"Wooden Clamp" Torture Being Used on Falun Gong Practitioners

One torture method being used by the Chinese Communist Party to persecute practitioners is called the "wooden clamp." The clamp is about 50 to 80 cm (20-31 inches) long, 30 to 50 cm (12-20 inches) wide, and 10 to 15 cm (4-6 inches) thick and weighs about 20 to 60 kilograms (44-132 lb.). There are two holes in the middle of the clamp for the feet. The victim wearing the clamp has a difficult time moving around and has to crawl into bed, and usually has to sit or lie down, since standing can cause the feet to hurt and be injured. Without help, a person wearing the clamp can't even go to eat or to the toilet. When getting out of bed and going to the toilet, the clamp not only presses on the feet and heels, causing extreme pain, but the edge of it gets caught by the bed, preventing the person from getting back into bed. At night, the person is not able to turn over. In winter, a quilt is too short to cover the victim's feet. In summer, the person is not able to take his or her trousers off.

In one instance when a practitioner was tortured with the clamp, it was early spring and the weather was still cold. The guards took away his quilt so he froze at night and could not even curl up. He needed other practitioners to help him get to meals or to the toilet. While he was enduring the pain involved in wearing the "wooden clamp," the guards continued forcing him to do hard labour and beat him when he refused. After wearing the clamp for a month, he lost all the hair on his feet, developed many rashes in that area, and lost 18 pounds. Even when the clamp was later removed, for a long period of time he was unable to climb into bed.

An even worse form of this torture is called "crawling with the wooden clamp." The guard puts the clamp on the person and orders him to crawl on a concrete floor. If he stops, the guard hits his back with a two-inch-wide baton. In an hour the person's fingers, toenails, and knees are all bleeding profusely, while his back is bruised from the beating.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/9/15/208333.html