Ms. Xu Yan and Her Husband Tortured by Police from Huailai County, Hebei Province

At 9 p.m., on July 9th, 2008, Mr. Ni Jinxing, his wife Ms. Xu Yan and her younger sister Ms. Xu Yue, returned to their home in Zongjiawa Town, Huailai County, Hebei Province from a visit to their parents' home in Bawangzhuang Village. Only 30 minutes later, someone knocked on the door loudly. They were reluctant to answer the door because they did not know who was outside. Soon, about 10 police officers and security personnel smashed through the door and broke into their home. The intruders identified themselves as officials from the Tumu Town Police Station in Huailai County, including Ma Changhai, the Chief of the Police Station, Sun Youzhi, from the Tumu Town security office, and someone wearing glasses from the National Security Team of the Tumu Town Police Department. They said that someone had reported Ms. Xu Yan to be a Falun Gong practitioner. They presented a search warrant and tried to force Mr. Ni to sign it. Mr. Ni refused to do so, explaining that his wife was a kind person and that it was not an offence to practise Falun Gong. They said to him, "It is up to you to sign or not to sign. In the end it won't matter whether you sign the paper or not; we will still do whatever we like." They then started to ransack the home. Ma Changhai cursed and insulted Ms. Xu Yue, the younger sister and threatened to search her bag and take away her MP3 player. He even yelled at her, saying that he would have beaten her if she were not so young.

They continued to search the home for about one hour and made a mess of everything. In the end, they took away a broken laptop that belongs to a friend of Mr. Ni's, several Falun Gong books, an MP4 player and some CDs. After they left, the family found that all their money had been stolen. The officers dragged Ms. Xu Yan into a car. They took both Ms. Xu and her her husband to the Tumu Town Police Station, leaving Ms. Xu Yue home alone and the door smashed.

In the Tumu Town Police Station, the police separated the couple, and started to interrogate them. However, they had nothing to confess because they had done nothing wrong. Instead, they explained that the police were acting against the law, which would bring them trouble in the future. At the time, Ma Changhai and another unnamed officer, threatened, intimidated and abused Mr. Ni, and further tormented him by trying to force him to insult the founder of Falun Gong, Teacher Li Hongzhi, and to even step on his picture. They claimed that they would have made Mr. Ni suffer even more if not for the fact that his brother was a village official.

At the police station, Mr. Ni saw his wife locked into a cage and sitting on the ground. It was cold and he took off his coat and tried to hand it to his wife, but the police prevented him from doing so. They took him to a cell and started to interrogate him, but to no avail. After quite a long time, they got tired and shackled his hands to a metal chair, known as the tiger bench¹, leaving one policeman behind to keep an eye on him.

On the next morning, July 7th, 2008, a technician was called in to take a look at Mr. Ni's computer for "evidence" to convict him. In the meantime, four or five policemen from the Huailai County office intimidated him, and tried to force him to insult the founder of Falun Gong by stepping on his picture. He remained shackled for 12 hours. At noon, he was locked into the cage in his wife's cell with a male thief, while his wife was shackled to the metal chair. They did not give the couple any food until their family members came to see them.

Between 4 and 5 p.m., the police transferred the wife to the Ertaizi Detention Centre of Huailai County. Mr. Ni's brother-in-law is a fellow villager of Ma Changhai and tried to reason with him about releasing Mr. Ni. Ma and the chief of the police station, Wang Guohong, then decided to demand 5,000 yuan² as a precondition for his release. After some argument, the extortion was lowered to 2,000 yuan. When Mr. Ni was finally released, he received no official statement about his arrest. The police still refused to release the wife and detained her on the trumped-up charge of "undermining the implementation of law using a cult." They forced Mr. Ni to sign for the arrest of his wife for which he is now very sorry.

Later, Mr. Ni heard rumours that his wife might no longer be held at the Ertaizi Detention Centre in Huailai County and that she had been transferred to somewhere in Zhangjiakou City (Hebei Province). He immediately went to the detention centre to ask for information. The police told him that they had nobody called Xu Yan in their custody and that they had no idea about her whereabouts.

On July 31st, 2008, Mr. Ni's mother-in-law received a call from someone at the Tumu Town Police Station to let them know that Ms. Xu Yan was in need of money. On August 2nd, 2008, the family went to the police station for more information. The chief of the station, Wang Guohong, told them that Ms. Xu had been sentenced to one year of forced labour by the Zhangjiakou City committee of forced labour re-education, and that she was already on her way to the Shijiazhuang City Women's Labour Camp. They tried to extort 1,000 yuan from Mr. Ni, saying that the labour camp was in need of it, and they would take along the money when they went to the labour camp for official procedures concerning his wife. Mr. Ni who did not have this amount of money in the first place, was suspicious about the legality of such a request and refused to pay.

On August 14th, 2008, Mr. Ni received a letter from his wife in the labour camp, from which he learned that five Falun Gong practitioners, including Ms. Ding Yifeng and her daughter, Ms. Zhu Daqing and Ms. Li Rongmei, had also been sent to the same labour camp by the deputy head of the police station, Chi Hongqiang. She further told him that family members were forbidden to visit them during the Beijing Olympic Games and that they were subjected mental tortures and brainwashing while at the labour camp.

After further investigations, we learned that the sequence of events was initiated when someone from the Tianjiayao Town Police Station in Chicheng County, Hebei Province went to the home of Mr. Ni's in-laws to ask about the whereabouts of Ms. Xu during the time leading up to the Olympic Games. Not being savvy enough about the workings of the government, the family told them what they knew. This led to the information being passed on to the Tumu Town Police Station and Bawangzhuang Village, Huailai County (Ms. Xu's hometown) officials. Ms. Xu's village officials then started to secretly shadow and investigate the family, which eventually led to the couple's arrest and Ms. Xu's labour camp sentence.

Officials involved in this persecution case:

Wang Wenhong, Chief of Tianjiayao Police Station: 86-13191916899 (mobile);
Wang Jiang, CCP Director of Tianjiayao Police Station;
Wang Guohong, Chief of Tumu Town Police Station: 86-13603134461 (mobile);
Chi Hongqiang, Deputy Chief of Tumu Town Police Station: 86-13703133652 (mobile);
Li Shujun, CCP Director of Tumu Town Police Station (son of the secretary of the communist party committee of Huailai county );
Sun Youzhi, Security office of Tumu town: 86-13833369358 (mobile);.

Note

1. "Tiger Bench": Prisoners are forced to sit on a small iron bench that is approximately 20 cm (6 inches) tall with their knees tied together. With their hands tied behind their backs or sometimes placed on their knees, they are forced to sit straight up and look straight ahead without movement for long periods of time.

2. "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://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/10/13/187641.html