39-Year-Old Mr. Li Shangrong Dies after Ten Years of Imprisonment

Name: Li Shangrong
Gender: Male
Age: 39
Address: Shenhe District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province
Occupation:
Date of Death: December 30th, 2011
Date of Most Recent Arrest: December 26th, 2000
Most Recent Place of Detention: Jinzhou Prison
City: Shenyang
Province: Liaoning
Persecution Suffered: Imprisonment, torture, home ransacked, interrogation, detention, forced labour, brainwashing

Shenyang City Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Li Shangrong was arrested in December 2000 and sentenced to ten years in prison. After ten years of imprisonment, he was emaciated when he returned home. He passed away on the morning of December 30th.

Before he died, Mr. Li said, “Upon returning home, I had to face the pain of losing two loved ones. To help support my 70-year-old father and my child, who was only one month old when I left, I needed to find a job quickly, so that my wife, who had been working so hard, could take a break. However, I simply could not continue working after several months.”

In a recent article published on the Clearwisdom website, “Twelve Years of Persecution Suffered by a Family Who Benefited from Practising Falun Gong,” Mr. Li described the persecution his family had suffered over the past 12 years. Mr. Li's sincerest desire was to awaken the people who have been deceived by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by sharing his own experiences. This was especially so for his relatives, so that they would not side with the CCP who had brutally persecuted him. As he said, “My whole family had a new life because of Falun Gong. The unreasonable persecution by the Communist regime caused my once happy family to endure great tragedy and death.”

Mr. Li started practising Falun Gong in 1995. He said, “At that time, I suffered from severe vasculitis. When traditional Chinese medical treatment and other qigong practices proved to be ineffective, the doctor suggested that my limbs be amputated. Facing that situation right after I graduated from college, I almost lost all hope to live. When I saw the change in my mother after she started practising Falun Gong, I decided to cultivate, too. I recovered quickly, was able to go to work, and regained the confidence to live.”

On the night of December 26th, 2000, a dozen officers led by Yang Jialin broke into Mr. Li's home and ransacked it. His wife had to take their infant child and flee from home that night. “I was detained in the Dongling District Detention Centre and beaten by the guard. For seven days, my legs were shackled to a board and then my hands were handcuffed to the shackles on my legs. I could not take care of myself. My legs were subsequently put in shackles for 108 days. I was afflicted with scabies, my skin was torn open, my flesh became infected, and my whole body itched terribly.”

A year later, Mr. Li was sentenced to a ten-year prison term. He was incarcerated in Wafangdian Prison and then in Jinzhou Prison. “I was transferred to Jinzhou Prison on December 19th, 2007. During a physical examination, it was discovered that there were cavities in my lungs. Because I resisted the so-called “transformation” [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] carried out by the prison, my family was not allowed to visit me during 2009-2010. I had a constant fever, and my weight dropped from 194 pounds in 2000 to 115 pounds when I was released.”

“In 2005, when my wife came to visit me with our child, she was seized from the hotel in Wafangdian and taken to Shenyang City Detention Centre. She was sentenced to three years in prison seven days later. She was detained in the Liaoning Province Women's Prison and locked up in the storage space with both hands separately handcuffed to a metal shelf. During this time, my mother was very worried about my wife and me. She also had to take care of our young child as well as her 91-year-old mother. She broke down from the pressure and passed away on May 27th, 2006. My grandmother also passed away one year before my release from jail.”

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2012/1/2/251315.html