Mr. Zhu Musong from Yueyang City, Hunan Province, Suffers Multiple Accounts of Persecution

Name: Zhu Musong
Gender: Male
Age: 43
Address: Beigang Township, Yueyang City, Hunan Province
Occupation: Farmer
Date of Most Recent Arrest: January 2005
Province: Hunan
Persecution Suffered: Sleep deprivation, forced labour, brainwashing, forced injections/drug administration, beatings, hanging up, imprisonment, solitary confinement, torture, force-feedings, extortion, physical restraint, home ransacked, interrogation, detention, denial of toilet use

Mr. Zhu Musong, 43, is a Falun Gong practitioner from Beigang Township, Yueyang City, Hunan Province. Since the Chinese Communist Party started to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in July 1999, Mr. Zhu has suffered in many ways at the hands of authorities. He was detained twice after appealing for the right to practise Falun Gong, was detained again for visiting a fellow practitioner, underwent 40 days of brainwashing, and was imprisoned twice at a forced labour camp for distributing Falun Gong fliers, once for a year, the second time for 15 months.

1. Detained for Appealing for the Right to Practise Falun Gong

On September 26th, 1999, Mr. Zhu and several other practitioners went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practise Falun Gong. When they arrived at the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, two police officers, a man and a woman, received them. Instead of listening to what they wanted to say, the officers kept asking them, "Where are you from? How many of you came together? Where are you staying? When did you get here?" The officers confiscated their IDs, and contacted the Yueyang City Office in Beijing to inform them. They also confiscated the 500 yuan¹ in cash Mr. Zhu had.

Officers from Yueyang City took Mr. Zhu back and detained him for 28 days at the Hubing Detention Centre, where Mr. Zhu had only one meal a day until his wife paid 560 yuan so that he would be given all his meals.

In 2000, on the eighth day of January of the Chinese Traditional Calendar, Mr. Zhu, for the second time, went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practise Falun Gong. He was detained again. This time he started a hunger strike to protest his detention. Three days later, he was transferred to the city detention centre, where officers interrogated him continuously for two days, depriving him of any sleep. Mr. Zhu asked to be released when he heard the news that his father-in-law had passed away. Director Li of the detention centre said, "You were not arrested for patronising prostitution. I do not have the authority to release you. I am not the one who wants you detained." Mr. Zhu and other practitioners were released 40 days later after having gone on a hunger strike together.

2. Brainwashing

In 2001, on the eighteenth day of January of the Chinese Traditional Calendar, Li Heping, director of the Justice Office in the township; Yu Yaoping, cadre of the village; Shi Guanghui, head of the group; Liu Xilong, member of the group; Song Hui and Yang Xia, cadres of the Justice Office; and others, totaling more than a dozen people, broke into Mr. Zhu's home. Li Heping said they would take him to a brainwashing centre because he was a bad member of society. Song Hui said, "You may have Falun Gong and no family, or have your family but no Falun Gong. You cannot have both." Mr. Zhu refused to leave but was overpowered by the group.

Mr. Zhu was held at the Beigang Senior Centre with practitioners Mr. Liu Bilian, Mr. Xiong Ailian, and Mr. Hu Jingyu. Li Heping locked him in a single cell and had Liu Xilong monitor him 24 hours a day. An additional person, whose family name was He, slept in the same cell with him at night. In addition, militiamen were stationed outside 24 hours a day. Li and the militiamen intentionally called out Mr. Zhu's name from time to time to make him apprehensive.

Cadre Yang Xia loudly read a newspaper that slandered Falun Gong. The Centre forced practitioners to listen. They had militiamen monitor practitioners and did not allow practitioners to talk to each other.

Li Heping and Yu Yaoping threatened Mr. Zhu, saying, "You are our focus here. If you do not stop practising Falun Gong, we will send you to a forced labor camp. We already have the document ready." One day, they called Mr. Zhu to a room. Song Hui tried to coerce him into writing a guarantee statement to renounce practising Falun Gong. They took turns threatening him, trying to pressure him to write it. [Note: Mr. Zhu did not write the statement.]

To coerce him, they had his wife come in and ask for a divorce. One morning, they had his oldest sister-in-law come in and help with the brainwashing.

After a month, they released three other practitioners but not Mr. Zhu.

On the 39th day of his detention, a young militiaman told Mr. Zhu, "The township transferred me here to prepare your document. They are going to send you to a forced labour camp. I saw all the documents." Mr. Zhu fled that night to his third-oldest brother's home.

Li Pinghe had dozens of people search for Mr. Zhu. All the homes of his relatives were searched thoroughly. Yu Yaoping and others were sent to Beijing to look for him there. They threatened his third-oldest brother by saying that they would arrest him and tear down his house if he did not produce Mr. Zhu. Militiamen were stationed at Mr. Zhu's home. Mr. Zhu's wife opposed their actions, saying, "You took him away. How could you ask me for his whereabouts? I don't know where he is." Li Pinghe threatened her, "You'd better produce him, or your house will be torn down."

3. Torture in Detention Centre

In 2002, on the afternoon of the ninth day of April of the Chinese Traditional Calendar, Mr. Zhu visited the home of another practitioner, Ms. Wang Lihua. Officers from the Beigang Police Station rushed in, arrested him, and took him to the Yueyang City Detention Centre. He was detained for 57 days and had 570 yuan extorted from him. During his detention, he was mistreated and lost more than 30 pounds.

On the 19th day of September of the Chinese Traditional Calendar, Mr. Zhu went to his mother-in-law's birthday party in Huangshi Township, Miluo City, where he gave out some Falun Gong fliers. In the evening on November 6th, officers from the Miluo City Domestic Security Division, agents from the Yuyang City 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong), cadres from the Beigang Township Justice Office, and officers from the Beigang Township Police Station and the Huangshi Township Police Station searched Mr. Zhu's home, arrested him, and held him at the Huangshi Township Police Station. The officers interrogated him. Mr. Zhu did not co-operate. Two officers, who claimed to be from the Miluo City Domestic Security Division (one in his 20s, the other in his 40s), began to beat him. They pushed him against a wall and punched his chest without mercy.

The younger one held him firmly against the wall, then kicked his feet hard to make them line up with the wall, blew smoke in his face, and rammed his knee into Mr. Zhu's stomach. Afterwards, the older one took his turn. He blew smoke in his face and struck his face and head. Mr. Zhu's eyesight became blurry, and he could not stand up anymore. At night, they imprisoned him at the Miluo City Detention Centre.

Mr. Zhu went on a hunger strike at the detention centre. Guards ordered inmates to beat him.

While forced-feeding him, the doctor of the detention centre intentionally pushed the plastic feeding tube in and out repeatedly.

4. Forced Labour

On January 22nd, 2003, Mr. Zhu was taken to the Xinkaipu Forced Labour Camp in Changsha City, Hunan Province.

In this camp, practitioners were forced to sit in a small square area drawn on the ground and not allowed to move, not even their eyes. They were not allowed to speak and were only allowed to use the bathroom three times a day. The C section in the camp had an "Entertainment Centre" sign over the gate, where the practitioner was forced to stand like a dummy. Later the guards wrote the name of Falun Gong's founder all over the ground except for a small area so that the practitioner would have to stand on one foot in order not to step on it. They forced the practitioner to stretch his arms level, then hung a spittoon on each of his arms, and put another one on the top of his head. They then forced him to wash his face with sputum. They beat his face, fingers, and toes with the soles of their shoes. They held the practitioner's eyelids open with toothpicks to prevent him from sleeping until he gave in and wrote the three statements.

On April 11th, Mr. Zhu's prison term was extended by nine days. He was held in the C section of this camp many times. Guard Hu Qifeng said that this was just a start, and that he wanted to torture him for another 30 years.

In 2005, on the fourth day of January of the Chinese Traditional Calendar, agents from the Yuyang City 610 Office and officers from the Lou District Domestic Security Division and Beigang Township Police Station arrested Mr. Zhu. Officer Tang Jianming and others beat him, interrogated him, and subjected him to 15 months of forced labour.

In the forced labour camp, Mr. Zhu was deprived of sleep and forced to sit and stand for a long time (refer to http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2005/3/22/58686.html). Guards Liu Pingliang, Hu Qifeng, and Du Xianglin ordered seven inmates to torture him. One day at noon, he got a bowl of meat bone soup. This was an unexpectedly good meal to receive in a prison, especially for a practitioner. He thought it was suspicious, but he was too hungry to reject it.

Two months later, he developed sickness. Fourteen months later, his stomach was swollen. He could not eat or drink. He lived on gruel and could barely walk. He was given a physical exam and was told that everything was fine. But the forced labor camp released him 20 days early.

It was night time when he was released. A car dropped him off about a half an hour's walk from his home. He managed to walk to home and fell on the sofa once he got in. But he could not get up again.

Mr. Zhu was taken to the hospital by his family. Doctors found that he was suffering from tuberculosis, pulmonary oedema and pleural effusion, and a high fever. Mr. Zhu remembered that in the labour camp, practitioner Mr. He Heping died as a result of forced injections, and practitioner Mr. Zhou Yongbing developed a mental disorder as a result of poisoning.

Mr. Zhu's health improved after treatment, but the doctor has said that he "will never fully recover." Currently, Mr. Zhu has lost the ability to care of himself, and his family is suffering financial hardship.

Note

1. "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.org/mh/articles/2010/3/1/219042.html