Mr. Li Xiwang Died in Agony as a Result of More than Ten Hours of “Anchor Torture”

Name: Li Xiwang
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown
Address: Nujiangli, Haimen Road, Hebei District, Tianjin
Occupation: Factory owner
Date of Most Recent Arrest: December 21st, 2010
Most Recent Place of Detention: Binhai Prison
City: Tianjin
Persecution Suffered: Detention, beating, imprisonment, handcuffing and shackling, solitary confinement

Mr. Li Xiwang was a small business owner in the Hebei District, Tianjin. Because he practised Falun Gong, the police arrested him and his wife Ms. Chen Liyan on December 21st, 2010 and sent the couple to Hexi Detention Centre. Six months later, Mr. Li was covertly sentenced and transferred to Binhai Prison (formerly known as Gangbei Prison) on July 18th, 2011. Just ten days into his incarceration he lost his life.
It is now confirmed that Mr. Li died as a result of “anchor torture,” an extremely brutal torture introduced to Binhai Prison by former deputy prison head Duan Jicun and Team Eight head Liu Gang.

A metal cylinder, open at both ends, and a metal ring, both bolted to the ground, are used in the torture. The victim is first made to stand inside the cylinder whose size is such that the lower body – from the hips on down – is tightly secured; there is no room for the legs to move. Next, the victim is forced to bend down to be handcuffed to the metal ring on the ground. In order not to cause too grave a consequence, prison guards usually release the victim after at most two hours. Mr. Li, however, was tortured in this way for more than ten hours. By the time the guards finally checked on him at 12:00 a.m. on July 29th, he was already dead.

Prison officials were extremely nervous about Mr. Li’s torture death and tried to cover up the crime. In the early morning of July 29th they dispatched two guards to inform Mr. Li’s family of his death. The guards produced a death certificate signed by the Binhai Prison Hospital, indicating that Mr. Li died of heart failure after emergency treatment failed. His family didn’t buy into the ruse, since they knew that Mr. Li had always been a very strong and healthy man and never had any history of heart problems. They wondered how it could be possible for him to die of heart failure just ten days after he was sent to the prison.

When Mr. Li’s family went to the prison to check on his body at noon on July 29th, they noticed marks on his neck and wrists that appeared to be a result of being tied or handcuffed. They raised doubts about the stated cause of his death and requested to review the prison’s surveillance video. The prison personnel claimed that the tape had already been submitted to the Prison Bureau, but later showed the family another video that they said showed the doctors trying to resuscitate Mr. Li. His family noticed that the video quality was too poor to tell anything.

At present, Mr. Li’s elderly mother is still not aware of her son’s death. During the family’s talk with the prison authorities, she was deceived into signing a document, which she was told was a request for early release of her daughter-in-law Ms. Chen Yanli. However, that document was not at all what the prison claimed it to be. Some suspected that it was actually Mr. Li’s death certificate that she signed.

Between July 29th and August 4th, the prison authorities were busy dealing with Mr. Li’s death case. His body was finally cremated, ending any further review of the case. According to a guard in charge of the matter, the prison has settled the matter by giving Mr. Li’s family several thousand yuan as compensation.
A similar crime happened at the same prison just one year ago. On the night of July 21st, 2010, several drug addicts beat Falun Gong practitioner Zhu Wenhua to death in just a few hours.

Partial List of Perpetrators -
Prison Director: Xu Burong
Deputy Director: Li Guoyu
Team Eight head: He Jiaqi
Team Five head: Zhang Shilin: +86-22-28175796
Former Deputy Prison Director, Duan Jicun: +86-13752459658

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2011/8/12/245275.html