More Details on the Persecution Death of Mr. Liu Shuchun at Lechang Forced Labour Camp in Shandong Province

Practitioner Mr. Liu Shuchun was very weak when the Changyi City Police in Shandong Province sent him to the Lechang Labour Education Centre. He’d already been on a hunger strike for many days while he was imprisoned in Changle.

During his incarceration Mr. Liu refused to be "transformed¹," so the guards in the Second Group of Changle Labour Education Centre stripped him of his clothes and drenched him with cold water. This was one of their routine methods of torturing practitioners.

During one of the coldest days of the year, with ice-cold water pouring over his body and the northweste wind blowing in through the open windows, Mr. Liu felt like he was being stabbed with thousands of knives. After an hour of this torture he was shivering violently and unable to speak. He felt as if his internal organs were under pressure and he could hardly stand the pain. Every practitioner who’s been tortured this way can attest to the severity of Liu Shuchun’s suffering. Meanwhile the guards shouted and cursed because their hands were so cold from holding the water hose, even though they were dressed in heavy jackets and wore insulated shoes and leather gloves.

When the guards tired of this torture they dragged Mr. Liu back to the Team One dormitory room opposite the bathroom and threw him, naked, wet and shivering, to the floor. They punched and kicked him, yelling, "Tell us, do you want to practise or not?" The racket from the beating and Mr. Liu's pained screams echoed through the west wing of the Labour Education Building. It went on until the scoundrels were dripping with sweat and it was lunchtime. They left him lying curled up on the cement floor with his eyes closed, trembling and breathing faintly. He lay there for more than an hour.

Later that afternoon the thugs stepped up their torture of Liu Shuchun, but they failed to force him "transform." He kept his mouth closed, refusing to speak. They gave him another cold shower and beat him again even more severely than they had before. He was trembling and his groans of pain grew lower and weaker. Gradually his moans could no longer be heard over the noise of the guards yelling, "Do you still want to practise?"

Mr. Liu Shuchun stopped breathing, but the punching and kicking continued. At first they didn’t notice that he’d died. Finally Tian Weixiang called the duty officer when he sensed that something was wrong.

In less than six hours, inmates, under the direction of the Changle Forced Labour Centre guards, had beaten Mr. Liu Shuchun to death. Shortly thereafter a labour camp vehicle arrived at the west building, and several Second Group guards wrapped him in a piece of cotton mattress, carried him down from the fourth floor, and loaded his body on the vehicle, which then drove away.

Mr. Liu Shuchun’s wife is also a Dafa practitioner, and she was detained at the Wangcun Forced Labour Camp at the time. Since there was nobody to claim him, his body, still wrapped in the cotton mattress, was left on the floor of a storage room for two days before they disposed of it, along with his personal belongings and clothes, but Mr. Liu’s name was removed from the bulletin board by the duty officer the same afternoon.

In order to contain the news of an inmate being beaten to death, Changle Forced Labour Camp officials transferred many guards from various departments to the Second Group to more closely monitor the rest of the practitioners. Practitioners weren’t allowed to write letters, make phone calls, or go anywhere by themselves. They weren’t even allowed to speak with each other. Even when a practitioner went to the restroom he was "sandwiched" by two guards. The Second Group guards assembled all the detainees and searched them three times. They turned the men’s briefs inside out and even removed the insoles from their shoes in order to examine them.

Despite the efforts of the authorities to block the news, word of Mr. Liu Shuchun’s brutal murder reached the outside the very same day.

Mr. Liu Shuchun was tortured to death on January 3rd, 2001, between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. in the Team One dormitory, fourth floor, west wing, by the inmates and guards of Subgroup Two, Second Police Group, Changle Forced Labour Camp, Weifang City.

The perpetrators:

Director Xu Lihua and Vice Director Zou Jintian, Changle Forced Labour Camp, who planned and instructed the inmates to beat and torture the detained Dafa practitioners. As leaders they are undeniably responsible for the death of Mr. Liu Shuchun.

Chief Han Huiyue, Subgroup Two, Second Police Group, Changle Forced Labour Camp. Sinister and ruthless, Han has used electric batons, beatings, forced standing and sitting, and all day physical exercise sessions to torture practitioners. Practitioners detained in his group have been subjected to hour-long cold-water showers with open windows in winter. After the showers, inmates kick the practitioners around as if they were soccer balls and only stop when they become exhausted. Each practitioner is be put through this again and again, as long as they refuse to be "transformed." Han Huiyue encouraged inmate Zhang to create a whip by attaching a fan belt to a wooden handle and whip the practitioners that refuse to renounce "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance." Groups of up to eight inmates strip a practitioner and push him to the ground, then two inmates step on the practitioner’s head, four more step on each limb, and the other two take turns whipping the practitioner. They start on the calves and work their way up little by little until they reach the neck. The practitioners’ scars don’t change colour even after their three-year labour terms are over. Han Huiyue is the one most responsible for instigating the inmates to so violently beat Mr. Liu Shuchun to death.

Officers on duty that day: group leader Xiao, and instructor Guan. They also encouraged the inmates to deliver the fatal beating and are therefore responsible for the crime.

Inmates who participated in Mr. Liu Shuchun’s murder:

1. Liu Chunxiang, the inmate who led the team. Liu is so wicked that he’s beaten nearly every practitioner detained at the labour camp. He was punished for beating Mr. Liu Shuchun to death with a three-month extension of his sentence, loss of his position, and a transfer out of Subgroup Two.

2. Tian Weixiang of Qingzhou City. Tian has beaten many practitioners. He wasn’t punished at all for his part in Mr. Liu Shuchun’s murder and kept his position until the end of his term.

3. Niu Zhongxin of Weifang City. Niu is crude and malicious and has beaten many practitioners. He received no punishment for the death of Mr. Liu Shuchun.

4. Liu Xuetian of Dongying City. He received no punishment for the death of Mr. Liu Shuchun.

Every practitioner detained in Subgroup Two in Changle Forced Labour Camp from the autumn of 2000 to the spring of 2001 is a witness to this murder. A detailed witness list will be made available to Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China (CIPFG).

Note

1. "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")

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/9/4/137070.html