Current Situation of Some Practitioners in Jidong Prison (Hebei Province)

Jidong Men's Prison is located in the Fengnan District, Tangshan City, Hebei Province. It is a remote area. Many practitioners are detained and persecuted in this prison.

Since each team in the prison is in a separate area, practitioners are divided among the different teams. Some teams only have one practitioner. Each practitioner is kept with four to six criminal inmates. Due to the prison's remoteness, some practitioners are not able to see their family members for several years, and the prison officials tightly control communications to prevent the persecution from being exposed. Only a few individual cases have become known publicly.

The prison officials use many brutal methods to torture practitioners in order to try to make them renounce Falun Gong, such as shocking them with electric batons, forcing them to stay under the burning sun, beating them, and putting them in solitary confinement in cells without sunshine for several months. They have ordered the criminal inmates to surround and beat practitioners and threatened to beat them to death. Some practitioners were deprived of sleep for a long period of time. They also invited people who gave up the practice of Falun Gong to come to the prison to help force the practitioners to give up their beliefs.

Below are the current situations of some of the practitioners in Jidong Prison:

First Team:

Mr. Liu Yongwang, 35 years old, is a practitioner from Baoding City, Hebei Province. He is an electrical engineer. He has been on hunger strike for more than five months and is in critical condition.

Second Team:

Mr. Meng Fanquan, 45 years old, is a lecturer at Hebei Technical University in Tangshan City. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and has been detained in Jidong Prison since October 2006.

Mr. Han Xueyu is a practitioner from the Fengrun District of Tangshan City and was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2003.

Mr. Kang Yongqiang, about 50 years old, is a practitioner from Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province.

Mr. Wei Haiwu, about 50 years old, is a practitioner from Baoding City.

Fourth Team:

Mr. Yang Jianpo, about 50 years old, is a practitioner from Langfang City, Hebei Province. He has been on a hunger strike for over 300 days and should be on parole for medical reasons. However, the prison officials refused to release him, and currently Mr. Yang's life is in danger.

Fifth Team:

Mr. Sun Jianzhong is a practitioner from the Fengrun District, Tangshan City, and was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2003.

Mr. Zhang Yunping, 50 years old, is a practitioner from the Tangshan City Iron and Steel Company. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2003.

There are over 100 practitioners currently detained in Jidong Prison.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/1/26/147667.html