Mr. Han Weixin Dies After Being Imprisoned and Tortured for Exposing the Truth about the Staged Tiananmen Self-Immolation

Name: Han Weixin
Gender: Male
Age: 46
Address: Anxin County, Hebei Province
Occupation: Staff member at the Anxin County Transportation Department
Date of Death: October 15th, 2011
Date of Most Recent Arrest: August 27th, 2002
Most recent place of detention: Hebei Province No. 4 Prison
City: Shijiazhuang
Province: Hebei
Persecution Suffered: Electric shock, sleep deprivation, forced labour, brainwashing, beatings, imprisonment, torture, interrogation, detention

Mr. Han Weixin, 46, was employed as a Shipping Management Station Director by the Anxin County Transportation Bureau. On August 27th, 2002, he was arrested for tapping into the TV system to broadcast videos that exposed the facts about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) staged self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square¹. He was severely beaten and tortured, and later sentenced to 15 years in prison. He had been incarcerated in the Hebei Province No. 4 Prison for seven years. He was released in March 2009, as he was on the verge of death due to severe illnesses that were brought on by torture. He died on October 15th, 2011.

Harassed and Detained for Practising Falun Gong

Mr. Han started practising Falun Gong prior to the start of the CCP's persecution in July 1999. Beforehand, he had suffered from acute inflammation of the pancreas and diabetes. Soon after he started practising, he was free of illnesses. He stopped smoking and drinking, and became a diligent, hard worker as a result of following the principles Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. His colleagues and friends praised him for being a great person.

In May 1999, when the CCP started to suppress Falun Gong practitioners, Mr. Han went to the Anxin County government with two fellow practitioners to appeal for the right to freely practice Falun Gong. Following their appeal, Wang Guozeng, the leader of the Transportation Department where Mr. Han worked, and director Meng Jianshe ordered about a dozen people to watch them around the clock. They detained Mr. Han in the department building for 20 days. In September 1999, they detained him in the department for another 20 days, allegedly to stop him from going to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong.

In July 2000, Wang Jinshen and Meng Jianshe put him under surveillance outside of the department for 8 days. When he subsequently returned to work, secretary Liu Xiaojiang asked him if he would continue to practice Falun Gong. Mr. Han firmly stated that he would maintain his belief, and from then on he was repeatedly harassed by the authorities. In November 2000, he became homeless in an effort to avoid further persecution. In order to learn of Mr. Han's whereabouts, the police detained his wife for more than ten days, despite the fact that she had a young child at home.

Arrested and Beaten for Exposing the Truth

On August 27th, 2002, Han Weixin and other practitioners went to Xushui County, Hebei Province, and tapped into the TV system to broadcast videos that exposed the facts about the CCP staged self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square. On their way home, they were stopped by the Xushui County police. Five practitioners were arrested and beaten. One of them was beaten so severely that his head was punctured from being beaten with a stick. Mr. Han was taken to the Xushui County Police Station, where officers interrogated and tortured him. They tied him to a tiger bench², beat him with batons and shocked him with electric batons. They targeted his back and ankles, and used so much force that one of the batons actually broke on impact. That night, they also instigated criminal detainees to deprive Mr. Han of sleep.

The next day, they beat Mr. Han again, and then forced him to do manual labour, packing matchboxes. Officials did not allow his family to visit him. He was separated from other practitioners and was put under constant video surveillance. He and other practitioners were also forced to work in the yard. Every time practitioners were taken away for questioning, they returned with wounds all over their bodies. Officers also coerced other detainees to viciously beat practitioners. Mr. Han went on a hunger strike for 21 days to protest the persecution. Criminal detainees forced him into the toilet and splashed cold water on his face, and beat him every time he would attempt to go to sleep.

Sentenced to 15 Years and Tortured in Prison

Mr. Han stopped his hunger strike when he received notice of a court hearing. In court, several practitioners asked for the self-immolation DVD to be played so that the facts about the incident could be revealed, but the court refused. Practitioners received heavy sentences in October 2002. Mr. Han was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment and sent to the Baoding No. 1 Prison. Seven days later, four practitioners, including Mr. Han, were transferred to the Hebei No. 4 Prison.

Mr. Han was detained in the No. 4 Section, where the lead guard was Gao Junling. A few days after Mr. Han refused to do forced labour, he was sent to the brainwashing centre of the prison. There, he was subjected to brainwashing sessions every day. Three to four prisoners were assigned to monitor him. They forced him to sit on a small bench for long periods of time and beat him if he didn’t comply. Li Like, who was in charge of the brainwashing sessions, told the prisoners to beat him on the back and buttocks with sticks. The sticks broke from the beatings. They forced him to sit until midnight in order to deprive him of sleep, and then forced him to get up at 5 a.m. He was given only one small steamed bun for breakfast, two buns for lunch and two for dinner. His eyes became badly sunken due to starvation and malnutrition. He went on a hunger strike for two days, and only then did the guards stop depriving him of food.

In 2005, Han Weixin became seriously ill due to the persecution. The hospital informed him that his diabetes had returned. In 2006, he was found to have tuberculosis of the lungs, and was detained in a small yard for inmates with infectious diseases in the prison. By November 2008, his condition deteriorated further and became life-threatening. He could no longer take care of himself and was sent to the Shijiazhuang Hospital, where he was diagnosed with severe accumulation of fluids in the chest, partial lung failure, and rapid heart beat. By this time, he had also gone blind in his right eye and couldn’t digest any food. The prison didn’t want to pay the hospital fees, so they informed his family of his hospitalisation, and Mr. Han’s wife, son, sister and brother-in-law came to the hospital to care for him. They were shocked to see the condition that he was in. He had been a strong man, but was just skin and bones at that point. The prison sent four guards to monitor him in the hospital and forbade people other than his family to visit him. Mr. Han’s family were forced to pay 20,000 yuan¹ in medical fees. They asked for his release on medical grounds three times, but were turned down each time by the prison.

On March 6th, 2009, the prison authorities informed the family that they could take Mr. Han home, as officials didn't want to take responsibility for the deterioration of Mr. Han's condition. Mr. Han's family took him home, but he had not recovered from the long-term persecution. Later on, the prison authorities forcibly took Mr. Han to a physical exam and released him because of his serious condition. However, that incident brought Mr. Han tremendous pressure and his health condition kept deteriorating after that. He went into a critical condition several times and finally passed away on October 15th, 2011.

Related article:

Han Weixin Persecuted for Seven Years
http://www.clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/2/8/123130.html

Note

1. The "Tiananmen Self-Immolation" an incident on Tiananmen Square in January 2001 whereby four people set themselves alight and the Chinese Communist claimed they were Falun Gong practitioners, yet there was video evidence to strongly disprove this claim.

2. "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.

3. "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/2011/11/8/248862.html