society, and the police were afraid that their persecution would be exposed among the arts community. So they changed their schedule and postponed their actions until August.

Mr. Tu Teng, born in 1978 and originally named Tu Songshan, is from Henan Province and currently lives in the Weiyang District of Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province. He established the Chinese Laurel Poets Society in 2007, to promote public cultural affairs. The Chinese Laurel Poets Society has organised ten poets conferences and multiple writers conferences in Xi'an City. He is an upright person who is not swayed by personal interests, and devotes himself to public interests. He earned the respect and acknowledgment from the art community in Xi'an and the student community of the more than thirty universities in Xi'an. He started seeking the true meaning of life when he was still a student. He was fortunate to by chance encounter and read Mr. Li Hongzhi's lecture, and he immediately realized that Falun Gong was what he had always been looking for. He began cultivating, and on that very day, he eliminated his ten-plus year habit of smoking. During the subsequent cultivation process, he eliminated all of his years-old bad habits, and benefited both himself and the relatives around him.

Tu Teng and Li Xiaohui were arrested by police from the Domestic Security Division of the Beilin District Police Department as they were telling someone the facts about Falun Gong inside a cafe near the Dayan Pagoda on the afternoon of August 13th, 2012. At about 8:30 p.m., the police officers, including Zhao Yuegang, deceived their way into Tu Teng's apartment and conducted a search. They also arrested his fiancé, Zhao Xiaomeng, and colleague Xie Jing.

The relatives of the three arrested Falun Gong practitioners have requested their release multiple times since August 13th. They were told by Zhao Yuegang and Zhang Shenggang that Tu Teng would be sentenced to at least one year of prison. For various reasons, this was changed to forced labour. It is well known that the forced labour system in China has become a notoriously illegal system. The police, led by Zhao Yuegang, violated the law in fabricating false charges against the three innocent Falun Gong practitioners and issued the notice of forced labour based on the falsified information. Their acts of ignoring the law and abusing their powers will sooner or later result in their punishment.

Earlier report:
http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2012/9/1/135241.html