How an Engineer Lost His Eyesight

Name: Kong Dewen
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown
Address: Unknown
Occupation: Engineer

Date of Most Recent Arrest: 2004
Most recent place of detention: Suzhou No. 3 Prison, Anhui Province
City: Suzhou City
Province: Anhui Province
Persecution Suffered: Detention, hung up, sleep deprivation, forced labour, drug administration, beatings, brainwashing

Mr. Kong Dewen was an engineer at the Wanjiang Factory in Hefei City, Anhui Province. He started practising Falun Gong in 1996, and his illnesses disappeared without any medication in less than a month. He strove to be a good person following Falun Gong's teachings. In turn, his family relationships became more harmonious and his co-workers considered him trustworthy. Mr. Kong was later persecuted by the Chinese communist government for his beliefs. He was poisoned while in jail, resulting in blindness.

In July 1999, the persecution of Falun Gong began. In December of that year, Mr. Kong went to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong, but was arrested and sent to a forced labour camp for one year by the Hefei Suburban Police Station in Anhui.

In 2004, Mr. Kong was arrested again by Wei Zheng, Yang Jun, and Wei, three officials from the 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) in Hefei City, Anhui. He was tortured in the torture chamber on the fourth floor of Hefei Police Station. Wei Zheng and Yang Jun locked him in an iron cage and cuffed his hands to the sides of the cage. Mr. Kong's body was hung up in the air, making his arms and wrists feel like they were broken. The pain was excruciating.

Mr. Kong was hung in the cage and deprived of sleep for 12 days and nights consecutively. Later he was transferred to a detention centre where he was forced to do manual work assembling coloured bulbs for long hours each day. He was not allowed to sleep until he finished his heavy workload. Beatings happened often. He was not provided with enough food – only a little rice and boiled old vegetables. Eventually he paid with his own money for extra food several times. Every time he ordered extra food, out of his compassion, he shared with his roommate who had received a capital sentence. However, not long after, Mr. Kong and his roommate both found their eyesight decreasing, their hearts were beating abnormally fast, their limbs were numb and weak. Thus, he suspected that his food was poisoned.

In 2005, Mr. Kong was sentenced to three years of imprisonment, and he was further tortured in Suzhou No. 3 Prison in Anhui. The torture methods included being locked in an isolated cell, brainwashing, being hung up, forced to stand still for extended periods of time, physical abuse, sleep deprivation, and forced labour. The main persecutors were Tang Chuanyou, Huang Qijun, Wang Jun, the head of Mr. Kong’s section in the prison, and others.

When he was released from the prison in March 2007, Mr. Kong had lost the ability to live a normal life. With the help of family members and friends, he is able to conduct some very basic day-to-day activities. He was diagnosed with severe eyesight declination by an ophthalmologist and was issued a document as proof of disability by the Association of People with Disabilities in Anhui.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2010/7/24/227481.html