Frenzy of Beatings and High-Voltage Shocks Cause Death of Dafa Practitioner

Li Hongwei, male, fifty-two years old, was an employee at The Agriculture Mechanical Company in Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province.

Li Hongwei had poor health and a bad temper before practising Falun Gong. He started to practise Falun Gong in March 1996, and very quickly regained his health and became a nice and kind person. The family came to be harmonious and had a happy life. In July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin began persecuting Falun Gong, and Li Hongwei and his fellow practitioners went to Beijing to appeal. They planned on telling the leadership of the country of their own experiences in practising Falun Gong and the benefits in body and mind they had attained. They were abducted on the way, and Li was sent to a detention centre for ten days because he refused to give up his belief in Falun Gong and his right to appeal. In the detention centre, the guards always beat him badly for practising the exercises. Later Li and over one hundred practitioners were sent to a brainwashing class in the city's labour camp, which was located in Xidayingzhi. On September 24 1999, vicious people slandered Falun Dafa in a meeting held by the brainwashing class. When Li stood up to refute the malicious lies, wicked people dragged him out of the room. As many of the practitioners stood up to stop the evildoers intention, the authorities sent anti-riot police to suppress them. The perpetrators transferred Li and six other practitioners to the detention centre, where Li was locked with handcuffs and fetters. The abusers kept beating him and punched his right ear, puncturing his eardrum and almost causing him to go deaf.

On October 30, 1999, the authorities illegally sentenced Li to three years in a labour camp, and sent him to the second group of the Chaoyang City Labour Camp. In January 2000, because Li refused to renounce his belief, the perpetrators transferred him to the third group, where he was forced to take part in slave labour so heavy it overburdened the workers. In the thirteen or fourteen hours' labour from 5am through 8pm every day, each of prisoners was forced to dig a ditch 1.2 -- 1.5m (4 -- 5ft) in depth and 20m (65ft) in length, or three holes 80cm (2.6ft) in diameter and 6m (20ft) in depth. Those who couldn't finish the quota would be beaten or be forced to stand still in the corridor for hours with the upper half of the body bent over. The food was horrible. The authorities just supplied two meals indoors every day. Each meal consisted of two pieces of a very small corn cake, which was mixed with sand and insects, and always half-baked. At the labour site, they supplied three meals every day, with four pieces of small corn cake for breakfast and dinner, respectively, and a steamed bun for lunch. The prisoners hardly had a chance to taste a pickle, and ate vegetables boiled with a mixture of salt water, sand and dirt. The Falun Gong practitioners were forced to do the hardest work and eat the least food. Without enough to eat, the inmates would take a portion of the practitioners' food for themselves. Even though the practitioners worked hard, they nevertheless suffered physical abuse. The prisoners claimed, "The team leader said we have to beat Falun Gong practitioners." As a political instructor, the vicious guard Tong Xiaoli instigated the police and inmates to beat the practitioners on different occasions. In January 2000, Li Hongwei and another practitioners were practising the exercises in a cell, and Tong let Wang, Song, Jia and three other policemen drag Li and his fellow practitioner into the reception room, where the guards shocked them with high voltage electric batons and kicked their chest and neck with boots. During the thirty minutes of torture, Li writhed with pain on the ground and his body became so swollen from the electric shock. In February 2000 prisoner Gao Chunhai, being instigated by the guards to vent their anger, battered Li's face and head for over twenty minutes, like a punch bag, because they had found him practising exercises. Li's head and face was swollen, distorted and bruised. He had to use his fingers to help open his eyes. Yet he did not retaliate against the abusers. In August 2002, Tong Xiaoli directed prisoners to resort to violence in an attempt to brainwash Li Hongwei and another practitioner, Liu Chunhua, then forced them to kneel down in the yard under the burning sun for two hours more. In August 2000, Li Hongwei was transferred back to the second group for brainwashing. In October 2000, he gave into the demands of the authorities and wrote a statement denouncing Falun Dafa, after being deceived by former practitioners [who now assit in the persecution because of fear of more torture and persecution] from the Masanjia Labour Camp, and was released later.

After being released, he realised he had been deceived, and issued a solemn statement to adhere to Falun Dafa. One day he was informed on as he was clarifying the facts about Falun Dafa to the police at the labour camp. When the wicked police tried to arrest him, he luckily escaped by taking a chance and was forced to become homeless. The police searched his house. In the morning on September 26, 2002, the second day after he had returned home, he was abducted by police from the Shuangta District Police Department, the Qianjin Local Police Station and the City "610 Office" while on his way to shop. When he was detained in the Wujiagui Detention Centre, the police searched his house. On October 10, the police notified the family that Li died on October 7. Under supervision of the police, his family checked his corpse. Alarmingly, they found his back was black, with scars caused by large-scale electric shock torture. The ears were also black and had traces of blood inside. What measure of torture had been inflicted upon Li for his body to be in such a shocking state? In addition, the body had apparently been cleaned up. When a family member tried to take photos, the police beat him, injuring his arms, and then locked him to the steam pipe for twenty-four hours. The police smashed the camera and exposed the film before making two points to Li's family:

1. The corpse would not be handed over to them
2. Only a limited number of people would be allowed to see the cremation.

The family members refused to let the police cremate the body. But on November 15, the Shuangta District Police Department told the family that they had to complete the cremation within three days. On November 18, without informing the family, the police secretly cremated the corpse. The family members didn't know about it until many days later.

A wonderful family was destroyed by the Jiang's tyranny. Li Hongwei is only one of the millions of cases of the persecution of compassionate people. Just because Falun Gong practitioners believe in being good people, they suffer by having their families shattered, and their good fortune being wiped away.

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/12/21/30006.html