Mr. Zhou Xiangyang in Critical Condition and on Hunger Strike at Gangbei Prison

Name: Zhou Xiangyang
Gender: Male
Age: 38
Address: Tangshan, Hebei Province
Occupation: Cost engineer at the Third Tianjin Railway Survey and Design Institute
Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 5th, 2011
Most Recent Place of Detention: Gangbei Prison, recently renamed to Binhai Prison
City: Tianjin
Persecution Suffered: Electric shock, sleep deprivation, forced labour, brainwashing, beatings, hung up, solitary confinement, force-feedings, physical restraint, home ransacked, interrogation, denial of toilet use

Mr. Zhou Xiangyang, a former engineer from the Third Exploration and Design Institute of Tianjin, was jailed in a Chinese communist prison for nine years. He is detained in Gangbei Prison (also known as Binhai Prison) in Tianjin City. There he was locked in a confinement cell, shocked with electric batons, deprived of sleep, and severely beaten.

He was also tortured by prison guards for four months with a method called “floor anchor,” in which a person's hands and feet are tied up and fixed to an iron ring on the ground for a long period of time. It is believed that another practitioner, Mr. Li Xiwang, died because of this method of torture.

Mr. Zhou went on a hunger strike for over one year to protest the mistreatment he was being subjected to, and was hospitalized several times. He was released in July 2009 on medical parole. Before his health fully recovered, he was again taken to jail on March 5th, 2010.

On February 1st, 2012, Mr. Zhou's family received a notice from the prison, advising them to come and see him. On February 2nd, they went to see him in a prison hospital. He was so weak and emaciated that he couldn't take any infusion or feeding. His life was in danger. The prison guard told the family that “Mr. Zhou was hospitalized on January 16th. He was having diarrhoea at that time. He was hospitalized because he didn't feel well. He didn't allow anyone to give him any infusion or feeding.”

It seemed obvious that the prison guard was trying to shirk responsibility. Because prison guards monitored Mr. Zhou and his family, he didn't have the freedom to say what he wanted to say.

No one knows for sure what tortures the communist authorities imposed on Mr. Zhou, causing him such enormous pain that he went on a hunger strike for over 330 days. He is still being detained in the prison even though he is on the verge of death. If he dies, wouldn't it be tantamount to murder? The prison authorities have tried everything possible to prevent Mr. Zhou's family from meeting with the lawyer. Why are they now asking his family to come to see him to “persuade him to eat something?”

Mr. Zhou's family has been trying to rescue him by hiring a lawyer to file a lawsuit against Gangbei Prison for their criminal acts of torture. Nonetheless, the Communist procurator refused to process their case, leading the prison officials to act even more rampantly. In another case, prison guards persecuted Mr. Li Xiwang to death within 10 days. 2,300 people signed a petition to openly support Falun Gong practitioners to sue the prison, the 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) as well as the committee of politics and law. In response to this, the bureau of public security, the bureau of prisons, prisons, and the procurator colluded with each other and implemented their revenge against these innocent people, resulting in the jailing of Mr. Zhou's wife Li Shanshan, and the arrest of his brother and sister-in-law, who were sent to a brainwashing centre for continued persecution. The prison guards continue to come up with additional schemes to harm Mr. Zhou.

In a similar past case, the death of Ms. Gao Rongrong (a practitioner from Shenyang City, Liaoning Province) was blamed on her refusal to eat anything, when in fact it is widely believed that she was murdered by the authorities in the hospital.

Shortly after Mr. Zhou was taken to the prison, his wife Ms. Li Shanshan went to see him. The prison guard told her: “This time, no matter what, we won't allow Zhou to get out of here on medical parole.”

Mr. Zhou's family and their lawyer continue to urgently request, “Immediately release the dying Mr. Zhou and investigate the criminal acts of Gangbei Prison.” We call for everyone's attention to Mr. Zhou's dire situation.

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Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2012/2/7/252792.html