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A Personal Account of Torture (abridged)
(Wang Yuhuan 10/16/2007 16:18)It is hard to believe such inhumanity can occur if you haven’t witnessed it firsthand.
In August 2000, I was sent to Heizuizi Labor Camp, where I had to work for 18 hours a day making products for export. The guards there tried to “reform” me. They forced me to write reports about the contents of my thinking. When I refused, they ordered inmates to physically assault me.
A camp guard named Sun Mingyan, from Group No. 6, personally sat on my head and tortured me with an electric baton, burning the skin on my face and scalp. Sun also beat my face and body. I was badly injured from it; my entire body was swollen.
Around December 2000, I was transferred to Group No. 2, where guards forced me to haul electric generators. This was demanding physical labor, and caused damage to my muscles. When a year later, in November 2001, I was finally released, I still could not so much as raise a bowl [to eat] due to the injuries I sustained. Before my release, staff from the 6-10 Office made me pay 2,000 yuan.
The 6-10 Office ordered a massive manhunt in Changchun city on March 5, 2002, after [Falun Gong] practitioners raised awareness of their persecution by tapping into the cable television network. The persecutors arrested some 5,000 practitioners. Each cell in the detention centers they were removed to held more than 50 practitioners—even the restrooms were used to detain people.
On March 11, 2002, police from Division No. 1 of the Changchun city police force arrested me and locked me inside a steel cage in a police station near Caishenmiao, in the Nanguan district. The steel cage was around 4 feet, which meant that I could not stand up.
In the evening the next day, policemen Gao Peng and Zhang Heng interrogated me. They handcuffed my hands behind my back and covered my head and neck with a canvas bag. The bag was then sealed up tightly with a rope, fastened around my neck. I could see nothing, and breathing became difficult. They then bound me up and threw me into the trunk of a car.
I was driven to a place in the mountains near Jingyuetan. It was a place specifically for torturing [Falun Gong] practitioners, and many had been tortured to death here. Mr. Liu Haibo, a practitioner and a college graduate, was tortured to death at this place. They had stripped him naked and forced him to kneel. Guards then inserted an extra-long electric baton into his anus, and proceeded to shock his insides, killing him.
Mr. Liu Yi, a doctor who worked in Luyuan District Hospital, was also tortured to death there. From what I know, 23 practitioners were tortured to death here. I know the names of many of them. They were buried in a large pit nearby. One pretty female practitioner, Xiang Min, told me, after being carried back to the detention center, that guards there had sexually assaulted her while at the same time shocking her with electricity. Close to 30 practitioners were tortured to death in the aftermath of the massive manhunt in Changchun city.
Police took me to the mountain location. After more than two hours of driving the car stopped. Several police officers dragged me along and repeatedly struck me. I just staggered along. I was repeatedly slammed into a tree at one point. Police told me often that they would kill me today.
After more than ten minutes of walking, we entered a building and walked further until we came upon a room. The police then took the canvas bag off my head, and said: “Prepare to die today. Nobody walks out of here alive!”
I was in a small room of about 18 square feet. There was a small table in it, upon which was placed three long electric batons, a rope, and a bed. The bed was for police to rest on, but even when they had exhausted themselves tormenting us, they still continued to verbally abuse us. There was also a “tiger bench” [torture rack.] Policemen were getting things ready to torture us.
Several policemen then pinned me down on the tiger bench, handcuffed my hands, and tied them behind my back. Then they tied my arms to the back of the bench; my chest and abdomen were tightly affixed by two metal pipes that crossed the bench; and my feet were locked in place by two large metal rings. The police then started to brutally torture me, repeating the torture every five minutes. Each time, they would pull me by the arms back and forth. I heard the crackling sound of my shoulders dislocating. I almost fainted from the excruciating pain. The floor was wet with my sweat and tears.
They then shoved my head towards my crotch. Since steel rods fixed my chest and abdomen to the bench, it I felt as if my neck was going to break. I felt excruciating pain in my chest and stomach. I constantly felt as if I was going to suffocate. They also tied a rope to the rings that bound my ankles, and yanked on them, causing unbearable pain. While they did this, additional other police officers would press my head downwards yet again. The pain made me convulse violently.
The cruel torture was repeated every five minutes. My sweat, tears and blood soaked my hair and clothes. The unbearable suffering caused me to faint repeatedly. When this happened, they would douse me with cold or scalding water to revive me. The hot water burned my injured skin.
After four hours of torture on the tiger bench, I was close to death. The officers then put a metal pail over my head. Each of seven policemen lit up three cigarettes and proceeded to blow the smoke into the bucket. This went on for over an hour. I gagged and fainted multiple times. They again woke me, using cold water.
Before I had fully regained consciousness, they burned my eyelids with cigarettes butts. The pain was indescribable. I struggled and flailed. At some point they grew bored of this torture, and began instead to punch me in the head and face. Blood flowed forth from my nose and mouth. I lost two of my front teeth, and my face swelled up, turning purplish black. They also punctured my eardrums with bamboo picks; I was deaf for half a month afterwards. The policemen finally went to sleep around 2 a.m., tired from torturing me.
During the 17 days in custody that March of 2002, I was taken to this torture place three times. Each time the torture was worse than before.
During the ensuing two trips, they took me at midnight from my cell. Both times seven or eight policemen came to my cell to take me away to the torture place. They would return me to my cell once death was at hand. The police didn’t want others to see the injuries and blood that resulted from the torture, so they dressed me in a thick sweater and pants. Blood nevertheless soaked through. The police then dressed me in still thicker clothes, but again, blood still soaked through.
Many fellow Falun Gong practitioners couldn’t sleep at night, owing to the atmosphere of terror and their worries for the rest of us. Those who were on the 6-10 Office’s name list were “interrogated” daily. When it was time, we would be bound up and plastic bags would be placed over our heads. Our hands were tied behind our backs. We were put in police cars and then driven off to the mountain site. There we were tortured.
After I was tortured, my health was terribly fragile. Detention Center No. 3 was tricked into accepting me the day after my torment. I was [soon] taken to the provincial hospital and Military Hospital No. 3 for an examination. The doctor said that my body was injured all throughout. In the afternoon, I was taken along with Guo Shuaishuai to a prison hospital for further persecution.
As soon as we entered the hospital, they tied us to a bed and injected unknown drugs into us. To this very day, my legs are still numb from the drug. I have no feeling in them when they are pinched, and my feet are always cold. Guo was force-fed for more than two months, with the feeding tube being left in her throat all along between sessions. She was in unbearable pain.
Another Falun Dafa practitioner, Jiang Yong, who was arrested at the same time as us, died from similar torture in June or July. Jiang too was injected with an unknown drug. Large amounts of blood were drawn from her every day. Jiang became extremely weak and emaciated, and died from the brutal force-feeding. We watched with our own eyes the inhuman process of a person being tortured to death! For Guo, meanwhile, the force-feeding was utterly unbearable. She swallowed the rubber feeding tube [to end the pain], though it was several feet long. The resultant stomach pain left her rolling in agony in her bed. The prison doctor was afraid that Guo would serve as evidence of what was happening for the outside world. For this reason, they tormented her even more cruelly.
Every day the policemen and male convicts would gaze at our naked, stripped-down bodies, and abuse us something terrible. One of the prison doctors groped Guo’s genitals, for example, despite the fact that she was already suffering terribly. Guo swallowed a small spoon at one point, and so the doctor operated to remove it. He made an incision unnecessarily long—stretching from her chest down to her lower pelvis. After stitching up Guo’s incision they sent her home to die. Guo has yet to recover in either body or mind.
Zhao Xiaoqin, who was sent to the prison hospital along with me, fainted from the beating she was given by 6-10 Office personnel. At one point they threw her down a flight of stairs. There was a lump the size of a bowl on her head afterwards, and her left arm was broken. Afterwards she was taken to the prison hospital for further maltreatment. There, the doctor put a cast on her arm, but it was not removed or cleaned the entire length of the summer. Her arm began to fester, and maggots appeared. Zhao lost her sanity, so terrible was the abuse, and to this day cannot talk. She only laughs and cries, without rhyme or reason.
I witnessed many such inhuman acts.
At one point all of the women in custody [for their Falun Gong belief] were bound to a hard wooden board, naked. Their legs were tied spread-eagle. They were left in this position for 26 days. We humiliation we were subjected to by the police, prison doctors, and male prisoners is inconceivable!
Because I recant and give up Falun Gong, the authorities decided to send me to Detention Center No. 3. However, the detention center refused to accept me, fearing I was near death. The police did not know what to do. So they then began to punch and kick me, and hung me from a steel door in the detention center for over five hours. Afterward they took me to the prison hospital for further abuse.
At the hospital yet again, I launched what would prove to be a 50-day hunger strike. At one point, the doctor used a scalpel to open up a vein, and tied up one end of it. He stuck a needle into the other end, with the result that blood spilled onto the bed and the floor. My legs turned badly swollen, and my feet started to show evidence of gangrene. The prison doctor said that my left leg was done for. I was injected each day with more than ten bottles of an unknown fluid.
No care was provided for me during this time, and I thus had to relieve myself in bed. My body was soaked in urine and feces for weeks on end. The suffering was indescribable.
(Wang Yuhuan 10/16/2007 16:18)
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