Outstanding Police Officer Xu Langzhou from Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province Dies in Prison Under Suspicious Circumstances

Name: Xu Langzhou
Gender: Male
Age: 39
Address: Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province
Occupation: Police officer
Date of Death: March 18th, 2012
Date of Most Recent Arrest: April 9th, 2004
Most Recent Place of Detention: Wumaping Prison
City: Leshan
Province: Sichuan
Persecution Suffered: Forced labour, brainwashing, beatings, detention and imprisonment, torture, dismissal from workplace

Mr. Xu Langzhou, a police officer from Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province, began to practise Falun Gong in 1994. After he began practising, each year he was recognised by being given the Outstanding Police Officer award by his department. The Panzhihua City TV station even did a feature story on him.
However, after the persecution of Falun Gong began by the communist regime, Mr. Xu was sentenced to two years of forced labour. He was later sentenced to eight years of imprisonment and tortured in many prisons. After suffering years of severe persecution while in detention, Mr. Xu died on March 18th, 2012 in a prison hospital. He was 39. Further details of his death are still under investigation.

Mr. Xu Langzhou was a police officer at Panzhihua City Traffic Police No. 1 Division. His duty was handling traffic accidents. After he started practising Falun Gong in 1994, Mr. Xu strictly conducted himself in accordance with Falun Gong's principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Within a short period of time after he started practising, he recovered from several long-standing illnesses. Before he began practising, he smoked, drank, and beat-up drivers who tried to shirk responsibility in traffic accidents. He also accepted gifts and monetary bribes. After Mr. Xu began practising Falun Gong, he eliminated these vices. He stopped beating people and turned down dinner invitations, gifts, and bribes. Every year, he was awarded as Outstanding Police Officer.

This upright police officer was however subjected to inhumane persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

1. Unjustly Fired from His Job and Detained for Making Appeals

Beginning on July 22nd, 1999, the regime's propaganda organisation published a series of reports slandering Falun Gong. When Xu Langzhou went to the appeals office in Beijing to explain the facts about Falun Gong, he was arrested and taken back to Panzhihua City, where he was locked up in a detention centre. He was released several days later. His workplace subsequently forced him to choose between his belief and his job. Mr. Xu felt it his right to continue practising Falun Gong and keep his job too. In the end, he was fired from his job. On November 23rd, 1999, when he made an appeal at the Panzhihua City Appeals Office, the staff reported him to the police department. The city 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) arrested him and took him to the Dadukou Police Station. That night, Mr. Xu was imprisoned in the basement of the police station. It was winter, and he was not wearing warm clothing. The next day, he was transferred to the detention centre where he was held in custody for one month.

2. Tortured in Detention Centre and Labour Camps

Mr. Xu was arrested again in 2000 and detained in the Panzhihua City Detention Centre, for doing the exercises outside his house. Because he explained the facts about Falun Gong to prison convicts, the guards tortured him using the death bed torture¹ method for 13 consecutive days. On March 15th, 2000, Mr. Xu was sentenced to two years of forced labour by the Panzhihua City 610 Office. He was then sent to Xinhua Forced Labour Camp in Mianyang, Sichuan Province, where he was subjected to brutal torture.

At the labour camp, the guards shocked Falun Gong practitioners with electric batons of several thousand watts, which burned through the victim's flesh. Several guards held Mr. Xu to the ground and tied him up with rope, which cut into his flesh. They stood on his face, grinding his face into the brick pavement and causing severe lacerations. He was subsequently thrown outside under the scorching sun.

Mr. Xu was also forced to bake bricks at extremely high temperatures. He was made to pick up red-hot bricks that could even light a cigarette even after they were taken out of the kiln. Before going inside the kiln to pick up the bricks, even on the hottest days he had to put on thick clothing, his hands had to be covered with a cotton sleeve cut off from clothing, and the sleeve was padded with a piece of rubber from a car tyre. Even young men in their thirties could only stay in the kiln for two minutes. Due to the intense heat and long hours stooping over, most of the brick pickers could not stand up straight after coming out of the kiln, and they were covered in ash. Mr. Xu spent two years doing this hard labour. Because he refused to give up his belief, his term was extended by another nine months. He suffered from injuries all over his body due to continuous abuse and torture.

3. Arrested Again, Interrogated and Sentenced to Prison

While Mr. Xu was detained at the labour camp, his wife could not bear the pressure of the persecution and divorced him. Upon his release he stayed at his younger sister's place and recovered from his physical injuries only after more than a year. During this time, officers from the Domestic Security Division often came to harass him.

In order to make a living, Mr. Xu set up a partnership with another person and opened a paint supplies factory. Just as the factory was starting to manufacture paint supplies, he was persecuted again. On April 9th, 2004, at 9:00 a.m., a dozen officers including Qin Gang, Zou Yongjun, and Sun Zhiwen from the Panhuazhi City Domestic Security Division arrested him while he was at work. They covered his head with a black bag and took him to a conference room on the second floor of the Jingu Restaurant. The officers hung him by his handcuffs for 24 hours, and subjected him to sleep deprivation for three days and two nights. Qin Gang, Zou Yongjun, Huang Jinyong, and other officers took turns continuously interrogating and torturing him, trying to force him to agree to “evidence” they had fabricated against him.

While he was being held, the police confiscated a bag which Mr. Xu carried with him. It was later verified that the bag contained the factory's account records, receipts, and over 3,000 yuan² in cash. The police however, insisted that the bag contained Falun Gong brochures. Zou Yongjun even pressured Mr. Xu's factory workers into giving false evidence. On September 14th, 2004, the Yanbian Court held a trial. Due to insufficient evidence as well as public outrage, the court did not pass a sentence. Pressured by the 610 Office however, on November 1st, 2004, the court held a second trial and sentenced Mr. Xu to eight and a half years of imprisonment using contrived information supplied by the Panhuazhi 610 Office.

(Related article: http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2008/2/20/94609.html)

4. Persecuted in Prison

Mr. Xu was taken to Guangyuan Prison in Sichuan Province in January 2005. In July, he was sent to solitary confinement for 15 days simply because he greeted another practitioner.

For six years while he was imprisoned at Guangyuan Prison, Xu Langzhou was not allowed to call his family even once. On seven separate occasions, his elderly mother travelled from Panzhihua City to see him, but the prison guards forbade her from visiting her son. In winter 2010, Mr. Xu was transferred to Wumaping Prison in Muchuan County. Because he refused to wear the prison uniform, the prison guards ordered convicts to cut off his clothes. He was allowed to wear only a pair of underpants. Mr. Xu went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Finally, in December 2011, the prison authorities allowed his family to send him clothing and 1,000 yuan in cash.

On March 7th, 2012, the prison notified Mr. Xu's family that they would be allowed to visit him at Chengdu City Prison for Ill Convicts, claiming that he had to undergo an operation for a duodenal ulcer. The next day, his mother Peng Guangzhen who is in her sixties, was forced to sign documents agreeing to an operation while Mr. Xu was unconscious. Three days after the operation, Mr. Xu was able to drink porridge. The hospital refused to allow his mother to take care of him, and hence she had to stay in a hotel outside the hospital. On the night of March 18th, the hospital informed the family that Mr. Xu had passed away.

Mr. Xu's body is currently at the Xindu funeral parlour. His family has asked that an outside forensic expert examine his body in order to determine the cause of his death.

Information on the perpetrators:
Zhu Wei, head of Wumaping Prison
Tianyi, deputy head: +86-833-4379003 (Office)

Sichuan Province Chengdu Prison for Ill Convicts (known externally as Sichuan Province Police General Hospital)

The Sichuan Province Chengdu Prison for Ill Convicts is the first prison for ill convicts approved by Sichuan Province. It is located at the Jintang Prison No. 3 Ward. The ward is on the seventh floor and is not accessible by elevator. Security there is as tight as in the regular prison, and the guards also act as doctors.

Address: No. 16 of Jindu Section on airport road, Shuangliu County, Sichuan Province
Prison hospital: +86-28-84898287, +86-28-85960120
He Zhengde, head of prison and hospital
Ou Keke, prison doctor: +86-28-85963848
Sichuan Province Prison Management Bureau: +86-28-86658966, +86-28-86716151

Note

1. "Death Bed" torture: A practitioner is tied to a bed with his hands handcuffed above his head to the bed rails, and his legs tied with thin nylon ropes. The rope is then tightly wrapped around the practitioner's body and the bed, from his legs to his chest. The rope is wrapped so tightly that the practitioner has difficulty breathing and eventually loses consciousness.

2. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.