Hebei Province Officials Burned Mr. Zhang Shunjie with a Red-hot Poker

Mr. Zhang Shunjie is a 40-year-old Dafa practitioner from Wei County, Hebei Province. On July 20th, 1999, the Chinese Communist regime started to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Because Mr. Zhang persisted in his belief, spoke righteous words, and rescued a fellow practitioner, he suffered severe persecution.

In June 2000, Mr. Zhang Shunjie went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa. When he sat on the stone pavement to take a break at Tiananmen Square, plainclothes policemen arrested him using force. The police in the car made him raise his hands. Then they lifted his shirt and beat his chest hard four or five rounds. The beating lasted over twenty minutes. When the police beat people, often the damage can't be seen on the surface, but they inflict internal injuries. Because Mr. Zhang refused to give his name, the police pushed him out of the car. After his release, he couldn't straighten his torso, he vomited blood, and he had a problem with nosebleeds. After the incident, Mr. Zhang couldn't perform any heavy labour. As a bricklayer, he used to stack bricks at a construction site, so he had to change his occupation to something less physically demanding. He bought a used motorcycle to make a living.

On the night of February 25th, 2002, after Zhang Shunjie had rescued a persecuted local practitioner, a group of men followed him home. They pounded on the door, threw stones into the yard, and then broke into his home. They unlawfully arrested Mr. Zhang and took him to the police station.

Gao Dequan violently slapped Mr. Zhang. The party secretary, Wang Sui, used a broom to hit the back of his hands repeatedly. They tried to force him to admit he had participated in rescuing another practitioner and to give the location of the rescued practitioner. Then they pushed him into a room and a group of men surrounded and beat him. When he fell, they pulled him up to continue the torture. This ordeal continued until 2:00 a.m. When they became tired, they locked Mr. Zhang in another room. He was handcuffed to a table so that he could neither stand nor squat.

The next morning, after people went to work, a vicious person named Wang Xizhen used a poker to hit Mr. Zhang. Later, Wang heated the poker red-hot and used it to sear Mr. Zhang's hands. His hands still have those scars. Jia Zhongcheng used a lighted cigarette to burn Zhang Shunjie's face. He also poured boiling water on his head. A person wearing a judicial robes yelled, "I will make your family suffer a great deal!"

After 9:00 a.m., a police officer from the local police station made Mr. Zhang hold onto a chair, then he handcuffed him. He took a big electric baton, raised Mr. Zhang's clothes from the back, and brutally shocked his back. He thrust the baton into his trousers and his mouth. Mr. Zhang's mouth was burnt black. The officer then handcuffed his hands behind his back, which caused excruciating pain.

At noon, they handcuffed Zhang Shunjie to a utility pole. Mr. Zhang started a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Nie from the police station fastened a heavy chain around Mr. Zhang's waist. Police officer Wang beat him so badly with an electric baton that it broke in two.

In the afternoon, they continued the torture. After placing a book on Mr. Zhang's chest, Wang practised boxing on Mr. Zhang. He also slapped his face with the book, causing Mr. Zhang's nose to bleed. But this vicious person didn't stop there. He took a wooden stick and continued the beating. After the stick broke, he fiercely jabbed the sharp tip of the stick into Mr. Zhang's chest. He pounded Mr. Zhang's feet with a heavy object and poured cold water over his chest. This incident took place in the cold of winter.

That night Zhang Shunjie was nearly unconscious. His hands were swollen from the torture, and his hands and body had been badly burned. He had injuries everywhere. When he began to perspire heavily, the perpetrators became scared. They got a doctor to check his pulse. Mr. Zhang's heartbeat was abnormal even though he had had no history of heart disease before he was tortured.

The next day the police asked Mr. Zhang's family for 5,000 yuan¹ to bail him out. When his family came and saw how badly he had been tortured, they said, "Our family didn't commit any crime, but you did this to him while he was in your custody, and you still want money from us?" When the police realised that they couldn't get any money his family, they put Mr. Zhang into a detention centre, where he endured more persecution. Among other tortures, the perpetrators poured cold water onto the floor of a room, striped off his clothes, and made him lie on the floor. They beat his buttocks with a shoe and they pushed his head into a barrel. Fifty days later, police extorted close to 5,000 yuan from him before releasing him.

At the end of October 2002, before the Sixteenth National Party Congress, Fan, a member of the joint security team of the Weizhou Town Police Station, led several other men to break into Mr. Zhang's home again. They blocked him at the door, beat him, arrested him, and took him to the office of the joint security team. They left him handcuffed for two days and nights. Mr. Zhang was sent to a brainwashing centre and held for more than 20 days.

The continual, inhuman persecution over several years injured Mr. Zhang Shunjie severely. In February 2005, he suddenly lost consciousness at home and was sent to the hospital. An x-ray showed that he had had a serious stroke. Because of the power of Dafa he recovered very quickly. Even the doctors and nurses said that it was a miracle.

Later, for no apparent reason, Mr. Zhang lost consciousness several times while at home or on the street. This greatly affected his daily work and life. The evil communist party has persecuted a good person and left him injured. His wife doesn't have a job, and he has three young children to support.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/1/1/117644.html