Mr. Zhang Quanfu's family lived in Baishan City, Jilin Province. His wife, Jiao Yongzhi, son Zhang Qifa and daughter Zhang Yulan are also Falun Dafa practitioners.
After the persecution against Falun Dafa began, Mr. Zhang and his son went to Beijing to appeal in December 1999 but were abducted by agents at the Beijing Train Station. The Forestry Political Security Head, Jiang Yuguo, and police officers Zhang Fengyou and Fu Xiaoguang took more than 1,000 yuan (1) in cash from them.
On January 8, 2000, Mr. Zhang's wife, Ms. Jiao Yongzhi, and their daughter, Zhang Yulan, went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa. They were also arrested. Hence, all four family members were held in detention, and had to pay 20 yuan per day for food. The food was substandard, with dirt in the soup. The family had to pay food costs totaling 1,300 yuan, despite government rules that prohibit charging detainees for food.
On February 17, 2000, the four family members again went to Beijing to appeal. They were arrested on Tiananmen Square and escorted home. A policeman in the Baishan City Liaison Office in Beijing named Sun Dali extorted more than 600 yuan from them. Police officers Zhang Fengyou and Yu Xiaoguang extorted another 500 yuan from them. In addition, the family was forced to pay another 1,000 yuan for food during this detention.
The four of family members were all sentenced to forced labour camps. The father and son were sent to the Baishan City Forced Labour Camp, and the mother and daughter were sent to the Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp in Changchun City.
The food in the Baishan Labour Camp was very bad and practitioners were forced to do heavy labour. Practitioners were not allowed to talk to each other, and they were inhumanely tortured. Near the end of Zhang Qifa's term, he was transferred to the Chaoyanggou Forced Labour Camp on December 24, 2000. The police and prisoners were beating Falun Dafa practitioners there. The sounds of beating, screaming, and leather striking flesh were all blended together. Some practitioners passed out due to the severe pain of the beatings. Some were beaten until they could not walk, or they walked with a limp. Zhang Qifa was beaten with axe handles, shocked with electric batons, slapped in the face, whipped with a leather belt, and punched and kicked. However, nothing could shake his solid belief in Falun Dafa.
The police and the common prisoners in the Chaoyanggou Forced Labour Camp beat and cursed practitioners as part of their daily routine. The police incited the common criminal inmates to torture them. Some practitioners in the Sixth Ward were beaten until they lost consciousness. The common inmates would then pour salt on their wounds and then pour cold water on them. The coldness, plus the severe pain resulting from the salt caused some practitioners to again lose consciousness. Some of them were hung up by their arms and legs and beaten until they had bruises all over their bodies. Some were injured so severely that they could not eat. Newly arrested practitioners would first be beaten by prisoners in the toilet, and then the criminals would pour freezing water on them. In the hot weather, no one was allowed to open the windows nor allowed to loosen their clothing. They forced more than twenty practitioners to stand next to one another in the extreme heat of the summer. Everyone was sweating profusely and they were not allowed to move one bit or else they would be beaten.
Some practitioners were sent to a separate office to be beaten with leather belts with triangular metal buckles. They were also shocked with electric batons until the smell of burning flesh filled the air. One young practitioner in the First Ward was beaten until he was disabled. He could no longer walk and could not eat without assistance. Every ward had such brutal cases. Practitioner Sun Mingxing in the Second Ward was beaten until his arms were injured and he could not put his clothes on by himself or eat on his own. He could not take care of himself at all. Another practitioner was brutally beaten by prisoners just because he was helping Sun Mingxing get dressed. Practitioner Li in the Third Ward was very steadfast in practising Falun Dafa. The depraved police ordered prisoners to pull out his pubic hair one strand at a time. Then they pulled out his eyebrows, hair and beard. Some practitioners were forced to squat with their heels raised up for a long time. Push pins were placed under both heels, so whoever could not hold the position any longer would be painfully pierced by the push pins under their heels.
After March 5, 2002, Falun Dafa practitioners from Changchun City successfully tapped into a cable TV system to broadcast the truth about the abuses occurring throughout China. The police conducted large-scale arrests throughout the Province. More than 5,000 practitioners were arrested in Changchun City alone. A perpetrator of the persecution, Wang Yunkun, went to the Chaoyanggou Labour Camp on April 6 to arrange for the purchase of large quantities of electric batons, torture devices, monitoring equipment and electrified wire nets. The Financial Bureau also went to the labour camp and allotted more funds to build buildings and to give bonuses to the police. Ever since then, the Chaoyanggou Forced Labour Camp has become a concentration camp specializing in the persecution of Falun Gong. The sounds of shocks from electric batons, screaming, beating, cursing, whipping and the sound of flesh being hit with axe handles were heard continuously. Terror hung in the air of the camp. For three or four months straight the police tortured all those who firmly remained steadfast in their belief in Falun Dafa. A number of tortures were used at the camp, including all of the ones previously mentioned, as well as the following: beating with bamboo sticks, with metal cables, shoe soles, and police batons. Other tortures include "Tying the Ropes" (2), "Riding an Airplane" (3), and being handcuffed and hung up in the air by the handcuffs (4). In the winter, freezing water is poured on the practitioners. They were deprived of sleep, force-fed, and locked up in small isolation cells (5).
Mr. Zhang Qifa was brutally beaten many times in the labour camp. He contracted scabies during the time he was kept in the Second Ward and became very weak. During the third week of intense torture, the police ignored the fact that his life was in danger, because they were seeking more bonus money. They cruelly stripped off Mr. Zhang's clothes and poured cold water onto the scabies-infected areas. Police officers Zhao Dongli and Zhu Shenglin of the Second Ward whipped Mr. Zhang Qifa with a belt with triangular shaped belt buckle until his body was covered with wounds and he was close to death. However, they did not want to be held responsible for his death, so they sent him home on January 19, 2003, where he died the next day.
His body was very dark, swollen and infected with scabies. The skin on his belly had started to decompose and his muscles were separated from the bones. The police from the Jiangyuan County Substation sent a vehicle to block the road leading to the Zhang family home, so as to prohibit people from seeing his body. They quickly cremated his body, and tried to block all information pertaining to the crime from being made known.
The father, Mr. Zhang Quanfu, died inside the Chaoyanggou Forced Labour Camp on the evening of January 6, 2003. In addition, Mr. Ding Yunde from Baishan City and Mr. Wang Jinian from Songjianghe Town were also tortured to death inside the Chaoyanggou Labour Camp.
The tragedy of the Zhang family is a true picture of the result of Jiang and his regime's genocidal policy towards Falun Gong.
Notes:
(1)Yuan is the Chinese currency; the average monthly pay of an urban worker is 500 yuan.
(2) "Tying the Ropes:" The police tie up the practitioner with a thin rope, circle the rope around the neck, and tie the hands behind the back. Then the police use all the force they can to tighten the rope. The rope becomes tighter and tighter around the body of the practitioner, and makes it more and more difficult for the practitioner to breathe. The pain is so intense that the practitioner sometimes loses bladder control. There are instances when the rope was tightened enough to break a practitioner's arm.
(3) "Riding an Airplane:" In this torture, the head is bent down until it cannot go down any further, while the hands are pulled up and held up at the highest point. The hips have to point up. One is forced to keep this position unchanged for a long time. The body in this position looks like the shape of an airplane, which is how this torture came to be named.
(4) With both hands shackled, both feet off the ground or only the toes touching the ground, one is hung by the handcuffs onto a basketball support or an upper ceiling beam. The hands and arms will soon become paralyzed and numb.
(5) The detainee is locked up in a very small cell by themselves. The guards handcuff practitioners with their arms behind their back in a fixed position, in which the practitioners can neither move nor lie down. The small cell is very damp and no sunshine comes in. Detainees have to urinate and defecate in the cell. Only half of a regular meal is served to detainees locked up in a small cell. During the night, rats are running around. The stench in the small cell is so bad that it is difficult to breathe.
http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2003/4/15/34541.html
http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/3/18/46166.html
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/3/13/69840.html
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