Mr. Wang Zhige Blinded in One Eye Due to Torture

Name: Wang Zhige
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown
Address: Yilan County, Heilongjiang,
Occupation: Employee of Harbin City Gas
Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 27th, 2005
Most recent place of detention: Hulan Prison
City: Harbin
Province: Heilongjiang

Fangzheng County police arrested Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Wang Zhige from Yilan County and detained him. They savagely beat him and brutally force-fed him, which resulted in blindness in his left eye. The court later slapped him with a three-year sentence and sent him to the Hulan Prison. The following is Wang Zhige's own account:

My name is Wang Zhige and I come from Heilongjiang Province. A group of officers from the Fangzheng County Domestic Security Division in Heilongjiang Province, headed by Chou Yongsheng, arrested me at noon on March 27th, 2005. They took me to the Domestic Security Division. While there, I refused to reveal any information about other Falun Gong practitioners and home-based Falun Gong material production sites. They used sleep deprivation in an attempt to obtain information from me. Some officers took turns sleeping and others remained awake while monitoring me; but they would shove me awake whenever I dozed off.

Police chief Zhao Jiaqi arrived the next afternoon. Deputy division head Weng Xuebing handcuffed me onto two poles on opposite sides of a bed. My arms were stretched to the maximum extent. Then Weng Xuebing put the entire weight of his heavy body against me, pushed against me, adding to the pressure on my arms and causing excruciating wrist pain. The scars on my wrists remained for a long time afterwards. He also vehemently slapped me across the face four to five times.

They transferred me to Fangzheng County No. 1 Detention Centre. I went on a hunger strike on April 4th, 2005. The officials force-fed me for the first time on April 8th, 2005. Detention centre head Li and police head Dong Yansong ordered the guards and inmates including Li Gang to tie me to a chair, then they proceeded to force-feed me.

They brought a nurse from a hospital and tried to force-feed me for two hours. I refused to cooperate with them, so they did not succeed. The nurse left, and detention centre doctor Ding Bo, some guards and inmates continued their attempts to force-feed me. They finally got the substance inside me when I was exhausted. They kept pouring the substance down my nasal tube into my stomach, until my stomach almost exploded and the gooey stuff gushed out of my mouth. They pinned my head back. I could no longer breathe through my nose because of the inserted tube, and my mouth was filled with the regurgitated substance. When I instinctively drew a breath in, the substance entered my trachea and I instantly lost consciousness.

When I came to they had stopped force-feeding me. I immediately started coughing violently for a long time to dislodge the stuff that was stuck in my trachea. The force-feeding was repeated every two or three days, and each time they would keep torturing me until I was listless in order to get the stuff in me. After the first feeding, I experienced high pressure behind the eyes and swelling and pain inside the eyes. I applied a wet towel to my eyes to relieve the symptoms.

I felt a terrible, sharp pain in my left eye in the middle of the night on April 13th, 2005. When I opened my eyes, the sight in my left eye deteriorated very quickly and I was completely blinded in that eye within ten seconds. They soon took me to a hospital, gave me an unknown medication and brought me back later that night.

They took me back to the hospital the next morning. I underwent further eye exams, which proved I had lost 100% sight in my left eye. They did not let me receive any treatment and took me back to the detention centre. My family looked up medical literature and consulted medical professionals. Their conclusion is the guards' brutality during the force-feeding broke the blood capillaries in my head, which caused the blood to slowly seep into my cranial cavity. The pressure gradually built up behind my left eye, and the optic nerves of my left eye were pressured, which caused the blindness. I went to two major hospitals for eye exams after leaving the prison and was told both times the optic nerves behind my left eye had atrophied. I was also told my eyesight could have been saved had I received prompt treatment, but three years later it is now too late to do anything.

Gross Abuse and Mistreatment at the Hulan Prison

After I was given the three-year sentence, I was taken to the Hulan Prison the afternoon of June 22nd, 2005. Upon arrival, head inmate Li Maojin and other inmates quickly pinned me to the ground and tortured me by pushing, twisting my arms to the back and forcing me to stand in humiliating postures. The guard on duty heard my painful cries; he came over but walked off when he saw they were abusing a Falun Gong practitioner.

Four practitioners and myself submitted solemn announcements to the guards on September 5th, 2005, declaring all of the words and actions we had said and done against Falun Gong under duress were completely void. They were furious and demanded that we retract the announcements, and we refused. They forced us to stand from 5:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. daily for ten days.

The guards launched another round of reform at the Group Drill Division the end of 2005. They assigned one or two inmates to reform¹ one practitioner, including coercing the practitioner to recite a "report" dictated by the prison that is said by the inmate when he encounters a guard, and the 38 prison policies.

The guards wanted the inmates to do their dirty work and used violent methods they cannot legally use themselves. Inmates Li Jikai and Zheng Shujun mistreated me. At first they threatened me, and then they faked kindness and asked me to "understand" them, because the guards would give them point deductions if I was not reformed, which would negatively affect their opportunity to obtain sentence reductions. I remained determined, and they resorted to violence. At first, they made me stand against a wall, and then they hit me. They brought someone else to beat me on the third day. They took me to an empty room and whacked me. I shouted, "Falun Gong is good;" "Li Jikai is hitting me!" They were afraid of people knowing about their crimes and stopped immediately. They resumed the beating after a while and I again shouted, and they stopped again. After several cycles they had no choice but to stop beating me. They never beat me again after that.

I was transferred to the Health Section that changed its name to the Supplies Ward in the evening of January 14th, 2006. I was monitored immediately upon getting to this ward and was told I could not study Falun Gong articles or do the Falun Gong exercises. They told me to do manual labour. I refused, so they sent the head inmate to reform me. I did not cooperate with him, either. Soon, the head inmate beat me. Later, the head inmate and I were held in the same cell, and he gained some understanding about Falun Gong. He expressed regret for having beaten me under the officials' instruction.

The Hulan Prison 610 Office² head and section head Chen Weiqiang led a group of officials who entered my cell one day in 2006. They went through my bed and found leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong and Falun Gong articles. Health Section political head Pei Xiadong and group head Xia Mingan arranged for inmates to watch me closely and prevent me from having contact with other Falun Gong practitioners. They told other inmates not to talk to me and removed my writing paper and envelopes. I went on a hunger strike the next day to protest the mistreatment.

Political head Pei Xiaodong, 610 Office head Chen Weiqiang and several other officials took me to a hospital for a physical exam the sixth day of my hunger strike. My heart rate was 130 beats per minute, yet Chen Weiqiang said, "No problem, take him back [to the prison]. If he doesn't reform, just force-feed him, otherwise tell his family to come claim his corpse."

They brought my two brothers on the eighth day and told them to persuade me to renounce my belief, but I refused. Pei Xiaodong asked me in the morning of the ninth day whether I had any requests. I repeated what I had always told him, "I must have the rights the inmates have, and I should be allowed to do what the inmates are allowed to do. Remove all monitoring of me right away." They eventually agreed to all of my demands.

From then on, we were able to create an environment in which we could validate the power of Falun Gong. Later on we could openly do the Falun Gong exercises. The Party officials dared not do anything to us.

When officials from Fangzheng County Domestic Security Division first arrested me, Chou Yongsheng and his subordinates body-searched me and took 200 Yuan³ cash from me. After I was taken to the detention centre, I told police chief Zhao Jiaqi about it but he never asked for the money back for me.

The Domestic Security officials took my keys and ransacked my home. They took a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a printer and lots of raw materials used to produce Falun Gong flyers. I kept the laptop in my closet and never used it, so it does not contain any evidence of Falun Gong-related work, which they sought to incriminate me. Furthermore, they did not include the laptop in the list of confiscated items, and in all likelihood kept it for themselves. They also kept a new Casio watch I had bought.

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.

3. "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://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/8/22/206875.html