Mr. Ding Guangcheng Recounts Torture During Long-term Imprisonment

Name: Ding Guangcheng
Gender: Male
Age: 60
Address: Dajiang Street at Hebei District in Tianjin
Occupation: A worker at the Tianjin Railroad Daily Life Service Centre
Date of Most Recent Arrest: May 15th, 2001
Most recent place of detention: Tianjin Prison
City: Tianjin
Persecution Suffered: Electric shock, sleep deprivation, forced labour, beatings, imprisonment, solitary confinement, torture, physical restraint, interrogation, detention, and forced brainwashing.

Mr. Ding Guangcheng was arrested in May 2001. He was brutally tortured and sentenced to six years of imprisonment in February 2002. He suffered a lot at the Tianjin Prison. The following is personal account of the persecution he suffered.

On May 15th, 2001, I was at home when officers from the Changzhoudao Police Substation at the Hedong District, along with Wang Yong, a National Security officer in his thirties from the Public Security Hedong District Branch, arrived together with a few of my co-workers including a man named Wang Yushu. They took us by force to the Changzhoudao Police Substation where Wang Yong and the other officers beat us and punched our faces. Two of my teeth were knocked out. They made us take off our clothes, leaving us in only our underpants, and then poured water on us. We had to stand in a puddle while they gave us electric shocks on our chests, belly buttons, necks, and the other sensitive areas on our bodies. They tortured us for several hours. They boasted, "In 1989, we shot at the college kids with machine guns when they asked for democracy in their movement, let alone you Falun Gong people." Some of the officers boasted that they were bodyguards for Jiang Zemin, [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution], the former head of the Communist regime when he came to Tianjin. Because I refused to be "transformed¹," without any legal justification, they took my wife to the police substation, detained her for twenty-four hours and threatened her, by saying they would throw her into a detention centre if she didn't co-operate. They also said they would intervene in my son's job applications, and if we didn't co-operate they could just kill us and put our bodies in a bag and throw them into the Haihe River.

The next day I was transferred to the Hedong District Detention Centre. They put more than thirty of us in a room fourteen square meters large (about 150 square feet.) It was a very hot summer and we were forced to sit on a small bench. Many people had scabies, and we were forced to make medicine boxes and process food for consumption in this notoriously unhygienic forced labour camp.

In February 2002, the Hedong Court sentenced me to six years of imprisonment, and in March 2002, I was transferred to the Tianjin Prison. The brainwashing centre at this prison is known for being one of the worst offenders in abusing Falun Gong practitioners.

Li Qiang is head of the department, and Lu Wenyun is the deputy head. They were both promoted to their positions because they were actively involved in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. Police officers Yang Bo, Liu Yunling, Fan Yasheng and Cao, Wang, and Bu (given names unknown) all played active roles when bribing inmates to closely monitor Falun Gong practitioners for rewards.

We had to get up at 6:00 a.m. each day and were forced to sit on a small plastic bench until 9:00 p.m. At that time, I had large scabies with sepsis all over my body, and my buttocks were ulcerated from the long-term sitting. My blood and flesh were stuck to my pants and I bled whenever I moved a little. Because of my firm belief in Dafa's principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance, police officers ordered convicted criminals Yu Yongjiang, Wang Xueyong, and Liu Qingguang to torture me. They have a special kind of bench that is about two inches wide, six inches long, and two inches high, which they made me sit on. They forced me to lift up my head with chest out and look forward without moving a muscle. They beat me and cursed and insulted me if I moved. They also put their cigarette butts into water and force-fed this vile solution to me.

Because of this long-term torture, I became very weak, but officer Yang Bo increased my workload so they could earn more money. My blood pressure went up very high. Later I refused to be used for their forced labour. Yang Bo then locked me up on February 15th, 2005 in a very small cell. The toilet was next to the bed which was on the ground. There was no heat. They gave me one quilt but it was so cold that I kept shivering. I was handcuffed and I was wearing foot shackles which were fastened to the ground. I could only drink water from the toilet and the guards threatened me saying they could have my prison term extended at any time.

Policeman Hong Yuan soon developed a new way to persecute Falun Gong practitioners by attempting to brainwash us. We were ordered to memorise articles that slander Falun Gong. They didn't allow us to sleep if we didn't recite these articles. Many fellow practitioners couldn't maintain clear minds because of this. Eventually, all of us together refused to do this and the police had to give up, but they forced us to watch films that slandered Falun Gong, attempting to brainwash us.

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")

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/10/21/210790.html