The Suffering of Falun Gong Practitioner Mr. Wang Haiqing in the Huludao Forced Labor Camp, Liaoning Province

(Clearwidsom.net) Mr. Wang Haiqing used to live in Fuxing City, Liaoning Province. When fellow practitioners visited him in August 2001, someone reported him to the police. Accusing him of being part of a so-called "illegal rally," the Chengnan Police Station arrested him and then sentenced him to one year of forced labor. In the Fuxing Forced Labor Camp, Mr. Wang refused to cooperate with the demands of his illegal detention, so the police cruelly abused him and later transferred him to the notorious Huludao Forced Labor Camp, where he and other Falun Gong practitioners suffered inhuman tortures.

Wang Haiqing was released when his term expired on September 3, 2002. However, the persecution against him was not over yet. Just two months later, on November 6, 2002, the local police broke into his house and tried to force Mr. Wang to renounce Falun Gong under the pretext of "keeping the public order" during the upcoming Chinese Communist Party's Sixteenth Conference. When Mr. Wang refused this irrational demand, the police abducted him immediately, jailed him in the Xingdi Detention Center, and then sentenced him to three more years of forced labor.

In the Huludao Forced Labor Camp, the police viciously beat and shocked Falun Gong practitioners with electric shock batons and even threatened, "If anyone refuses to accept brainwashing, we'll push him out of a fourth floor window and tell the public he committed suicide." In the face of this savage persecution, Wang Haiqing once yielded to their demands, but later he realized that this so-called "transformation" was not right and that he was deceiving himself as well as others. Undergoing these perpetual tortures, Mr. Wang's physical condition worsened, his arms and legs ceased to function, and his vision deteriorated.

To protest the persecution, Wang Haiqing went on a hunger strike in January 2004. During this time, the police did not stop their abuse. Instead, they let prisoners drag him along the ground by his legs and they beat the inmates who had taken care of him, all in order to coerce him into giving up Falun Gong.

In February 2004, Wang Haiqing became critically ill. Camp guard Peng Guozhu called Mr. Wang's family to get them to pay 5,000 Yuan (1) for sending him out for medical treatment, claiming that he could be released on medical parole if they paid the money. Later, Peng Guozhu lowered the price to 2,000 Yuan, because the family could not afford the original amount.

On February 25, 2004, when Mr. Wang's family members came to the labor camp, they were shocked to see his condition: a once strong and healthy young man was now so thin and weak that he had to be helped by two inmates just to walk, and he was unable to hold his chopsticks to eat. At his family members' forceful insistence, the labor camp authorities let him be examined at the City Hospital. His vision was severely compromised, and the computer showed a serious problem with his optic nerve. The doctors told them he needed immediate medical treatment, or he would lose his vision entirely. Due to limited resources and time, the hospital did not run any other physical tests. On their way back to the labor camp, the camp medical doctor Gao took the examination report away from them under false pretences. Only when Mr. Wang's family members strongly protested did the camp later give them a copy. Mr. Wang's family asked the camp's political commissar, Wang Shuxiang, to release Mr. Wang on medical parole because of his poor health and on humanitarian ground. However, Wang Shuxiang refused, promising that the labor camp would see to it that Wang Haiqing was examined further.

Several days later, when Mr. Wang Haiqing's family called the camp for the outcome of the "further testing," a policeman who refused to give his name claimed that Mr. Wang had recovered and was playing chess. A follow-up response from the political commissar's office claimed that Wang Haiqing's condition was not serious enough for medical parole. Yet how could a patient who had almost lost the use of his eyes (as verified by hospital tests) and his limbs recover his health in a forced labor camp within several days?

Mr. Wang Haiqing is still protesting the forced labor camp's brutal persecution against him.

(1) Yuan is the unit of currency in China, where the average monthly salary of an urban worker is 500 Yuan.

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