Ms. Zhao Yanxia Force-Fed to Death and other Cases of Savage Torture Towards Dafa Practitioners in Inner Mongolia

Early in the year 2000, officers from the Hongshan Police Station arrested Falun Dafa practitioner Song Kaijun, a teacher at Chifeng Normal School, who had gone to Beijing to appeal. She was returned to Chifeng City and held at Hongshan Detention Centre, where she was beaten. The Hongshan Assistant Police Chief, Li Shucheng, who was responsible for persecuting Falun Gong at the time, directed another officer, Cai Yuguo, a man renowned for his merciless beating of prisoners, to torture Song Kaijun. Cai repeatedly punched and kicked her, and inflicted shocks and burns with an electric baton. He also tortured her by hanging her up and handcuffing her from the back (1). Song Kaijun was interrogated and tortured many times, usually at night.

One night, Song Kaijun was interrogated and not sent back to her room until the next morning. When the detention centre police later found her, she was unable to stand up straight. Her arms protruded backwards and could not lay flat from having been hung up. Unable to return to a normal posture, she endured extreme pain. Song Kaijun was subsequently sentenced to three years in jail and has since been released.

Some victims of the Hongshan Police Department were forced to fabricate evidence that would frame Falun Dafa practitioner Zhao Shuzhen. Zhao Shuzhen later went on a hunger strike to protest the injustice of her unlawful detention. It took a gang of about eight policemen to physically restrain the emaciated Zhao Shuzhen and force-feed her with corn soup. They used a cylindrical dilator instrument to open her mouth, which caused her face to turn bluish purple from bruising. Later, she went on many other hunger strikes. She was put in shackles with her hands cuffed behind her back, and she was detained in a dark room.

When the Hongshan Police ordered the Falun Gong practitioners to recite the jail rules, Ms. Wang Weihua and Ms. Haoping refused to recite them since they were not criminals. A policeman named Deng Liyan repeatedly shocked the two women with an electric baton. The rest of the practitioners held at Hongshan Detention Centre went on a hunger strike to protest this brutality. The police officers force-fed hot corn soup to Wang Weihua. Her mouth was full of blisters, and a large piece of skin inside her mouth peeled away from being scalded by the boiling hot soup. The corner of her mouth was torn open, leaving a bleeding wound. Her neck, shoulders and chest were also scalded.

Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Zhao Yanxia was tortured to death during force-feeding. However, in order to cover up their crime, the police at Hongshan Detention Centre claimed that Zhao had died of a cardiac arrest, thus deceiving people, especially Zhao's family.

When Hongshan Police arrested Falun Dafa practitioner Li Hui, she refused to cooperate with them. When she was first sent to Hongshan Detention Centre, the police forced her to the floor, where they used their feet to step on her head and arms in order to force her fingerprints to the paper. In order to obtain false evidence from her, the police tortured her savagely. The sadistic guards fastened electrodes connected from a variable-voltage electrical generator to the bare nipples of Li Hui's breasts. Then they randomly alternated the voltage level between the highest and lowest settings, causing her to repeatedly lose and regain consciousness while her limbs seized up uncontrollably, due to the electric shock.

Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Hao Ping was also persecuted in Hongshan Detention Centre. On one freezing winter night, police threw Hao Ping into a dark room without her cotton-padded coat, and cuffed her to the freezing iron chair (3) for over twenty hours. During that entire time they did not give her any food, and forbade her from going to the toilet. Hao Ping's clothes became even colder when they eventually became soaked in urine. When the Ministry officials came to inspect the detention centre, fellow detained practitioner Li Hui requested relief for Hao Ping, but the police retaliated by locking Li Hui in a cold, dark room as well.

1. A torture known by various names, such as the "Big Hang Up": With both hands cuffed behind the back and only toes barely touching the ground, one is hung by a rope that is tied to a metal window frame, tall post or structural support beam. Both hands and arms will soon lose sensory perception. In addition, both hands will go dead from lack of blood circulation.
2.The yuan is the basic unit of currency in China, where the average monthly salary for an urban worker is 500 yuan.
3. The iron chair is made of iron pipes. Victims are restrained on the iron chairs with both arms and legs tied for long periods of time. For illustration, see http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/1/9/17577.html

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/4/12/72115.html