Attorney and Falun Gong Practitioner Mr. Liu Zhongshan from Guangxi Province Sentenced to Seven Years and Brutally Tortured

(Clearwisdom.net) Practitioner Mr. Liu Zhongshan from Nanning City, Guangxi Province has been illegally sentenced to seven years at the Litang Prison in Binyang County, Nanning City, Guangxi Province, where he has been tortured. On March 10, 2009, he was beaten by inmates Lu Zengwen, Lao Houyan, Deng Shiyan and others. On December 31, 2008, he was brutally beaten by a group of guards.

Mr. Liu Zhongshan was born in 1972 and is from Jingzhou City, Hubei Province. He was an attorney working for the Dingfeng Law Firm in Nanning City, Guangxi Province.

On the evening of March 8, 2006, when Mr. Liu was distributing Falun Dafa truth-clarifying materials to people, he was arrested by police from the Criminal Investigation Team of the Nanning City Public Security Bureau. It was during the period of time that the Chinese People's National Conference and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were being held. He was taken to the Nanning City No. 1 Detention Center, where he suffered brutal torture.

On August 23, 2006, the Xixiangtang District Court in Nanning City held the first trial for Mr. Liu and sentenced him to seven years of imprisonment for "using an evil organization to undermine the law." In January 2007, the court held a second trial for Mr. Liu and upheld the original sentence. Mr. Liu Zhongshan refused to sign the sentencing statement.

On March 13, 2007, when Mr. Liu's family went to the detention center to visit him, the guards refused to let them in. On March 14, Mr. Liu was transferred to the Litang Prison, Binyang County and held at the No. 7 Prison Ward.

On December 31, 2008, when Mr. liu was threatened by inmates, he went to see the guards, but ward counselor Wei (last name) hit him with a chair and then directed a group of guards to beat him. He was beaten so badly that blood was all over the ground and his clothes.

After the beating, the guards feared that their crimes would be exposed, so they told the inmates to destroy the clothes and clean the bloody floor. Wei shouted publicly, "Even if Liu Zhongshan gets out of here, I will still find someone to beat him." A young guard who had just started working there also shouted in front of the door of No. 2 cell (a confinement cell), "As long as he wasn't beaten to death, there is no crime. As long as no one gets killed, no one is breaking the law." He also threatened, "It doesn't matter where you go to sue me, it won't work. Even the judicial hall is unable to control me."

On January 1, 2009, Xu (last name), the ward instructor, forced Mr. Liu to kneel down and ordered the inmates to beat him.

On January 8, 2009, the guards told inmate Liang Yezhi and others to brutally beat Mr. Liu many times and locked him in a solitary cell for over one hundred days. Because inmate Liang Yezhi beat Mr. Liu, the guards submitted a report to have his sentence reduced. During Mr. Liu's confinement, inmates restricted his use of the bathroom, talking, and even strictly prohibited his use of writing materials.

Inmates Zhong Jian, Lao Houyan, Deng Shiyan, Lu Zengwen, Liang Guanghong and others further persecuted Mr. Liu. They only allowed him to use the bathroom twice per day, once in the morning and once in the evening. When Mr. Liu asked to see the head of the prison, they simply ignored him. Lao Houyan also publicly pledged, "Even if my term was extended and I had to stay in prison for the rest of my life, I would still break Liu Zhongshan's head."

At 8:00 a.m. on March 10, 2009, Lu Zengwen lied to other inmates by saying that Mr. Liu attempted to escape from his cell. He told inmates Lao Houyan, Deng Shiyan, Liang Guanghong, and Zhong Jian to beat him. Lao Houyan ordered two inmates who were on duty in No. 2 cell to unlock the door. Then he rushed into the cell, pushed Mr. Liu to the ground and brutally beat him.

Zhong Jian helped Lao Houyan beat Mr. Liu. Deng Shiyan hit Mr. Liu's ankles, insteps, knees and legs with a chair. Other inmates stomped on Mr. Liu's body. When he shouted for help from the two inmates who were on duty in the cell, Lu Zengwen stopped them and told other inmates to join in the beating. The two on-duty inmates could no longer stand to witness the torture and tried to persuade them to stop, but they were ignored. When a guard came, he didn't try to stop the inmates' violence, but instead he stood and watched. When Mr. Liu called for help from the guard, he asked what Mr. Liu wanted from him. When it was over, Mr. Liu's feet, legs, nose, chest and ribs were badly injured. On May 6, two months after the beating, when a family member visited him, his injuries were still visible.

Mr. Liu went on a hunger strike for two days. On March 12, when the assistant warden came to the No. 7 Prison Ward to check on the situation there, Lao Houyan closed the No. 2 cell's window in an attempt to prevent Mr. Liu from reporting their crimes. He still reported to the assistant warden about the crimes committed by the guards and the inmates for over two months. The situation got slightly better afterwards.

Although Mr. Liu requested many times to appeal to the Procuratorate for his rights that the guards and the inmates had violated, he was always turned down. Around April 24, Mr. Liu held a hunger strike for five days. On the evening of April 29, the guards feared he would die, so they informed Supervision Section Chief Lu Jianguang from the Binyang County Procuratorate about Mr. Liu's hunger strike. Lu Jianguang went to the prison to investigate Mr. Liu's case that night.

Lu Jianguang, Supervision Section chief from the Binyang County Procuratorate, Guangxi Province: 86-13257757318 (Cell)

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/6/5/202267.html

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