A Letter Written by Mr. Wang Gang, Crippled from Torture, from Baoding Prison, Hebei Province

The following is a letter from Falun Dafa practitioner Mr. Wang Gang. He is currently imprisoned in Baoding Prison, also known as No. 1 Prison of Hebei Province. In his letter, he is asking the "Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China" to investigate the persecution and torture of Falun Dafa practitioners at Baoding Prison.

Mr. Wang Gang is a resident of Xiweitou Village, Dongyihezhuang Township, Zhuozhou City, Hebei Province. In this letter, he describes details of his torture between May 18th and 30th, 2005. We ask practitioners who are familiar with this situation to expose facts of additional tortures.

Mr. Wang Gang's original letter:

On the afternoon of May 18th, 2005, I returned to my cell after working for the prison. In the evening, because I did the Falun Gong exercises, they tied me to a bed in an office of the prison guards the entire night. After coming back from work on May 19th, I was taken to solitary confinement after dinner.

On May 24th, the people who were supposed to look after me got some warm water to wash me. After only one quarter was done, they took away the water basin and said that there was an inspection. They never finished washing the rest of my body after the inspection was over.

One time I was able to break free from the rope they used to tie me to the bed. Because I had been tied to the bed for many days, I had lost feeling in my legs and feet. I leaned against the wall and moved myself to the water basin in a corner of the room. I washed my face and used my shorts as a towel. After they found out, they again tied me to the bed. They told the night shift people that I had broken free from the rope. They then tied me to another bed. That bed had metal corners, three iron bars on the wooden board, two foot shackles, and a very wide waist belt. Both of my hands were cuffed to the bed.

During my ten days of solitary confinement, the people who watched me were not allowed to speak to me. They only gave me a little water. Sometimes they would not even allow the people who were watching me to speak or give me water. During this period, the prison director Gao Ying was personally responsible for torturing me. When the captain of my brigade wanted to visit me, he had to get permission from Gao Ying. They wanted to "transform¹" me using this method, or they would tie me to the bed for 15 to 30 days.

On many occasions, I told the person in charge of the solitary confinement that I did not feel good and that I needed to go to the hospital, but they ignored me. Later, I asked the person who watched me to tell the brigade that I was ill. Finally they sent a doctor to look at me, but the doctor did not say anything afterward. The only thing they did was remove the shackles from my feet. In addition, Wang Langui peeked into my room many times. Wang also asked the person who was watching me if I had shown any signs of being "transformed." When no clear answer was given, Wang stopped showing up.

At around 4:00 a.m. on May 27th, Fan Jianli and Ran Po came to the room. Fang asked me my name. He directed a flashlight at my face. He asked, "Who put the cushion underneath you?" I did not reply. He then kicked my leg seven or eight times. He tried to drag the cushion out from under me, but could not. He then asked others to help him. Zhang Wei and Shao Chengjun came in a hurry to help take the cushion away. When they pulled the cushion from underneath me, my back was bruised from the wooden blocks and iron bars on the bed, and some of my skin was broken already. He then went to the monitoring room and told me to come and see him there. I was not even wearing any shorts at the time. I was only allowed to put on trousers when he saw me. I told him that my legs were injured. He had people drag me out of the monitoring room and told me to walk into the room on my own. I could not walk, so I crawled inside the room. He told me to stand up. I told him that I could not because my legs were injured. He then kicked me and told me to get out. He said that I could only enter if I walked in. I crawled in the room three times. He said that if I still pretended to be hurt, he would send me to the "strict monitoring unit" the next morning. Soon after that, Fang and Ran left. I told Zhang Wei and Shao Chengjun that they should tell the prison unit that Fang had injured me and ask them to take me to the hospital. Zhou Zhanghu put me on a tricycle and took me to the prison hospital.

They put me on an IV until one o'clock in the morning. Then they took me back to solitary confinement and tied me to the bed again. On May 28th, they took me to the hospital again for an IV. The hospital administrator asked me how my legs were injured, but I did not tell him. At around noon, I was taken to the Baoding 252 Military Hospital for a physical examination. At around 5:00 p.m., I was taken to the Beijing 301 Hospital. The doctors at both hospitals said that my legs needed to be amputated.

I was taken back to the prison hospital. On May 29th, I was taken to the No. 1 Hospital of Baoding City. The next morning, I was told that I should have my legs amputated as soon as possible. In the morning on May 30th, they told Shi Zhaoying, Wang Langui, and Zhou Zhanghu about my legs. Around noon, prison hospital administrator Zhang came to visit me. I told him that I had something to tell him. At that time, only two of us were in the room. I told Zhang that Fang Jianli had beaten me. I told him that I wanted justice from the prison officials, otherwise I would refuse to have my legs amputated. He agreed and promised to inform the prison officials.

On the afternoon of May 30th, the hospital again notified me that I was in a dire condition. I told Shi Zhaoying, "I want to ask my wife's opinion." Shi said, "No, what is the use to tell her about it."

While I was in the hospital, the director of the prison 610 Office² Zhang was also there on May 30. I told him that Fan Jianli had beaten me. He said, "Wang Gang, you should try to get better first. We will deal with this later." Later, when Wang Langui came to the hospital to visit me, I asked him, "How is my situation going to be dealt with?" He said, "You could write a report to the prison officials and also write down how you want to resolve the issue and some of your thoughts." So I wrote down how they tortured me.

I was placed under strict monitoring at the hospital for over a year. They did not dare to come back to the prison because they were afraid I would expose the facts to the others. When I requested a visit, they always came up with some excuse. They thought they could resolve the situation with money, but I refused.

To this day, the prison investigation team has only investigated my case superficially. Even during the investigation, the team leader Yang Maoling threatened me, "If you keep it up, you won't be able to get a medical parole even if you are eligible." They only documented that Fan Jianli beat me once or twice. There was no mention of me crawling into the office. When I reported the beating to Shi Zhaoying on May 30th, 2005, he wrote it down and I signed it. I ask him to tell Prison Director Gao Ying about the beating. Why did Gao Ying not show up or assign people to investigate the case? My solitary confinement was controlled by the prison, and no one was allowed to see me without Gao Ying's approval. Wasn't my beating instigated by Gao Ying? To this day, Gao has not showed his face.

A new director, Song Zhigang, talked to me many times and tried to find out what I thought about being crippled. I only asked for justice. Right now I have no contact with my family. I don't even know if they know what has happened to me. I hope that my family could be informed about my situation and that more people would realise the truth about this evil political party.

Wang Gang

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Prison Director Gao Ying: 86-312-5923801 (Office), 86-312-5928999 (Home), 86-13832224005 (Mobile)
Fan Jianli: 86-13832224037 (Mobile)
Zhang Shengguo: 86-312-5923002 (Office), 86-13832224002 (Mobile)
Gao Zexiang: 86-312-5923006 (Office), 86-312-5928069 (Home), 86-13832224006 (Mobile)

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")

2. "The 610 office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/9/27/138740.html