The Persecution Suffered by Mr. Lian Yikun Before His Death

Name: Lian Yikun
Gender: Male
Age: 39
Address: Wumahe District, Yichun City
Occupation: Unknown
Date of Death: July 14th, 2012?
Date of Most Recent Arrest: April 26th, 2012
Most Recent Place of Detention: Suihua Forced Labour Camp
City: Yichun
Province: Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered: Arrest, ID card confiscated, homelessness, imprisonment, forced labour, detention

Because of the persecution of Falun Gong, practitioner Mr. Lian Yikun from Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province was forced to become homeless for many years. He decided to return home to apply for an ID card on April 26th, 2012. However, he was arrested by the local police department and taken to Suihua Forced Labour Camp 15 days later. In just a little over a month, Mr. Lian died at the labour camp at the age of 39, apparently tortured to death. His family received the notification on July 14u and all they saw was his disfigured corpse covered with wounds and both legs broken.

Mr. Lian Yikun was born in 1973. He lived in the Wumahe District, Yichun City. He had a happy family originally, before his wife divorced him due to being unable to withstand the pressure of the persecution. His wife once said while crying, “My husband is a good person; why would a good person suffer persecution? Without this persecution my family would be a happy one. This persecution has damaged my family and my husband as well. Aren't there any laws? How can a good, kind person receive such a fate?”

1. Family subjected to persecution

On July 21st, 1999, Mr. Lian was forcibly taken from his home to a brainwashing centre by policeman Li Xiaokui from the Daonan Police Station in the Wumahe District. He was imprisoned for three days before his family were able to have him released on bail. His younger sister and his father had been taken away with him at the same time. His father was imprisoned at a brainwashing centre for 15 days before being released.

In December 1999, Mr. Lian and 22 local fellow practitioners jointly appealed to their local government peacefully and rationally, telling them that it's wrong to persecute Falun Gong, and requested the restoration of Falun Gong's reputation and the return of confiscated Falun Gong books. The practitioners were persecuted by the local government and detained at a detention centre. The local government and police department believed that Mr. Lian's father Lian Tao organised the appeal, along with Zhang Ancai and Cheng Xiuchun. Without going through any legal procedures, they arrested Lian Tao and Zhang Ancai and sentenced them to forced labour for 2 1/2 years and 2 years, respectively.

After an illegal imprisonment of 18 months at Yichun Forced Labour Camp, Mr. Lian Tao was transferred to Suihua Forced Labour Camp. Falun Gong practitioners Cheng Xiuchun was imprisoned at the same time, and later, on practitioners Wu Xilu, Fang Shuzhen, Sun Zhi and others were also imprisoned there. By that time, Mr. Lian Yikun and his sister had already been imprisoned for over four months.

During this period, the Wumahe Police Department tried to deceive the relatives of the arrested Falun Gong practitioners by saying that all the fault was on the practitioners, as they would be released the moment they gave up practising Falun Gong. With this deceit, they caused practitioners' relatives to misunderstand their practitioner family members and created conflicts between them. As a result, Falun Gong practitioner Wu Xilu and his wife divorced. Practitioner Liu Chenglin, a judge at a local court, was imprisoned this time for participating in the appeal. He died shortly after being released.

2. A family injured by persecution

The persecution has brought grave disaster to Mr. Lian Yikun's immediate family and other relatives. Upon returning home from detention, Mr. Lian Yikun and his sister were listed as major targets of persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) personnel of Yichun City. The police would visit their homes and track their activities every day, causing them to be unable to go to work. Mr. Lian's mother was so traumatised that her heart disease recurred. She could not take care of herself for a long period and often awoke a night, in a panic from her nightmares. Their family, once admired by many neighbours, was severely injured by this persecution. Their successful family business of two years, a processing factory with an annual revenue of over 100 thousand yuan¹, was forced to close.

Mr. Lian Yikun was originally working at a business office but was forced to quit because he practiced Falun Gong. His uncle was the vice chairman of the local People's Congress but became a target of persecution because of the CCP's practice of implicating family members. His supervisor applied constant pressure on him during the two years of persecution against Mr. Lian Yikun and his family. Unable to withstand the pressure, his uncle died suddenly in 2001 of a heart attack.

Mr. Lian and his sister, along with practitioners Zhang Tiemin, Zhang Damin, and Gu Xiuying, were taken to a brainwashing centre by local police in May 2000. They refused to cooperate with the police at the brainwashing centre and were released four days later. In July 2000 Mr. Lian went to Tiananmen Square to appeal for justice for Falun Gong, along with Zhang Tiemin and Zhang Damin. They were illegally detained by the Beijing police. The local police went to Mr. Lian's home and didn't find him so they went to Beijing looking for him.

Mr. Lian and his fellow practitioners were sentenced to one year of forced labour. Because of this, his sister was taken to the Wumahe Detention Centre by deputy police chief An Kuihua, along with local Falun Gong practitioners Pang Ruiqin and Wang Yuying. She was imprisoned for over three months.

During this period, Mr. Lian Yikun personally witnessed his father being brutally beaten by inmates and wardens at Yichun Labour Camp for not giving up practising Falun Gong. He was tremendously hurt by this.

Before the New Year's Day of 2001, Mr. Lian's sister and mother went to visit an older relative in Harbin City. The Wumahe police went to Harbin to forcibly take them back. Their older relative was heartbroken. The local police imprisoned Mr. Lian's sister at the Daonan Police Station. Some kindhearted police officers scolded the CCP for imprisoning such a good person, saying that the job of the police was doomed and that under the CCP's leadership, the police were no longer doing good things for the people.

This time, Mr. Lian's sister was imprisoned for over four months. The chief of the police department, Li Jichen wanted to send her to a labour camp for persecution, so he ordered the police to interrogate her every day and compile paperwork for the application for her forced labour sentence. The Yichun City auditor said that she was too young to be put into a labour camp. In the latter half of 2001 Mr. Lian's sister was unable to stay in Yichun due to the persecution, and went to a faraway city for a job, leaving her ill mother at home.

On November 18th, 2003 Mr. Lian Yikun and his father were forcibly taken to the Wumahe Detention Centre and detained for over three months by deputy police chief An Kuihua, 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) director Li Xiaokui and a policeman with the last name Wang. They were later transferred to the Yichun City Brainwashing Centre for three months and were released at the end of May 2004. At the time of imprisonment Mr. Lian had been married for just 10 months. His wife was devastated. Later on she could not bear the persecution anymore and divorced Mr. Lian.

3. Homeless for seven years, died in custody within three months of returning home

On August 27th, 2005 several Falun Gong practitioners in Yichun went to Tieli City for an experience sharing conference. Officers from the Yichun Police Department arrested more than 20 practitioners from Yichun and Tieli City who attended the conference. Falun Gong practitioner Zhou Shuhai who worked at the Yichun government was also arrested and sentenced. He subsequently died at Daqing Prison as a result of torture, at the age of 32.

At 2 a. m. on September 23rd, 2005, 610 Office director Li Xiaokui and two policemen broke into Mr. Lian's home, arrested his father, ransacked the home, and confiscated his new computer with a value of over 8,000 yuan.

The next day, the police went to Mr. Lian's home again to arrest him, but he escaped. His over 80-year-old grandma was left at home with no one to take care of her. Mr. Lian's father was imprisoned at the Suihua Forced Labour Camp for three years, where he refused to renounce Falun Gong and suffered extremely brutal persecution.

After his escape, Mr. Lian was forced to be homeless for over seven years, without even an ID card (the police had taken away his ID card during the first two years of the persecution). He lived a very difficult life and he was often very depressed. Without an ID card, normal places would not hire him, causing him great difficulty in making a living.

On April 5th, 2012 Mr. Lian returned home to obtain an ID card. When he went to apply for his card on April 26, the political instructor of the police department, Jiang Cheng, 610 Office director Li Linqiang, and Li Xiaokui from the Domestic Security Division forcibly took him to the Wumahe Detention Centre under the charge that he escaped arrest in 2005. His friends and relatives went to the police department to inquire and were told that he would be released two weeks later. However, 15 days later he was sentenced to forced labour for one year and imprisoned at Suihua Forced Labour Camp.

Mr. Lian Yikun died several weeks later. In just one month, a healthy and upright person died in police custody. What kind of torture did he receive at the labour camp? No one knows. What his family members saw in the freezer at the mortuary was only his disfigured corpse with wounds all over him and both legs broken.

4. Crimes committed at Suihua Forced Labour Camp

After Suihua Forced Labour Camp was designated in 2000 as the primary camp in Heilongjiang Province for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, the CCP stated that the labour camp would receive an award of 20,000 yuan for each imprisoned practitioner. To augment the persecution, Jiang's group invested several million yuan of the hard-earned money of the Chinese people to build a four story building with a built-in monitoring system in 2002. From its outward appearance, Suihua Forced Labour Camp looks like a luxury hotel, but inside, bloody persecution is going on. According to incomplete statistics, over 30 Falun Gong practitioners have died from torture and abuse there.

Practitioner Wang Liqiang from Anda, in his 40s, died 20 days after being released. Cheng Bo from Nancha District, Yichun City died a month after being released. Practitioner Jiang Chengjiu from Boli County, in his 60s, died a month after being released. Practitioner Wang from Fangzheng County, in his 40s, died while using the toilet at the labour camp. In the winter of 2004, another practitioner died while doing military-style drills outside. Captain Liu Wei publicly claimed, “The worst penalty for causing a Falun Gong practitioner's death is no bigger than a minor discipline infraction. Their death counts as a suicide.”

At Suihua Forced Labour Camp, the guards ordered other inmates to beat Falun Gong practitioners. Seven or eight inmates surrounded a practitioner to beat him up. The wardens used electric batons to shock or beat practitioners, and poured cold water on practitioners to revive them after they lost consciousness. They used solitary confinement or the torture device, tiger bench, to torture practitioners in an attempt to force them to write statements giving up Falun Gong. If they didn't comply, practitioners would be subjected to other means of brutal, villainous tortures including the tiger bench, iron chair, death bed, fire torture, electric shock, big hang up, severe beatings, being pieced with needles, having the fingernails pierced, being hung up by handcuffs, solitary confinement, suffocation, sleep deprivation, being forced to stand in the baking sun or freezing cold, being doused with ice cold water, injection of unknown drugs, intensive physical drills, forced-feeding with mustard oil, being subjected to intense lights, and hard labour. The severe abuse and torture caused some practitioners to suffer mental collapse, and many practitioners were injured, disabled or lost their lives.

The most brutal torture at Suihua Forced Labour is hanging up. In this torture, a practitioner is handcuffed with his arms behind his back and hung up from a bunk bed inside the police office with a cloth rope made from bed linen. Afterwards, a plastic bag is placed over the practitioner's head. When the practitioner has almost suffocated, the bag is taken away and two wardens each hold a lit cigarette to the nostrils of the practitioner. After the cigarettes are out they light another two to continue the torture. The practitioner's lungs feel like exploding and they sweat profusely. After two hours, the practitioner is let down and while one warden holds up his body, and another two stretch the practitioner's arms while claiming that without stretching, the practitioner's arms would become disabled. Then they hang the practitioner up again to continue the torture. When the practitioner's mind is not clear, they let him down and demand that he sign the statements to give up Falun Gong that they have prepared for him.

This brutal torture has continued from 2003 until today. Batch after batch of wardens have rotated through the labour camp, but this torture has remained in use. There are many other tortures used at Suihua Forced Labour Camp. After being tortured by hanging up, the practitioner's body does not display any apparent wounds. However, because they have been forced to inhale cigarettes, their lungs are severely damaged and their breathing becomes very laboured. They cannot even speak with any strong force. Many practitioners died shortly after returning home. Some were mentally broken down. An autopsy could not tell the cause of death as there was no apparent injury. Many practitioners were tortured to death in this way.

Under the CCP's legal system, Falun Gong practitioners have nowhere to appeal. Even after a practitioner is tortured to death, the officials would protect each other and turn the justice system upside down. Their grieving family members cannot get a just treatment under this system. However, good and evil will receive their deserved good fortune or retribution. Heaven will not spare the perpetrators of these evil acts. Eventually the day will come when the practitioners' suffering will be fully exposed and the perpetrators will be punished accordingly.

The wardens at Suihua Forced Labour Camp who have severely persecuted Falun Gong practitioners include: Kang Guixin, Kong Fandong, instructor Gao Zhonghai, captain Liu Wei, deputy instructor Long Kuibin, Liu Zhongwei, Lian Xing, Diao Xuesong, Li Chengchun, Li Hongjiang, Zeng Lingjun, Jin Qingfu, Chen Xinglong, Shi Jian, Wang Wei, Bi Fei, Li Hui, Pan Juying, Li Jian, Tian Zhizheng, Wang Yufei, Qu Jiantao, Qian Shiliang.

Parties involved in the persecution in Suihua Forced Labour Camp
Xiao Huayu, director: +86-455-8110701 (Office), +86- 15946107788 (Mobile)
Li Shuping, political commissioner: +86-455-8110702 (Office), +86-15045550555(Mobile)
Jin Saolu, deputy director: +86-455-8462571 (Office), +86-13796578111 (Mobile)
Kang Guixin, education section chief: +86-455-8110742 (Office), +86-15946142897 (Mobile)
Chen Xinlong: +86-455-8110865 (Office), +86-15045550797 (Mobile)
Liu Zhongwei: +86-455-8110721 (Office), +86-13644655004 (Mobile)

Note

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