Woman, Whose Torture Was Cited by Attorney, Killed in Custody

A Chinese woman whose experience of torture was mentioned in an open letter written by a famous human rights lawyer has been killed in custody, according to a Falun Gong human rights group.

Fifty-three year old Sun Shuxiang, a Falun Gong practitioner from Changchun, died on October 10th, four months after her release from a labour camp where she had been severely tortured. Sun was cited as a torture victim by Chinese human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng in a 2005 open letter to top Chinese leaders. Several of the individuals cited by Gao have recently ended up dead, Falun Gong human rights groups say.

During the past 11 years, Chinese authorities have unlawfully arrested and mistreated Sun Shuxiang 12 times for practising Falun Gong. They also ransacked her home, extorted money from her, and sentenced her to forced labour. She has been subjected to torture, forced injections of unknown drugs, beatings, brainwashing, and electric shocks, the Falun Dafa Information Centre reported on October 31st.

Attorney Gao Zhisheng—himself a victim of torture by Chinese authorities—cited Sun as a torture victim in an open letter to Chinese Communist Party leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao on December 12th, 2005. Sun is the third Falun Gong practitioner mentioned by Gao Zhisheng to have lost her life to torture at the hands of the Chinese state. Two other practitioners, Ms. Wang Yuhuan and Ms. Liu Lihua, who were interviewed by Gao, also died as a result of persecution.

Clearwisdom.net, a Falun Gong website, reported on October 26th that Changchun City Domestic Security and agents from the “610 Office” (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) arrested Sun during the early morning on September 22nd, 2009 at her daughter's home where Sun was taking care of her grandson. The 610 Office is an extra-judicial agency created to persecute Falun Gong; it has sweeping powers over the police and judiciary.

Over the next nine months authorities detained Sun at different locations: the Changchun Police Department, the Changchun No. 3 Detention Centre, and the Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp in Changchun City. In each of these locations Sun was tortured.

In June 2010 the labour camp release Sun on medical grounds. She was emaciated and had difficulty breathing, eating, and drinking. She died on October 10th.

Torture

When Sun was detained and taken to the Changchun City Police Department, she refused to sign a fabricated confession. An officer then handcuffed her in an extremely painful way by forcing one of her arms over her shoulder and pulling the other arm up behind her back—a form of torture known as “carrying a sword on the back.” The police then took her fingerprints by force, and later used the fabricated documents as evidence against her.

The following are excerpts from Sun’s interview with lawyer Gao Zhisheng, where Sun recounted some of the torture she had been subjected to by police, forced labour personnel, and while in hospital prior to Dec. 2005.

“At the beginning of July 2002, I went to my father's home. A few plainclothes officers stormed in and arrested me. They covered my face and drove for about two hours the next day. They took me to a dark basement. They took the cover off. About nine officers came into the room and carried me to the Tiger Bench¹, bound my chest and abdomen tightly with a rope, and put a thick metal rod through the chair arms. One officer said, ‘If you tell us everything, you only need to sit here for one hour. Otherwise, we will make you go through all sorts of torture.’

“Another officer slapped me and asked which fellow practitioners I knew. I said I did not know any. He then used an electric baton to shock me deep in between my lower ribs. Then he asked me if I remembered any phone numbers of fellow practitioners. I refused to say. He then shocked one side of me, from my fingertips to my arm and up to my head and then went to the other side and did the same thing. He went back and forth slowly two times. He changed to another baton with a higher voltage and started to shock the tips of my toes and up my whole body twice. Seeing that I still did not give out information about my fellow practitioners, the officers targeted my eyes with the electric baton. I felt as if my eyes were about to fall out, and I could hardly see. They began to shock my ribs and breasts while continuing to ask me for information. They put the baton in my mouth and shocked it. It swelled up. There were many blisters around my mouth and it was scarred inside. They still repeatedly burned my mouth. I almost died.

“At the beginning of 2003, I was living in the home of a fellow practitioner, Ms. Xing Guiling. Very late one night, her two doors were hammered open. Armed police stormed in, arrested us, and took us to Luyuan District Police Department. They again restrained me on the Tiger Bench and beat Ms. Xing brutally down to the floor, then kicked her up, beat her down, and kicked her up again. They were trying to force her to give out contact information for her fellow practitioners. Seeing that she would not betray the others, they choked her with a leather belt until she was almost dead. Then they began to torture me. We were tortured three days before being taken to the Changchun City Third Detention Centre.

“On August 4th, 2003, the police again arrested me and took me to the Nan'guan District Police Department. An officer grabbed me by my hair and threw me against the wall. I became disoriented by the impact. Later they put me on a Tiger Bench and handcuffed me. A guard hit me my arm and the handcuff cut into my wrist. They put shackles on my ankles and made them as tight as possible. I suffered excruciating pain in my ankles. They then covered my head with a plastic bag and closed the opening. There was no air and I almost suffocated. They would then open the bag and repeat it again and again, a total of three times. Some of them stepped on the shackles on my ankles to make the shackles tighter. My ankles were bleeding and the pain was unbearable, so I lost consciousness. They poured cold water on me to wake me up.. . .” (full text of Gao Zhisheng's open letter to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao)
Levi Browde, executive director at the Falun Dafa Information Centre, said in their press release: “Sun’s ordeal epitomises the cruelty of the persecution against Falun Gong and the authorities’ calculated use of various torture methods to break people’s will. Be it in a labour camp, detention centre, or mountainside torture chamber, Sun and other practitioners like her across China are not given a moment’s rest. They are subjected to relentless, exhausting physical and psychological torture.”

Attorney Gao’s Disappearance

In an October 27th letter to the Wall Street Journal, attorney Gao’s teenage daughter, Grace Geng, appealed to US President Barack Obama to seek information about Gao’s whereabouts during the November Group of 20 Summit meeting with Hu Jintao.

Gao has been in and out of detention for the past five years and has not been heard from for six months. Many fear he may have been killed in custody.

17-year-old Grace escaped from China and now lives in the United States with her mother and younger brother. Geng said she was beaten by Chinese police as a 12-year-old after her father began speaking out for the rights of China’s vulnerable people.

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.