Mr. Wu Tonglin Sent to Jiutai Yinmahe Forced Labour Camp in Jilin Province Four Times

Name: Wu Tonglin
Gender: Male
Age: 54
Address: Unknown
Occupation: Unknown

Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 15th, 2009
Most Recent Place of Detention: Jiutai Yinmahe Forced Labour Camp
City: Jiutai City
Province: Jilin Province
Persecution Suffered: Imprisonment, forced labour, torture, force-feedings, extortion, sleep deprivation, beatings.

Mr. Wu Tonglin, a Falun Gong practitioner in Daan County, Jilin Province, was arrested and taken to Jiutai Yinmahe Forced Labour Camp in March 2009. He has been on a hunger strike for four months and is now very weak. It is the fifth time that he has been incarcerated in a forced labour camp, and the fourth time to be detained in Jiutai Yinmahe Forced Labour Camp.

Mr. Wu is 54 years old. On March 15th, 2009, the new secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Daan, Li Jiangshan, directed his henchmen to aggressively persecute Falun Gong practitioners. That was when Mr. Wu was arrested by police from the notorious 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) and the local street committee. He was taken to a detention centre. On March 15th, he was sent to Jiutai Yinmahe Forced Labour Camp for two years.

Because Mr. Wu firmly believes in Falun Gong, he was persecuted with no hesitation by Shi Chunguang, a director in the Kaifang Team in Yinmahe Forced Labour Camp in Jiutai; the guards; and criminal inmates. He was forced to sit on a board for 24 hours and on the torturous Tiger Bench¹. On July 22nd, he went on a hunger strike, but he was brutally force fed twice a day.

He was taken into custody in Changchun City on his way to Beijing in February 2000 and sent to Jiutai Forced Labour Camp. At that time, his mother was over 100 years old and his wife had mental disorders. Their lives without Mr. Wu were very difficult.

At the end of October 2001, Mr. Wu Tonglin was released from Jiutai Forced Labour Camp eight months after his term officially ended. On his way back to his hometown, Officer Liu Qingbo of the Changhong Street Police Station in Daan City asked him if he still practised Falun Gong. Mr. Wu's reply was a resounding, "Yes!" As a result, he was taken to a local detention centre and then detained in the forced labour camp for nine days. He was finally released after a four-day hunger strike. It became known after his release that staff in the Political Security Office in Daan City extorted 3,000 yuan² from Mr. Wu's family. His company even took "expenses" out of his salary.

In March 2002, after former head of the communist regime Jiang Zemin issued his order for Falun Gong: "Ruin their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically," police with the 610 Office in Daan broke into the homes of over 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners and arbitrarily arrested 200 of them that were on their blacklist. At the beginning of September, Mr. Wu was arrested again by the 610 Office in Daan and taken to Jiutai Forced Labour Camp for another three years.

Mr. Wu Tonglin was persecuted brutally in Yinmahe Forced Labour Camp in Jiutai because he believed in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, the universal and guiding principles of Falun Gong. He was force fed with incredible brutality. A tube was inserted into his stomach and was pulled back and forth. Those in charge said maliciously, "It's fun to insert the tube." Four of his teeth fell out as they tortured him. After half a year of such monstrous treatment, at the beginning of 2003, Mr. Wu lost consciousness. In order to keep from being held responsible, Jiutai Forced Labour Camp officials hastily sent Mr. Wu back to Daan, leaving him with his family. At that time, he was near death. He continued to cultivate diligently in Falun Gong and recovered his health.

At the beginning of 2005, he went to the Political Security Office in Daan City to ask for the 3,000 yuan they had extorted from his poor family. Police officer Chen Yamin said that he had not yet completed his term (it was from September 2002 to September 2005), so they again took him to Jiutai Forced Labour Camp.

In Jiutai Forced Labour Camp, Mr. Wu was again persecuted every day. He was forced to sit on a board, and the criminals would only let him sleep for one or two hours a day, and sometimes not at all. Guards and criminal inmates forced him to wrestle to prevent him from sleeping. Mr. Wu fell against the wall due to sleepiness and was beaten by so-called teaching assistant, Wei Liwei.

At the beginning of 2005, guards instigated the criminal inmates not to allow Wu Tonglin to sleep at all. Inmate Li Yan made Mr. Wu sit on the metal part of a bed and then sat on his legs. Li Yan often beat and insulted Mr. Wu, and, during the next four days, he only allowed him to sleep for two hours every day. Mr. Wu was tortured like this for over three weeks.

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://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/11/24/213220.html