“Salt All Over Her Wounds" -- A Witness Tells How Ms. Zhi Guixiang Was Tortured To Death

I was arrested on July 19 2002 and sent to the Zhengyang Police Station in the Luyuan Area of Changchun City. While detained there, I was shackled to a torture device and witnessed a woman in a red skirt laying on the ground in the next room. Her whole body was injured and covered with wounds. After a while, the police detained us together. At this time I found that her wounds had salt scattered over them. In order to protest the persecution, as soon as she was arrested she had started a hunger strike. The police did not get any information out of her. On July 20, before the police sent me to the interrogation room, she had been taken there and tortured. She had been on a hunger strike for a few days.

I was sent to Zhengyang's No.3 detention centre. The next day, the practitioner in the red skirt was carried inside as well. Practitioners who were with her reported that the authorities did a physical examination at the 208 Hospital before they were sent to the detention centre. They found that Zhi Guixiang had suffered a heart attack and had both internal and external injuries. Therefore, the detention centre should have refused to accept her. But the heartless authorities at the Zhengyang police station still found an evil way to ensure that Zhi Guixiang was admitted to the No.3 detention centre.

Whilst detained in the female jail, Zhi Guixiang went on a hunger strike. She was sent to Sheling Hospital every day for force-feeding, but she refused to cooperate. On the second day police put feet shackles onto her feet. On the third day she was put on a torture device called the "sitting board*." She sat against the wall and kept shaking. I told the head jailer to report this to the warders. But warder Yang Xue did not care at all and said, "there is no problem!" At 3 am on the second day, practitioner Zhi Guixiang was knocked to the ground and wanted to say something. It looked like she was in a lot of pain. A criminal cried out fearfully when she saw this. After that Zhi Guixiang also cried out, "Dafa practitioners are innocent! We should not be detained!" Immediately, on-duty guards came in and ordered the criminals to cover her mouth, making it difficult for her to breathe. She was in this small room crowded with 40 people on a hot summer day. I cannot imagine how she felt as some criminals started to beat her.

On the second day of her "sitting board" torture, the head jailer again ordered some criminals to cover her mouth. Two people carried Zhi and forced her onto the "sitting board". After the guard came, she ordered other criminals to carry Zhi to a small cell. When they took the towel off her face, the towel was full of blood. Even under such conditions, Zhi was put onto a torture device usually reserved for criminals facing the death penalty. Her handcuffs went through the leg shackles and the two were locked together to prevent her escaping. She could only bend her back and could not lie down except in a painful position. She was unable to feed herself or go to the bathroom without help and needed someone to look after her all the time. A few days later, when the police saw Zhi Guixiang was dying, the guard said they would carry her away and send her to hospital. But other people said they did not see Zhi in Police Hospital. A few days later when Luyuan Police Station interrogated me again, I asked for the whereabouts of Zhi Guixiang. The police said she died while on the way to external interrogation. It is clear that they are covering up the truth. The authorities of the Zhengyang police station are entirely responsible for Zhi Guixiang's death.

* Sitting Board -- A torture device. Practitioners are forced to put their hands on top of their laps and sit with their backs straight for 18 hours per day. This may be continued for over fifty days. The authorities limit practitioners' toilet time. Because of the long time spent sitting on hard, narrow benches, practitioners' buttocks develop large sores that hurt badly. Practitioners often cannot even urinate normally because of the pain. The labour camp was very humid and the police would not allow practitioners to have ventilation or the chance to get some sunlight. Practitioners were locked up for so long that countless red scabies grew over their entire body which were very itchy and painful.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/3/9/46104.html