Falun Dafa practitioner Mr. Lu Zhiyong from Heishui County, Abazhou, Sichuan Province, has been arrested and detained many times in the past seven years. Presently, he is still being held in Xinhua Forced Labour Camp in Mianyang City. He is skin and bones. He is 1.78 metres tall, but due to the gross abuse his weight has fallen to less than 50 kg.
Lu Zhiyong’s family called the labour camp in January 2007 to enquire about his condition. They asked the officials whether Mr. Lu had money, since detainees at the detention centre had to pay for their food. A woman in Group 2 of Division 7 answered the phone. Later, a man who claimed to be “official He” told the family on the phone: “Lu Zhiyong is in great health.” Mr. Lu’s family asked to speak to him. After a while the family heard someone shouting, “Lu Zhiyong” and heard crackling noises that resembled electric batons, followed by what sounded like water splashing against a window and heavy pounding on the door and windows. One man screamed, “I’ll help you say it! I’ll help you say it!” Official He hastily hung up.
Lu Zhiyong’s family is extremely worried about his health and hope good people can condemn and stop this barbaric and groundless persecution.
Mr. Lu Zhiyong worked as a police officer at the Heizhui County Police Department in A'ou, Sichuan Province prior to the persecution. He was sickly as a child. Once he started practising Falun Dafa, all of his illnesses disappeared without a trace. He was awarded the title “Outstanding People’s Police Officer” and appointed successor to the deputy head of Heizhui County Police Department for his integrity and responsibility.
The Communist Party started persecuting Falun Dafa in July 1999. Mr. Lu led his whole family on a trip to Beijing to appeal for justice for Dafa. They were arrested and detained in Beijing for one day and taken back to Heishui County, where they were held for three months. During the detention, a male guard raped Lu Zhiyong’s wife, Ms. Rao Qun.
Lu Zhiyong was removed from his position as a police officer and sentenced to a one-year probation at a state-run enterprise. He was assigned to patrol the mountainous area coded 904—a cold, high-altitude, rarely inhabited region without telephone or public transportation. Less than 100 people lived in the area. Lu Zhiyong refused to accept the regime's wrongheaded decision to persecute Falun Gong and decided to appeal again in Beijing in July 2001. He gathered some food and walked for seven days and seven nights in the forest, but local police arrested him before he ever got out of Heishui County. The police said to him, “We’ll send you to Mianyang [City] for a three-month study where there are lots of Falun Gong [practitioners].”
He was held at the notorious Xinhua Forced Labour Camp in Mianyang City for close to 18 months. He developed severe pulmonary oedema and seizures as a result of the mistreatment. He was near death and unable to take care of himself when the camp authorities reluctantly released him on medical parole. He returned to his mother who carefully nursed him back to health.
Lu Zhiyong called Xinhua Labour Camp on April 16th, 2002 and said to the officials, “You cannot deceive me ever again.” In the afternoon, guards from the labour camp arrived in a vehicle and again arrested him. His mother had left home and his daughter was in school. He was the only one home. Several men carried him into the police vehicle. He wore very thin clothes and slippers. The guards dragged him over 1,000 feet before they shoved him into a vehicle. He shouted again and again, “Falun Dafa is good!” People who gathered and watched said angrily, “If they were not wearing police uniforms I would really like to beat them up!”
After the imposed term expired, Mr. Lu returned to his mother’s home. It was close to Chinese New Year. An acquaintance from his former workplace picked him up and said, “You should go back to Heishui County and reunite with your wife.” It was 10:00 p.m. and pouring rain when they arrived in Heishui County. Lu Zhiyong’s wife, Rao Qun, went to Heishui County to meet him, but the local police did many things to prevent the couple from seeing each other. They turned the couple’s daughter over to Ms. Rao Qun and told them to go home. The next day the police said to Lu Zhiyong, “You must write a “guarantee statement1” before you can go home.” He refused and was forced to again to work in the mountainous area 904. He was under close watch.
Mr. Lu and his wife were separated by 80 kilometres. Her superiors refused to let her take a few days off to visit her husband. The couple communicated through a mountain resident who periodically went to Heishui County to buy vegetables. Lu Zhiyong’s living and working conditions were terrible.
Lu Zhiyong held a hunger strike for more than one month to protest the discriminatory treatment before his superiors finally consented to let his wife visit him. Ms. Rao Qun saw that her husband weighed around 100 lbs and his hair was completely white. She walked a long distance and went to a small town with telephone service where she made a phone call to his mother and told her about his condition. His mother took the rest of the family and arrived in a van at Mountain Area 904. They picked up Lu Zhiyong and his wife and went to Heishui County. They talked to the Heishui police and petitioned to permit Lu Zhiyong return to his family. It was the first Chinese New Year Lu Zhiyong had spent with his family since the persecution started in 1999.
Later on, Rao Qun wrote letters to inform people about the persecution of Falun Gong and dispel the state
propaganda attacking the practice, and the mailman reported her. The police broke into her home in the middle of the night and took her away. Lu Zhiyong went to the county police department and the Political and Judiciary Committee and asked for his wife, but they said, “We will release her in a month.” One month later Lu Zhiyong went back but was told, “We have already sent her to Nanmusi Women’s Forced Labour Camp in Zizhong City. The Abazhou government sentenced her to three years of forced labour.”
Mr. Lu only option was to go back to patrol the mountain in order to support his family. He always informed people about the true nature of Falun Gong whenever he came off the mountain to buy necessities. The year after Rao Qun was sent to Nanmusi Women’s Labour Camp, a child brainwashed by the regime's propaganda reported him when he was explaining the facts. Mr. Lu was sent to Group 3, Division 6 at Xinhua Forced Labour Camp in Mianyang City. His daughter was separated from both her parents and had to live with her grandmother, who was in her late 60s. Their only source of income was the grandmother’s limited pension, a part of which is used to pay for the young girl’s tuition.
Lu Zhiyong’s family went to visit him in March 2006. When he met them, three inmates stood on his left and three guards stood on his right to make sure he didn’t say or do anything “inappropriate.” He was in good spirits and smiled and said goodbye at the end of the meeting.
Mr. Lu was very determined at the labour camp and was thus listed as a major persecution target. He was transferred to Group 1, Division 7 where practitioners are savagely tortured.
According to an insider, the camp officials often use rubber sticks covered with long sharp nails to beat “stubborn” practitioners for more than 40 minutes at a time. There is not a single square inch of skin left intact on the practitioner after such a beating. They often refuse to give the practitioners food, purposely starving them. When the practitioners show symptoms of critical illness, they are taken to a hospital and given IV infusions so that the officials can avoid taking responsibility should the practitioners die. Even the doctors at the detention centre privately protested the abuse. They also put unknown substances in practitioners’ food, which made Lu Zhiyong become severely bloated.
Because the Party officials are truly afraid of practitioners, they are unusually suspicious. Lu Zhiyong’s family called him at the labour camp in early October 2006. The family reported to him, “Your daughter is behaving well; she makes good grades. Her teacher praised her essay and her math grade is number one in the class.” The officials accused Lu Zhiyong of “transmitting coded information" and beat him until he lost consciousness. They then took him to Emergency at the hospital. (The officials often beat practitioners when their families call and purposely let the family hear practitioners scream in pain). Lu Zhiyong’s family visited him on October 14th, 2006, but the guards said he couldn’t eat and was taken to the hospital.
The torture methods that have already been exposed are only a tiny percentage of what takes place in that labour camp. Lu Zhiyong called his family in early November 2006 and told them the guards often beat him for no reason. Sometimes when he is working the guards push him to the ground and savagely beat him.
Seven of Mr. Lu’s family members went to visit him in December 2006 and saw him emaciated and skeleton-like. His face was black and blue. His uncles and aunts cried. His aunt said, “When I am retired, I will take your place so you can go home.” They told him to eat more food, but Lu Zhiyong said, “It is not that I don’t want to eat; I can’t eat. I can eat only a little during lunch.”
His family thinks there are two possible causes for this condition; either the guards put drugs in his food or water or he is suffering from swelling in his gastrointestinal system or stomach bleeding as a result of being beaten.
Contact information:
Xinhua Forced Labour Camp in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province
Main office: 86-816-2274441
Section office: 86-816-2260410
Division 6: 86-816-2830597
Group 2, Division 6: 86-816-2830769
Group 3, Division 6: 86-816-2830543
Group 1, Division 6: 86-816-2831189
Note
1. "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.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/3/11/150543.html
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