The Suffering and Persecution of Practitioner Mr. Han Dequan from Liaoning Province

Mr. Han Dequan, 50 years old, is a practitioner from Xingcheng City, Liaoning Province. He was illegally arrested¹ on November 17th, 2001, and sentenced to six years in prison starting in 2002 because he played a tape exposing the persecution. Since then, he has been locked up in the Dabei Prison in Shenyang, where he is suffering inhumane tortures.

Mr. Han was held in the so-called "intense surveillance brigade" of the No.3 Prison in Shenyang in October 2002. When he refused to recite the prison rules, Wang Weihai and others, ordered by the police, beat him severely. He was seriously injured and he is currently still suffering serious pain. As Mr. Han describes it, his body from the waist down, especially his legs and feet, feel like they are soaking in ice water all the time. The pain pierces to the bone and is nearly intolerable. He also always feels pain and swelling in the back of his head. The images of the beating he received appear constantly in his mind.
Mr. Han continues to ask the prison authorities to bring Wang Weihai to justice according to the law, yet as of today he has not received any response to his request. The letters he sent to the judiciary agencies were all confiscated by the prison section head, Zhao Peng. Mr. Han argued strongly in favour of an article of the law that states "letters to judiciary agencies require no check." Zhao Peng said, "There is no law for you Falun Gong practitioners. If your letters were sent out, my uniform would have to be stripped off." He also said, "Can you provide a witness? All the criminals are required to be witnesses for the government!"
Mr. Han requested to have a physical checkup outside of the jail. Guard Liu replied, "You need to pay for this yourself, and yet it still needs to be approved by the jail authority. You cannot say that you were beaten by a prisoner either. You have to say that it was due to your fighting with the criminals. Some people in the government said that beating Falun Gong practitioners counts for nothing. The government won't permit you to go outside to have a physical examination."

The following is the persecution suffered by Mr. Han, as described by him personally.

Guard Zhao Peng called me to his office in October 2002 and ordered me to memorize 58 rules as soon as possible. Once before, Zhao Peng told me that if I recited the 58 rules, it meant that I already acknowledged my crime. I said, "Then I won't recite any more. But I won't be against any rule either. We practitioners don't do any bad deeds." I refused to recite the 58 rules and was sent to the "intense surveillance brigade." The muscle men claimed that they represent the government to implement its policies. These ruffians tortured me mainly by beating, starving, freezing, and frightening me.

1. Beating

Liu Tiefeng often stripped me of all my clothes, beat me down to the ground, and then punched and kicked me. They used rubber clubs to strike at me countless times everyday. While sitting on the two-finger wide wooden bench, if I moved even a little, Liu Tiefeng and Sun Lei (one in front and the other behind me) kicked me simultaneously. The bench was knocked over due to their kicking. My hands were bound so tightly that the ropes cut into the skin. Almost everyday they treated me like that.

During the seventh night, when I had just fallen asleep, Wang Weihai pulled me up. After he kicked and slapped me, he took out a pen and paper and tried to force me to write a guarantee statement². I didn't pay any attention to him. Wang then fiercely punched me in the chest. I felt extreme pain and had difficulty breathing. He then fiercely hacked me on the throat so that I was choking. Later on, he fiercely kicked my head, trampled my face with his foot, stepped on my face with both feet and kicked it, and then stood on my stomach and jumped on it. I was in extreme pain and felt as though my guts would fall out.

When Wang saw that I still refused to write, while swearing at me, he kicked me hard on my left flank. Due to the extreme pain, I suddenly screamed and couldn't move any longer. He said, "You pretend to be dead" and used all his strength to squeeze my testicles. The pain was so terrible that I wanted to die. I was wet with cold sweat, shivered ceaselessly, and coughed heavily.

Later, muscle men Liu Tiefeng and Sun Lei, who were cheering Wang along, became afraid that Wang would torture me to death, so they called him out.

This torture lasted over two hours and caused me to suffer from a sharp pain in my head. The pain in my left leg was so severe that I couldn't turn around. My face was bruised and swollen. My head was severely swollen too.

2. Corporeal punishment

My body was tortured three or four times everyday. Before each torture they would ask me, "Do you yield?" I didn't answer. They then beat me for a while. Then they untied me and forced me to do the "flying airplane" torture. They had me stand with my back bent so that my head touched the ground and my arms were stretched backward and upward. One of them stood beside me and stared at me, holding a club. If I made a little movement, the club would come down on me. I was often beaten down to the ground. One time, brigade head Wang said, "Let him be clear-headed." Thus, three thugs simultaneously rushed at me and beat me relentlessly. They grasped my arms behind my back and lifted them up as high as possible. My head touched the ground and I had difficulty breathing. The ground around my feet was wet with sweat. When they released me, I lay down weakly and couldn't get up. A criminal said, "They are too inhumane. They even do such ruthless things to a man who is so old."

3. Starving

They also starved me in order to force me to give in. They gave all the other people who were under intense surveillance a half bowl of corn flour soup, but they only gave me a quarter bowl. Almost every day, while beating me, Liu Tiefeng insulted me endlessly, 'Even if your Falun Gong is gold, the Party will convert you to mud' and 'If Falun Gong practitioners come here, nobody will leave without being "transformed³." They lock you up for six months to one year so that you will suffer long-term malnutrition and finally you will suffer tuberculosis. They will ask your family for money with the excuse that they want to send you to a hospital for treatment. Your 20,000 yuan⁴ will be used up in just a few days. Then they will extort money again, forcing your family to sell their house and land so that you become broke. At last your family will lose you and their possessions. The Communist Party has countless means to punish you. If you yield, I will give you a piece of steamed corn bread now.'

4. Freezing

In order to force me to give in, the evil persons exhausted all their inhumane means. When it was cold, they stripped off my sweat clothes and only left me with a thin prisoner's uniform. Standing on the frozen ground with only a pair of nylon socks, I was so cold that I shivered all the time. My feet seemed to be standing on ice and it was intolerable. It was snowing lightly and it was unusually cold. In the morning, a criminal put his clothes around me. When Liu Tiefeng saw that, he beat my face and head with a club. He forced me to take off the clothes and threw them into the trashcan. Liu said, 'If the authorities found out that you put on more clothes, they would deduct my points. I want to accumulate some points to go home earlier. Don't blame me.' I was so cold that I shivered all the time.

5. Instilling Fear

While they tortured me physically, they also attempted to destroy me mentally. They often described some incidents that occurred at the jail in order to frighten me.

Liu Tiefeng said, 'You Falun Gong practitioners are so few to talk to people, while the propaganda of the Party's radio stations, television stations, and the press overwhelmed the whole country. Thus ordinary people only believe the Communist Party. Fake things are said to be truth. A criminal from our No.3 prison section jumped down from the fifth floor and died in 2000. The authorities claimed that he practiced Falun Gong and had cultivation insanity. Criminals all had to act as witnesses. Actually, he was not a Falun Gong practitioner at all. He did that because he was not awarded as many points as he expected and felt like he was treated unfairly. How could his family know the facts? They all hate Falun Gong.'
Liu also said, 'You don't have to be too stubborn. I've defeated about four Falun Gong practitioners who were even steadier than you. Zeng Qingtao was a guy about 20 years old from your No.3 prison section. We deprived him of sleep for four days and gave him a little soup to eat everyday so that he wouldn't die. When he didn't give in under the beatings, we hung him up. If he still didn't yield, we then scratched him or scratched the undersides of his feet. We poured cold water on him every day. No matter how steadfast he was, he couldn't stand it.'

I once stayed in the same prison section as Zeng Qingtao did. He was a young man about 25 years old. Criminals said that he was very healthy when he arrived at the jail. When I saw him, he obviously had a mental problem. One time we met in the toilet. I heard him saying to the criminal who was monitoring him, 'I feel ashamed to live in this world. Our Teacher is so good, yet I insulted him. I feel so sorry toward my Teacher.' It's true. The most painful thing to do is to force someone to act against his or her own conscience. Yet the Communist Party uses exactly these contemptible and shameless means, as well as violence, to force people to do bad deeds.

Liu repeatedly treated me like this almost everyday. I asked him, 'What benefits do you get for doing what you do?' He said, 'The benefit is very great. If we "transform" one Falun Gong practitioner, leaders will get awards. It is also beneficial for getting promotions. If I do well, I can be a provincial work model; at least I can get a merit record. I advise you to be practical. If we truly beat you to death, we only need to fill out a form, claiming you died of suicide. Will the authorities admit that we beat you to death and compensate your family? You are dreaming! If it were not for the leaders that said you were old and were afraid you would die, we would have already "transformed" you. It's kind of nothing to settle with you.'

Secretary Pang also said to me, 'We considered your old age and didn't do ruthless things to you.' It was already incredibly severe, yet it still couldn't be called ruthless!? When they do ruthless things, the atrocity is beyond one's imagination.

At last, they could not "transform" me. The criminals also said, 'You haven't been transformed, yet they sent you back. The sun must be rising in the west.'

Note

1. Illegally arrested: Contrary to what former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, who initiated the persecution, and the Chinese Communist Party would like the world to believe, practising Falun Gong is NOT illegal in China. Although the Public Security Department issued an unconstitutional set of restraints on the practice at the onset of the persecution in 1999, no laws have been passed by the only legislative body in China, the People's Congress, banning Falun Gong or granting the police the authority to arrest Falun Gong practitioners for practising the exercises or distributing flyers. For a more complete discussion of the illegality of the persecution of Falun Gong, please refer to the article "The Ban on Falun Gong—A Dictator's Whim, Not the Rule of Law". (Variation: "illegally sentenced")

2. "Guarantee Statement": A statement to declare that one is remorseful for practising Falun Gong and guarantees not to practise Falun Gong again, not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and never again associate with any Falun Dafa practitioners.

3. "Reform or Transform" Implementation of brainwashing and torture in order to force a practitioner to renounce Falun Gong. (Variations: "reform", "transform", "reformed", "reforming", "transformed", "transforming", and "transformation")

4. "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/2006/6/11/130083.html