Mr. Du Ting Tortured at Tilanqiao Prison in Shanghai for Seven Years

Mr. Du Ting, 43, has been held at Tilanqiao Prison in Shanghai for more than seven years. He once held a hunger strike for more than 400 days to protest the persecution. Recently the guards stripped him naked and tied him on a death bed¹, and several inmates have verbally and physically abused him around the clock.

The abuse has lasted for a long time. Du Ting's family has requested medical parole, but the request was denied. Du Ting has suffered a mental collapse and is extremely weak.

Mr. Du was born in Zhenyuan County, Gansu Province. He moved to Shanghai to work around 1993 and began practising Falun Gong in November 1998. He conducted himself according to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and quit smoking and drinking. His temperament also changed from being impulsive, to considerate and magnanimous. Falun Gong gave him perfect health.

After Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999, Du Ting went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. He was arrested and taken to a police department in Beijing. His captors eventually sent him to the Gansu Province Liaison Office in Beijing where he was handcuffed and tortured for one night before he broke free and returned to Shanghai. Party officials in the Qingpu District, Shanghai pressured his superiors at work in July 2000, and Du Ting was forced to resign.

Minhang District Police Department in Shanghai and Haikou City Police arrested him on May 4th, 2001, and held him at the Haikou City Detention Centre where they deprived him of sleep and brutally tortured him. After some time they took him to the Minhang District Police Department. The persecutors continued using sleep deprivation in attempts to make him reveal information about other Falun Gong practitioners. They also tortured his practitioner wife Fu Xiaohong by compelling her to stay awake for 12 days and nights, and later sentenced her to 18 months of forced labour.

Yan Weichun, a Politics and Security Division official and other officials from the Minhang District took 3,000 yuan² from Du Ting, saying the money would be used pay for Du Ting and his wife's plane tickets from Haikou to Shanghai, but the officials kept the money for themselves.

Du Ting held a hunger strike after being transferred to the Minhang District Detention Centre. The Minhang District Procuratorate issued an arrest warrant for Du Ting on August 17th, 2001. A trial for which Du Ting was not allowed to hire a lawyer and was not allowed to defend himself, was held at Minhang District Court on March 18th, 2002. Du Ting was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was then held at Tilanqiao Prison in Shanghai, where he has been held for seven years and eight months.

When Mr. Du was first taken to the prison he was held in Division 2, which is for death row prisoners. He was treated worse than death row inmates. He held the hunger strike lasting more than 400 days, and the guards locked him in solitary confinement and handcuffed him. They forced him to sit on a small wooden stool for days on end. During the early stages of Du Ting's hunger strike, the guards ordered inmates to cook a little porridge and tried to force-feed him. They pinned him to the floor, a couple of people stepped on him, while others held his head down and tried to pry his mouth open, and yet others beat him in such a way it would cause internal injury but leave no visible wounds.

When Du Ting was dragged to another room or when he walked to the toilet he shouted, "Falun Gong is good! Restore Falun Gong's reputation!" He firmly resisted insults from the guards and inmates and refused to wear the prison uniform. The guards ordered inmates to do many illegal things they wanted done but would not do themselves. Once during the process of Du Ting being dragged to the clinic, the inmates pinched, hit and kicked him. One inmate whacked his thighs, which caused pain in that area for several months.

When the guards force-fed Mr. Du they used a thick tube, which caused abrasions and severe pain in his nose. Du Ting said to people who visited him that his life was in danger during every minute of those force-feeding sessions. The guards cuffed, beat and kicked him because he resisted the force-feedings. They dragged him to the feeding room on the cold concrete floor and they throttled his neck when he shouted, "Falun Gong is good!" Sometimes they caused him to lose consciousness.

The guards forced Falun Gong practitioners to watch CCP-made slanderous propaganda films for 12-14 hours each day, sometimes for more than twenty consecutive days. They even put earpieces in some practitioners' ears to force them to listen to audiotapes that slandered Falun Gong. They broadcast the same tapes from powerful loudspeakers placed in front of Du Ting's solitary confinement cell in order to torment him.

China's prison laws state, "The highest administrative penalty is solitary confinement ...for up to 15 days, during which time the detainee shall not be subject to beating, corporal punishment or abuse." The so-called "strictly controlled" punishment is not stated in any Chinese law, and yet at Tilanqiao Prison, the "strictly controlled" punishment means arbitrary beatings and torture.

The Chinese Communist Party has committed crimes that trample its own laws, and has legalized physical torture and mental torment by calling it "strict control," to avoid violating the law regarding solitary confinement. Du Ting was held at the Strictly Controlled Division for as long as 18 months during the period between March 2005 and December 2006, and the prison forbade his wife from seeing him for six months.

The officials suddenly transferred Du Ting to Group 4 in Division 1 in late 2006. This is where felons, mostly criminals with life sentences or death row inmates with a few years of reprieve are held. It is a place known for violent, hardcore criminals. Many of them tried their best to please the guards in efforts to have their sentences commuted. When the guards ordered them to torture Falun Gong practitioners, they were vicious.

Du Ting is very weak from long-term torture. Even the guards said his organs weren't functioning properly. In early 2007 the guards and inmates tortured Du Ting. He developed fluid accumulation in his pleural cavities, which nearly killed him, and he eventually contracted tuberculosis and pneumonia. The authorities refused to let his wife see him. They told her she could not meet with him because he was sick. Guard Zhang Yi ordered inmates to keep torturing Du Ting. For a while Du Ting resumed eating and drinking fluids but again went on a hunger strike to protest the terrible abuse.

Mr. Du again lapsed into critical condition in early 2008 and was taken to Shanghai Prison General Hospital. When his family went to visit him he was in a wheelchair and could not walk.

The authorities at the Tilanqiao Prison have developed their own way of "handling" hunger-strikers with methods such as tying with ropes. After Du Ting returned to the prison from the hospital, the guards stripped him naked and tied him to the "death bed" so he could not move at all. Inmates watched him around the clock and never stopped attacking and insulting him. The abuse has lasted to this day.

Persons who participated in Du Ting's abuse:

Zhang Yi, head of Group 4, Division 1, Badge No. 3101179: 86-21-35104888 ext. 7104
Tang, head of Division 1: 86-21-35104888 ext. 7101
Li Yongfang, head of the Education Section: 86-21-35104888 ext. 5204
Jiang Hui, inmate at Division 1
Liu Jinbao, prison head: 86-21-35104888 ext. 5217

Tilanqiao Prison in Shanghai
Address: No 147 Changyang Road, Houkou District, Shanghai, Zip code: 200082
Phone: 86-21-35104888

Note

1. "Death Bed" torture: A practitioner is tied to a bed with his hands handcuffed above his head to the bed rails, and his legs tied with thin nylon ropes. The rope is then tightly wrapped around the practitioner's body and the bed, from his legs to his chest. The rope is wrapped so tightly that the practitioner has difficulty breathing and eventually loses consciousness.

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.ca/mh/articles/2009/1/17/193650.html