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Falun Gong Practitioner Li Hongwei Is Tortured to Death in Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province
Written on December 9, 2002 (Clearwidom.net) Li Hongwei, male, fifty-two years old, was an employee
at The Agriculture Mechanical Company in Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province.
Before being tortured to death, he was a resident in Qianjin Street, Shuangta
District, Chaoyang City. Li Hongwei had poor health and a bad temper before practicing cultivation.
He started to practice Falun Gong in March 1996, and very quickly regained his
health and became a nice 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
practicing 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 center for ten
days because he refused to give up his belief in Falun Gong and his right to
appeal. In the detention center, the guards always beat him badly for
practicing the exercises. Later Li and over one hundred practitioners were
sent to a brainwashing class in the city's forced labor camp, which was
located in Xidayingzhi. On September 24, 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 evil force's intention, the authorities
sent anti-riot police to suppress them. The perpetrators transferred Li and
six other practitioners to the detention center, 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 forced labor camp, and sent him to the second group of the Chaoyang City
Forced Labor Camp. In January 2002, because Li refused to renounce his belief,
the perpetrators transferred him to the third group, where he was forced to
take part in slave labor so heavy it overburdened the workers. In the thirteen
or fourteen hours' labor 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 labor 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
practicing 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 got swollen from the electric
shock. In February 2000 prisoner Gao Chunhai, being instigated by the guards,
battered Li's face and head for over twenty minutes, because they had found
him practicing exercises. Li's head and face was swollen, distorted and
bruised. He had to use his fingers to help open his eyes. 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 compromised after being deceived by collaborators from the Masanjia
Forced Labor Camp, and was released later. After being released, he realized he had been deceived, and issued a solemn
statement to adhere to Falun Dafa and follow the course of the Fa
rectification. One day he was informed on as he was clarifying the facts about
Falun Dafa to the police at the forced labor camp. When the wicked police
tried to arrest him, he 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 that 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 Center, 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 members checked his corpse. 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. 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
having their families shattered, with their fortunes being lost. Posting date: 12/21/2002 |