Hubei Province:The Criminal Acts of Torture Committed against Dafa Practitioners at Police Station in Shiyan City

Eyewitness Account of Police Torture

One day in October 2000, while I was working at the Renmin Road Police Station in Shiyan City, Hubei Province, I witnessed the police pull two women (Falun Dafa practitioners) into the police station. One of the women appeared to be over 50 years old. The head of the police station, Mr. Gao, as well as the police officer, Mr. Chen Xuyong, punched and kicked this woman repeatedly while they interrogated her. They handcuffed her hands behind her back with one hand pulled over the shoulder and the other pulled up from the lower back, a type of brutal torture known as "carrying a sword on the back." Then they hung her by her hands in the air in this position. The two police officers kept beating her savagely on the face and head with belts, and cursing her at the same time. The face of the elderly woman soon turned dark purple. Shreds of hair kept tearing off from her head. The police officers continued flogging and cursing the elderly woman for nearly three hours before they finally dropped her down on the floor. Still, they did not stop the torture. They kept violently kicking her in the chest and directly on her heart until she passed out. The two police officers then barked at her, "Stop faking! Get up!" [the actual language they used contained expletives]. I could no longer bear to watch this atrocious torture, so I decided to go upstairs and check on the other woman, in her 40's, hoping that she had not suffered from any torture.

My heart sank when I saw what was happening upstairs: this woman was being subjected to even crueller tortures. The head of the Renmin Road Police Station, Mr. Liu, ordered six policemen to handcuff her hands in the same "carrying a sword on the back" position and hang her in the air by the hands, exactly how their colleagues had done to the elderly woman downstairs. The seven men took turns torturing her in many horrible ways. The tortures they performed during my presence included flogging her with belts, slapping her face violently, and shocking her all over the body with multiple electric batons. It was truly the most unbearable scene for anyone who has the slightest sympathy to witness.

My heart was immediately filled with great respect and admiration for these two female Dafa practitioners. Throughout the inhumane tortures, they never wailed, cried, nor begged for mercy. The brutality of the police failed to make them give in. Next to these policemen, these two women appeared remarkably noble and magnificent.

By noon, the policemen had already tortured the elderly woman for nearly four hours, and were finally going to remove her handcuffs. However, they were unable to do so because her wrists had become enormously swollen, making the handcuffs cut deeply into them. Finally, four policemen ignored her pain and strenuously removed the handcuffs by force. As for the middle-aged woman upstairs, they did not remove her handcuffs using the same brutal force until 4 PM. By then it was too late. Her arms had been fractured due to the seven hours of savage beatings and hanging in the air by the hands in the "carrying the sword in the back" position. When she was finally dropped down onto the floor, she lost consciousness due to the excruciating pain. The police officers poured a bucket of cold water over her and brought her back to consciousness to restore the feeling of pain. They then sent both women directly to the First Detention Centre.

Two days later, the policemen from the Renmin Road Police Station went to the detention centre and started investigating these two Falun Dafa practitioners again. Mr. Liu, Mr. Gao, Mr. Chen Xuyong, and several other policemen surrounded the two women, and started beating them up savagely. Then they again handcuffed them in the "carrying a sword in the back" position. This most excruciating procedure instantly shocked the middle-aged woman whose arms had been fractured just two days earlier due to the seven consecutive hours of being hung up while handcuffed in this same way. She passed out in agony immediately. Incredibly, these policemen started violently beating the heads of the women after seeing what had happened to the younger woman. Their heads and bodies were already deformed from the atrocious tortures of only two days earlier, and now these policemen were torturing them again, adding additional pain and injuries to the two already severely wounded women. These policemen were, as we say in Chinese, "adding frost to snow," or inflicting more disaster to these women in their darkest hour.

I also witnessed an even more appalling crime. At this same time, the police officers brought in another female Dafa practitioner in her 30's whom they had abducted in Beijing. As soon as she entered the room, several policemen held her up in the air by grabbing her hair while some other policemen started punching her savagely causing her body to swing in the air. Next they threw her to the ground and trampled on her head violently. Then the policemen kicked her body back and forth towards each other, as if they were playing soccer with a human body. They even forced the other two female Dafa practitioners to watch this sadistic torture, which the torturers found entertaining. At this pivotal moment, in the battle between righteousness and evil, one of the two female Dafa practitioners started to recite one of her Teacher's poems over and over again,

Liu, Gao and other depraved police officers became embarrassed and enraged by her righteous action. All the policemen in the room abandoned their sadistic sport and swarmed over the Dafa practitioner reciting the poem. They focused their attention on her and started to slap her face continuously. She did not budge or show any sign of fear. The policemen, however, had to stop, and blew on their palms to ease the pain from their violent slapping. Then Gao said that he needed some leg exercise. He swung one of his legs back and forth a few times in the air first to make a powerful stroke, and then suddenly kicked the practitioner with extreme force on the chest, which caused her to fly backwards and lose consciousness. When she came to, the policemen started to flog all three female practitioners with belts, punch them, and kick them until the end of the day. Before the policemen left for the day, they demanded that the three Dafa practitioners crawl on all fours out of the investigation room, but all of them refused to comply. The three female practitioners slowly but determinedly struggled to stand up with dignity. The policemen kicked them in the back, trying to force them to crawl out the door. When they realised that they could not force them to give up, they kept kicking the three practitioners like soccer balls until they were kicked out of the room. The police illegally detained the three Dafa practitioners in the detention centre for a month, and extorted 5,000 to 8,000 yuan from them [500 yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China].

(The above information was provided by an eyewitness in December 2000.)

Another Criminal Act Committed by the Policemen from Renmin Road Police Station

One day in October 2000, flyers that clarified the truth about Falun Dafa and the persecution against Falun Dafa were posted all over downtown Shiyan City. In order to trace the source of the flyers, the police abducted the staff and owners of every single photocopying business in Shiyan City for police investigation. The police also closed many photocopying businesses and confiscated their business equipment, causing many of them to lose their businesses and become homeless. The police committed an even crueller crime against an innocent man in the photocopying business.

The police discovered that a man in his 30's had practised Falun Gong at one time, and that he now owned a small business with a printing machine, so they ransacked his home and his store. Even though they failed to find any Dafa materials in either place, they confiscated the printer and abducted the man anyway. They took the man to Renmin Road Police Station where they handcuffed him and tried to force him to confess by beating him. The man answered them with a reasonable explanation in a righteous manner, which embarrassed and infuriated the policemen. The police hung the man in the air with his hands behind his back in the "carrying a sword in the back" position and beat him savagely in order to make him admit that he was the man who printed the truth-clarification materials. When the policemen found this torture method fruitless, several of them took turns flogging him with a leather whip, shocking him with an electric baton, and hitting him with a club all over the body. The man soon became severely injured. They kept torturing him in this manner from 6 AM to 5 PM. During this period of time the man passed out three times. Each time, the police splashed him with cold water to bring him back to consciousness and resumed the torture. The police left work for the day with the man hanging in the air inside the investigation room.

The next morning when the police came to work, they found the man unconscious. They finally dropped him to the ground and removed the handcuffs. However, the man's arms had been broken because he had been hanging in the air with his hands behind his back in the "carrying a sword in the back" position for almost 26 consecutive hours. Also, the man was severely bruised and was dark purple and crimson from head to toe. His body was so deformed from the tortures that he no longer resembled a human being. Because the policemen could not find any criminal evidence against the man to justify their cruelty, they started fearing for the potential legal consequences of murder. Out of cowardice, the policemen took the man to a hospital in Sanyan for resuscitation and medical treatment. To conceal their crimes, the head of the Renmin Road Police Station warned his subordinate officers before they headed for the hospital, "When the doctors ask you the cause of his injury, you must reply that the injuries were caused by two bandits, who robbed the man's wallet and beat him. If you give them the wrong answer, you will pay for the consequence with your life." So the head of Renmin Road Police Station and two police officers took the man to Taihe Hospital in Sanyan. The doctors and nurses were shocked to see the man's severe injuries. They demanded, "Who has done this to you? Do these criminals have any humanity left in them?"

After a careful diagnosis, the doctors decided that the man had two broken arms, which required a cast and hospital stay for the medical treatment. The policemen did not want to expose their criminal evidence to the doctors, so they told the doctors that this man was wanted in the police station for help in a criminal investigation, and that a medical prescription would suffice. Thus they took the man, who needed immediate medical attention, away from the hospital. They lied to the detention centre and told them that the man was arrested as a Falun Gong practitioner and then detained him in the detention centre for a month. Moreover, the police even extorted 5,000 yuan from the man [500 yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China]. This was still not the end of the persecution against this innocent man. After he was released from the detention centre, the police notified him to attend forced brainwashing sessions for two months. Because the man could no longer look after himself with his broken arms, the police postponed the two-month forced brainwashing sessions, but instead extorted another 3,000 yuan from him. Sources indicate that during his detention, it was Falun Gong practitioners who shared a cell with this man and voluntarily looked after him and tried to nurse him back to health. As of the time that this article was written, the man still could not use his arms, which had been fractured by the Renmin Road police in October 2000.

(An eyewitness provided the above information in January 2001.)

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/11/15/60644.html