Mr. Zhang Hongwei Dying in Jilin Prison

Mr. Zhang Hongwei is a Falun Dafa practitioner from Tonghua Cty, Jilin Province. He was arrested in 2001 when he was producing leaflets exposing the persecution in Beijing City. Mr. Zhang was sentenced to 13 years in prison and locked in the Tiebei Prison in Changchun City. He has been beaten many times, and he went on hunger strike for more than 50 days to protest. The prison warden said, "As long as you quit your hunger strike, you may practise Falun Gong however you want." When Mr. Zhang recovered a little bit, he was transferred to Jilin Prison, where he was tortured by being locked in a small cell¹ for two years. During that two years, his family was refused the right to visit him with excuse of his "being in solitary confinement." One time, however, Mr. Zhang was carried out. He moved very slowly and could only stand by leaning against the wall. The guards said that his condition was due to long-term confinement in the small cell. His family found out he had been beaten many times.

Mr. Zhang had been tortured by being handcuffed on the Death Bed² for more than 50 days and the Big Hang Up³. As weak as he was, he was still not allowed family visits. His family sued Jilin Prison Deputy Warden Liu Wei and Education Office Head Tan Fuhua at the Procuratorate. Mr. Zhang Hongwei was finally released from the small cell in the middle of August 2004. His family was not allowed to visit until the end of that month, however, to conceal the severity of the torture.

At the beginning of 2005, Zhang Hongwei was locked in a small cell for another three months, and his health was failing due to this brutal torture. He was sick with tuberculosis at the beginning of 2006, and he has no energy to talk now. When he was checked on March 8th, 2006, the doctors found he had third degree TB, pleurisy with pleural fluid, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Mr. Zhang cannot eat because the medicine has ruined his stomach. He thinking is often fuzzy, he is very thin and has difficulty walking, and he has extreme chest pain. His warden has requested that he be let out on medical parole, but the prison administration has not yet approved this request. Mr. Zhang's condition is worsening quickly.

There have been several cases of Falun Dafa practitioners that have died of tuberculosis because of delayed treatment in the prison or labour camps. Some of them have died inside the prisons or the camps, and some of them were released when dying because the guards were trying to escape legal responsibilities.

Note

1. Small cell: The detainee is locked up in a very small cell individually. The guards handcuff the practitioners' wrists behind their backs in a fixed position so that 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 daytime. During the night rats run around. The stench in the small cell is so bad that it is difficult to breathe.

2. "Death Bed" torture: A practitioner is tied to a bed with his hands handcuffed above his head to the bed rails, and his legs tied with thin nylon ropes. The rope is then tightly wrapped around the practitioner's body and the bed, from his legs to his chest. The rope is wrapped so tightly that the practitioner has difficulty breathing and eventually loses consciousness.

3. Big Hang-up: There are two forms in this torture: 1) With both wrists handcuffed behind the back and only toes touching the ground, one is hung by a rope that is tied to a metal window frame; 2) One hand of a practitioner is handcuffed to one bunk bed and the other hand to another bed, and the two beds are pulled in opposite directions. The pain is extreme as the body is pulled apart. See illustration on http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/11/17/54624.html

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/4/2/124252.html