Chongqing Practitioners Severely Persecuted by Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai

We are Falun Gong practitioners from Chongqing. After June 2008, when Bo Xilai, former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chongqing branch, transferred Wang Lijun to Chongqing, we witnessed the crimes committed by both Bo and Wang. They brainwashed the people of Chongqing with methods similar to those of the Cultural Revolution, and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners escalated.

To boost “results” and curry favour with higher ranking members of the CCP, Bo secretly ordered an accelerated and ruthless campaign of persecution against Falun Gong. Under Bo's order, Wang Lijun, former deputy mayor and chief of police of Chongqing, implemented a policy of genocide against Falun Gong practitioners. He ordered every subsidiary police department to aggressively persecute practitioners, through arrests, detention, torture, trials, and sentencing. Many practitioners were terribly injured, disabled, or even died as a result of the accelerated persecution. Chongqing became known as a city where practitioners were brutally persecuted.

According to incomplete statistics assembled by the Minghui website, around the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, more than 240 Falun Gong Chongqing practitioners were arrested and detained.

In 2009, at least 188 practitioners were arrested. Of those, six of them were persecuted to death, 18 were sentenced to prison, 76 sentenced to forced labour, and five sent to mental hospitals to be persecuted.

In 2010, 193 practitioners were persecuted. Of those, two were persecuted to death, 13 were sentenced to prison, 50 were sentenced to forced labour, 123 were arrested, and five were severely harassed.

Since 2011 to the time of this report, 324 practitioners have been persecuted. Among them, eight were persecuted to death, five were sentenced to prison, 23 were sentenced to forced labour, 243 were arrested, and 45 practitioners were harassed. Most practitioners' homes were ransacked.

Besides utilizing the police departments, the Chongqing government also recruited many so-called “assistant officers” to monitor several “key” practitioners around the clock. They even targeted elderly practitioners and children, with the majority of arrested practitioners being seniors in their 60s and 70s.

Some practitioners were beaten so severely that they suffered brain damage, others suffered punitive forced-feeding and injection with nerve-damaging drugs, and a number of practitioners died as a direct result of torture and abuse. Some practitioners passed away as a consequence of long-term mental and physical persecution. Many were detained for prolonged terms, while others were forced to leave home. Some practitioners mysteriously” disappeared.” The lives of countless Falun Gong practitioners and their families have been severely disrupted as a result of the persecution in the Chongqing area.

Below are several examples of persecution cases that took place under Bo and Wang's watch.

1. Mr. Jiang Xiqing Cremated While Still Alive

Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Jiang Xiqing, 66, was retired from the Jiangjin City Land Tax Bureau in the Chongqing area. On January 28th, 2012, officials with the Xishanping Forced Labour Camp announced his death. Six hours later, his family arrived. When they saw their father's body in the freezer cabinet, they felt his chest and stomach, which were still warm. They cried, “Our father is still alive, please save him.” They tried to do CRT on him but the guard stopped them. Over 20 guards forcibly took Mr. Jiang away and had him cremated.

2. Ms. Xu Zhen Suffocated to Death

Ms. Xu Zhen, 46, was a practitioner from the Hechuan District in Chongqing. On September 20th, 2011, she was arrested, and on September 26, she was sent to the Chongqing Women's Forced Labour Camp.

Because she refused to renounce Falun Gong, the guards dragged her to the fourth floor, where there were no monitoring devices installed, and beat her severely. Camp authorities then ordered a male guard, Yu Xiaohua, to organize a group of inmates to monitor and torture Ms. Xu on the fourth floor. They taped her mouth and feet, punched and kicked her, and tortured her in different ways. Ms. Xu lost consciousness during the beatings many times. The inmates poured cold water on her to wake her up then continued the beatings. Inmates Tang Hongxia and Zhou Yi stuffed cardboard into her vagina and forced her to repeatedly get up and squat down. The torture caused Ms. Xu to bleed profusely until she was in critical condition. Guard Yu praised the inmates who tortured Ms. Xu, telling them that they were accumulating merit by doing so, and that the more severe the torture, the better. He also rewarded them with fruit.

The inmates routinely dragged Ms. Xu up to the fourth floor to continue torturing her during the day and locked her in solitary confinement at night. Ms. Xu had to sleep on the ground as there was no furniture in the solitary confinement cell. She became very weak and emaciated as a result of the abuse.

Guard Zhu Yan ordered the inmates to wake Ms. Xu at 5:00 a.m. and to keep her awake until 1:00 a.m the next morning. Around October 19th, 2011, Qin Fang, a drug addicted inmate, suffocated Ms. Xu to death with a blanket. No one was held responsible for Ms. Xu's death.

3. A Young Child's Whereabouts Unknown after Two Arrests

Zhang Yuanyuan's hometown is Xintong Town, Chongqi. Her father, Mr. Zhang Hongxu, and her mother, Ms. Wu Yongmei, are both Falun Gong practitioners. In December 2003, Zhang Liang, director of the Tongnan County Domestic Security Division, arrested Yuanyuan's mother. She was taken a detention center and interrogated. Ms. Wu held a hunger strike to protest the arrest. She was released when she was on the verge of death.

On January 1st, 2004, in an attempt to capture Yuanyuan's parents, officers from the Tongnan First Police Station kidnapped Yuanyuan, who was just four years old at the time.

At around 11:00 a.m. on August 7th, 2010, officers from the Tongnan Police Department arrested several practitioners, including Yuanyuan, now 11 years of age. They put her in a solitary cell and tried to intimidate her. Later, they sent her to a distant relative. In 2011, after her father, Mr. Zhang Hongxu, was sent to Xishanping Forced Labour Camp, Yuanyuan left home to avoid further persecution. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

4. Retired Teacher Liu Jianhua Passes Away after Long-Term Trauma

Mr. Liu Jianhua's wife, Ms. Gu Ziyi; their daughter, Ms. Liu Zhilan; and son-in-law, Mr. Zhang Quanliang, were persecuted several times. Ms. Gu was sentenced to three years of forced labour in 2000; Ms. Liu was sentence to one year of forced labour in 2005; Mr. Zhang was sentenced to three years of forced labour in 2000 and was brutally tortured during detention. In 2005, Mr. Zhang was sentenced to five years in prison and was severely persecuted in Yongchuan Prison in Chongqing. Their other daughter used to have a mental illness. After she began practising Falun Gong, she recovered. However, after the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999, her condition deteriorated badly. Mr. Liu was so traumatized due to the long-term persecution of his family, that, in 2000, he became paralyzed.

At around 7:40 a.m. on August 3rd, 2011, officials from the local 610 Office attempted to arrest Mr. Liu but failed. At 8:00 a.m. on October 11th, 2011, while Ms. Liu and Mr. Zhang were on their way to work, officials from the Shancun Street Residential Committee arrested them. When Mr. Liu heard the news, he was unable to bear it and nearly died. While he was recovering at home, officials from the local 610 Office and local residential committee, over a dozen people in all, broke into his home and arrested Ms. Gu, who was taking care of him. Mr. Liu's condition deteriorated afterwards, and he passed away in January 2012.

The above cases are just a few examples of the thousands of Falun Gong practitioners persecuted in Chongqiong.