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Mr. Xie Yunhuan Sentenced to Ten Years in Prison after Returning to China and Recently Severely Beaten in Prison (Photos)
(Clearwisdom.net) On March 16, 2008, during a session in the Education
Section of the 10th Division of Mudanjiang City Prison in
Heilongjiang Province, Leng Guohua (male) gave incorrect and untruthful
information about the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident with the
intention of defaming Falun Gong. Mr. Xie Yunhuan tried to stop him and said,
"Stop slandering Falun Gong. It is a sin to slander Falun Gong. Good deeds
are met with good returns and evil deeds are met with evil returns." An inmate reported Mr. Xie to prison officials for what he had said during
the session. At 10 a.m. on March 17, 2008, Wang Enze (male), the chief of the 10th
Division, severely beat Mr. Xie. The details of the beating are still under
investigation. Mr. Xie Yunhuan was born on May 9, 1975, and holds a bachelor's degree. His
hometown is Jidong County, Heilongjiang Province. In 1996, at the age of 21, Mr.
Xie began to practice Falun Gong. In April 1999, he went to Japan to study. The
brutal persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20, 1999, and thousands of
practitioners were arrested, sentenced to forced labor, or jailed. In February,
2000, Mr. Xie returned to China, although he had not finished his studies in
Japan. He was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison for appealing to
stop the persecution of Falun Gong. Picture taken on February 1, 2000, when Mr. Xie came back to
China from Japan. Mr. Xie detained in the prison Below are the facts concerning the persecution of Mr. Xie over the past few
years: In February 2000, when Mr. Xie was on his way home from Japan, the Jidong
County Police Department had already issued a warrant for his arrest. Mr. Xie
could not go home. He went to Beijing several times to appeal for an end to the
persecution of Falun Gong and to tell people the facts about Falun Gong and its
persecution. In March 2001, Mr. Xie suddenly disappeared. He was arrested and
put under investigation as a Japanese secret agent because he carried with him
phone numbers of his classmates in Japan. Accusing him of being a secret agent
was an excuse used by the Chinese State Security agents to frame him. It was not until July 2001 that Mr. Xie managed to get others to help in
passing along information about himself to his family. His family learned that
Beijing State Security Bureau officials had arrested him on March 12, 2001, and
that he was sent to the notorious Beijing Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. He was
physically and mentally tortured by being brainwashed, deprived of sleep for a
long period of time, and severely beaten. He also became infected with scabies. At the end of July 2001, Mr. Xie was escorted back to Heilongjiang Province
and detained in the Jixi City First Detention Center. For 42 consecutive days,
the director of the detention center deprived him of sleep and meals. He was
given only a bowl of very light soup in the morning and afternoon. When the
guards noticed him closing his eyes, he was shocked with electric batons to keep
him awake. In August 2002, right before he was to be sentenced, his interrogators
tortured him and forced a confession. He was deprived of sleep for more than ten
days. The police fabricated evidence, and at the end of August in 2002, the
Jiguan District Court in Jixi City sentenced him to ten years in prison without
the right to appeal. The whole process was conducted without witnesses or
evidence. No defense lawyers were present. His family was not allowed to see him
for this entire time. In October of 2002, Mr. Xie was sent to the Hadagang Prison in Jidong County.
According to prison rules, he did not qualify to do hard labor in the coal mine
because he was nearsighted. However, these rules did not apply to Falun Gong
practitioners. Mr. Xie was forced to do dangerous hard labor underground in the
coal mine everyday. He was whipped or beaten with a club by the guards if he did
not work fast enough. In May 2003, Mr. Xie and more than ten practitioners were transferred to
Mudanjiang City Prison. He was forced to work for more than 16 hours a day. To
collect some extra money on the side, the prison officials forced the detainees
with computer skills to play on-line computer games for long periods of time to
obtain high scores that could be traded in for cash. This drained the detainees'
mentally and they could not think. The prison officials tightly restricted the
family visits and each detainee was allowed only 30 minutes each month. The
visits were strictly monitored. If sensitive topics were brought up, the visits
were interrupted and the detainee would not be allowed to meet with family
members for the next several months. Mr. Xie's brother, Mr. Xie Yunhua, is also a Falun Gong practitioner. He is a
Japanese citizen and a resident of Shizuoka, Japan. He is calling on the
international community to pay attention to his brother's case and to help in
the efforts to rescue him. Individuals or government agencies involved: Beijing State Security Bureau Jiang Guofa, Party Secretary of Jidong County Political and Law Committee
(Jiang confiscated practitioners' savings and spent practitioners' retirement
pensions to diminish practitioners' economic resources.) Posting date: 4/7/2008 |