Guards in Hulan Prison (Heilongjiang Province) Torture Falun Gong Practitioners in Confinement Room

By a practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) Hulan Prison in Heilongjiang Province is one of the major prisons persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. Chen Weiqiang, a guard of the "Transformation" Section, has spared no effort in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners since taking this job in 2002. He has given orders to all sections of the prison to set up quotas for "transforming" Falun Gong practitioners. In this period, more than one hundred Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to persecution. In April 2005, practitioner Liu Yu was tortured to death.

The means used to torture Falun Gong practitioners are extremely brutal. Among several methods used are confinement and wearing instruments of torture. Practitioners Qian Houming, Li Guanghou, Gu Yunpeng, Liu Guoliang, Zhang Ce, Zhao Hongwu, Zhang Zhiguo, Zhang Jian, and Sun Tinghui were detained in the confinement room because they persisted in their belief and protested the persecution.

The confinement room in Hulan Prison is only about four or five square meters in size, with no windows, and an iron door. There is no bed, and only a simple toilet. On the wall are video and audio monitors. A dim light is on all year long. The floor is the bed. On the floor are five iron rings used to immobilize the detainees. It is very cold inside the confinement room. Even if wearing a padded jacket and pants, a normal person would not be able to go longer than a couple of days before suffering from frequent urination.

The detained practitioners in the confinement room are given only two small steamed buns per day, without drinking water. They have to drink the water from the toilet. They have nothing to use for rinsing and washing. At night they are given a very thin quilt for two or three people. That is only enough for matting, but not for covering. They often wake up in the night due to the freezing cold, or they cannot even sleep at all for the whole night. When detained in the confinement room over a long period of time, it is very easy for them to contract all sorts of diseases. When released from there, all of the practitioners were extremely emaciated. It would take them about six months to recover their strength. The detention period in the confinement room for practitioners varies from fifteen days to sixty-eight days.

"Locking to the earth with rings" is a means of torture in which the detainee's hands and feet are handcuffed together first, then a very short steel cable ties the handcuffs and fetter together to a iron ring. In this way the detainee can only stand or lie down while bending. The detainees can not use the restroom by themselves. The police have frequently tortured Falun Gong practitioners with this torture. Normally practitioners are locked up for fifteen days or even longer. Practitioner Zhao Hongwu, Zhang Zhiguo, Zhang Jian, and Sun Tinghui have been tortured with these means.

The "hanging rings" is a more brutal torture means, in which the detainee's hands and feet are handcuffed on four separate rings. The detainee cannot move and needs help with eating, drinking, or using the restroom. Practitioner Zhao Hongwu was tortured like this for seven days. The urine caused his upper legs to become seriously ulcerated. Even under such conditions, the guards continued torturing him with "locking to the earth with rings" for another eighteen days.

The fifteen wardens of Hulan Prison, the director, the associate director, the heads of each section, instructors, and guards are still brutally persecuting Falun Gong practitioners to this day.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/3/27/151632.html

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