Mr. Wang Yaowen, 50, from Shanxi Province Brutally Tortured

Name: Wang Yaowen
Gender: Male
Age: 50
Address: Wangjin Village, Dingxiang County
Occupation: Teacher at Xinzhou Junior High School, Shanxi Province
Date of Most Recent Arrest: May 2004

Most Recent Place of Detention: Qi County Prison, Jinzhong Prison
City: Qi County
Province: Shanxi
Persecution Suffered: Sleep deprivation, forced labour, beatings, hung by handcuffs, imprisonment, solitary confinement, forced-feedings, fired from workplace, physical restraint, home ransacked, detention, denial of toilet use

Mr. Wang Yaowen started practising Falun Gong in 1997. He has been imprisoned and brutally tortured many times since the persecution started in 1999.

In March 2000, Mr. Wang went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. He was arrested and taken back to his hometown, where he was held in the Dingxiang Detention Centre. Guards there stripped the clothes off practitioners on a cold morning in March, and poured buckets of cold water over them. They then beat the practitioners with pipes and batons. The guards ordered inmates to punch Mr. Wang in the throat, making him unable to eat or talk for a week. They also broke some of his teeth. He was later transferred to Xindian Forced Labour Camp.

Mr. Wang was arrested again in August 2001, when he was seen distributing Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution. He was taken to a detention centre, where he was force-fed and handcuffed to an iron bar for more than two weeks. Hu Maosheng, head of the detention centre, ordered inmates to continually torture Mr. Wang. When they tried to send him to a forced labour camp, the camp refused to accept him due to his poor health.

In June 2002, Mr. Wang was arrested and taken to the Xindian Forced Labour Camp. He was held in the Third Team, which exists solely for the purpose of torturing practitioners. If practitioners refused to renounce their belief, the team leader, Fan Lizhan, forced them to do hard labour, deprived them of sleep, and beat them.

When Mr. Wang published an open letter, "My open letter to people of Dingxiang County," exposing the crimes committed by officers from the local police and 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong), in May 2004, he was arrested and held in a detention centre for more than a year. He was beaten, hung up by handcuffs, and force-fed. On a hot summer day, the guards wrapped Mr. Wang in three layers of thick cotton quilts and left him outside in the scorching sun for around four hours.

In May 2005, Mr Wang was sentenced to four years in the Qi County Prison. During the first fifteen months, he was held in a strict-control room and monitored by inmates around the clock. When he tried to do the Falun Gong exercises, he was beaten and forced to stand still for over ten hours. One night, when he was practising the exercises, Sang Lilin, the prisoner on guard duty, saw it. He beat Mr. Wang and burned his fingers. His fingers did not heal for six months.

When Mr. Wang did the exercises one time, while in solitary confinement, he was seen and was brutally beaten by inmates. He was then hung from a large gate outside overnight.

Mr. Wang was transferred to the Second Prison District in August 2006. Xue Shengyue, an inmate who was sentenced to a twenty-year prison term, was assigned to monitor and torture him. Mr. Wang was kept in isolation, denied the use of the toilet and had to stand still for long periods of time. He also had his hands tied to his bed at night to ensure that he could not do the exercises.

Between April and May 2007, guards deprived Mr Wang of sleep for a month and forced him to stand upright for an entire week, in order to try and get him to renounce his belief. They only allowed him to move at mealtimes and to use the toilet. They also stripped him of his clothes several times.

When Mr. Wang's release was imminent, guard Ren Danrui ordered inmates Xue Shengyue and others to push him to the ground and tried to get him to fingerprint a document. When they failed to do so, Ren Danrui was livid and put Mr. Wang in solitary confinement for 48 days.

Since the onset of the persecution, Mr. Wang has been tortured and has had his home ransacked by officers from the Dingxiang County police, 610 Office, and the political security team. They have confiscated many of his personal belongings, including all of his Falun Gong books, and stolen his money.

Mr. Wang has not received his wages from his workplace since 2000, when he was brought back from Beijing after appealing for Falun Gong. They have given him only 200-300 yuan¹ for living expenses. Mr. Wang was fired from his workplace in the summer of 2006, and now lives in extreme poverty.

Those responsible for the torture of Mr. Wang Yaowen:

Hu Maosheng, head of Dingxiang Detention Centre: 138-35031887 (Mobile)
Li Baoping, former agent at Dingxiang County 610 Office and now working at the Shenshan Police Station: 0350-6028811 (Home), 13835031812(Mobile)
Wang Jun: 86-350-6036039 (Home)
Zhang Baowen, judge at Dingxiang Court: 86-350-6025870 (Home)

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.ca/mh/articles/2010/10/7/230668.html