Tortured on Tiananmen

Zhao Shujing, a 51-year-old retired woman in Shijingshan district, Beijing, is a Falun Gong practitioner. At around 2 pm on November 18, 2000, she went to Tiananmen Square by herself to clarify the truth about Falun Gong to the people. A group of plainclothes policemen caught her and took turns beating and kicking her, causing her to lose consciousness in Tiananmen Square.

This photo shows the harm done to a Falun Dafa practitioner who was beaten by police in Tiananmen Square on December 26, 2000. The practitioner’s right arm was beaten so badly that it was temporarily paralyzed. Another practitioner, a 70-year-old lady, was hit badly on the head and the face by the police in another incident that day.

She was already in the police van when she regained consciousness. Blood ran out from her nose and mouth. There were bloodstains on her entire body, her clothes and on the floor of the police van. The policemen searched her body while she was unconscious and they stole 10 yuan (about US$1.20) from her.
When Zhao Shujing was dragged to the Tiananmen police station, even the police officers there could not bear to look at her miserable state and they asked the policeman from her neighborhood to take her. However, this neighborhood policeman refused to take her back because of the severe condition of her injuries. By 8 or 9 pm, the Tiananmen police station asked Zhao Shujing to go home and said: “You just came to Tiananmen Square to practice exercises. You are not breaching any law. You can go home now.”...

Torture In Tiananmen Police Station

A 52 year-old male practitioner from Hebei Province (name unknown) went to Tiananmen square on Jan 18, 2001. He wrote with a piece of chalk on a carton: “Falun Dafa is Good,” and successfully displayed it in Tiananmen Square. Following this action, seven to eight policemen surrounded him and knocked him to the ground, beating him up. After being beaten he was thrown into a van. While in the van a policeman beat him on his body with a wooden club. After the club was broken, the police use serrated edge of the club to hit the mouth of the practitioner, badly injuring him. The practitioner hasn’t been able to close his mouth until now.

He was taken to the Tiananmen Police Station. Because he refused to reveal his name and address, he was beaten for 3 consecutive days without any water or food. During the beatings, the police hit his back and lower body. The police also let him lie on the ground and pounded him with another practitioner’s body. Up till now, he feels that his chest is blocked and sunken from the beatings. Also, a policeman stepped on his hand and ground it against the floor, which left a two-inch-length bruise; he is still unable to lift his swollen hand (see the picture to the left). Finally towards the end of his torture he received a blow to his head and lost consciousness. He regained consciousness in a first aid center in Beijing.

On Jan 22, 2001, some policemen came from his hometown to bring him back. He was so weak that he was barely able to breathe. He was too frail to even accept water. Afraid of being blamed, local police asked his family to carry him home and also requested nearly 2000 Yuan (Chinese dollars, about four month salary of an averaged worker in cities of China) to release him. These pictures were taken on Jan 25, the third day after his release.

Xiang, Jinying , from Haiyan County of Zhejiang province was arrested on Tiananmen Square on October 26, 1999, and sent to the Tiananmen Police Station. She was tortured there and her left arm was broken.

“The police dragged a dozen of us out and handcuffed us. (one hand goes back from the shoulder, the other hand goes back from the waist, which is an extremely suffering way of being handcuffed) The police also made us kneel on the ground and bumped our heads onto the wall. A policeman even dragged my arm with force regardless that I was handcuffed. Suddenly, my arm broke with a crack. I broke out in a cold sweat because of the pain. I endured the pain silently. About 15 minutes later, the police found something wrong with me. He thus took my handcuffs off. He even swayed my arm to see whether I was lying to him or not. He thought it might be dislocated. He had tried to re-locate it for several times but failed eventually.”

An unnamed practitioner was arrested in Tiananmen Square on October 17, 2000, and was taken to the Tiananmen Police Station. The police there shocked her with electric batons and kicked her for several hours. As a result, wounds covered her whole body. After the beating, several policemen held her down and threatened to inject her with something that they called a “vaccination.” She tried her best to resist, and they finally gave up. One police, however, still forcefully put drops of an extremely pungent liquid into her nostrils. Soon afterwards it took effect - she felt dizzy and unbalanced, it was very difficult for her to breathe.

Late in October of 2000, several groups of practitioners went to Tianenmen and displayed banners or practiced the exercises. In Tiananmen Square, plainclothes policemen and hired thugs were used to grab banners from practitioners' hands and then force them into police cars.... In custody, the groups were split up again, one practitioner to a room. The guards would close the door and draw the curtain so that no one could see inside. Then they would begin to interrogate and beat the practitioner. The police would viciously beat with batons and electric rods any practitioner who refused to give his or her name or address.

Some policemen even used a special baton designed to injure specific places on the body and inflict internal injury. And many practitioners did incur internal injuries. Some were totally bruised and swollen, others had fractured hands or torn foot muscles. The police yelled viciously, "Want to come to Beijing again? Want to practice anymore?"

In everyone's presence, they cuffed one practitioner's thumbs to his toes, then hung him up wearing one thin layer of clothing. Next, they poured cold water all over his body and turned the air conditioner on full blast. When the practitioner was almost frozen stiff, they turned on the heater to blow hot air on him. In this way, back and forth, they tortured him repeatedly.

Worse still: six policemen stepped on a young unmarried woman's abdomen when she refused to give her name and address. They stepped so hard that it made her bleed from her vagina and her face turned pale. Then they threatened, "If you continue to keep silent, we'll strip you and rape you!"

The Death of Chu Congrui

Chu Congrui was a 19-year-old girl from Tiande Township, Shulan, Jilin Province. She went to Beijing to appeal on December 1, 2000 and was arrested in Tiananmen Square. She died in Haidian District Detention Center on around December 13, 2000. Her face and lips were severely swollen. Both ears were plugged with blood soaked cotton swabs. Her nose was collapsed, indicating that she had been violently beaten before she died. Her body was cremated in Changping County of Beijing on December 18. Another female practitioner who went to Beijing to appeal together with Chu Congrui, was also persecuted to death. She died from being pushed from the 8th floor of a building by a police from the Haidian District Police Bureau.

Beaten, Scalded, Frozen, Shocked....

On the morning of January 18, 2001, we went to Tiananmen Square to appeal for Falun Dafa. The temperature was colder than -14C. [About 6.80 F] and it was snowing. We unfurled a nine-meter banner, which read “Falun Dafa is the Righteous Fa,” and held it up for quite a long time. We also spoke over a loud speaker. The plainclothes police dragged us into a police vehicle, beat each of us for about 20 minutes, and then took us to Xuanwu District detention center. The scene was witnessed by many onlookers.

We were assigned to different rooms to be interrogated. I was sent to room No 4. To force me to give my name and address, the police applied two high-voltage electric batons to sensitive parts of my body. My body was covered with bruises and blisters. They then poured cold water and turned the electric fan on me. They whipped me with thorny bamboo sticks, thrust the sticks up my anus, and scalded me with boiling water. They also insulted my Teacher, Li Hongzhi, with foul language. We went on a hunger strike in protest.

During my third day in the detention center, I was transferred to the cell for prisoners in death row. This place was specifically used to persecute Dafa practitioners. Upon entering the cell, several inmates immediately pushed me to the ground; some held my head while others held my arms and legs so that I could not move. The head of the cell, who was wearing leather boots, kicked my legs violently. They bragged about how they had tortured all the other Dafa practitioners. They tortured me for nearly an hour. My two legs were black and blue. Several people had to lift me onto a board. Around 12:00 o’clock midnight, they kicked me for another hour. The next morning I was subjected to another round of kicking.

At noon, the guard (badge number 028955) ordered the head of the cell to feed me. I immediately asked the guard to stop the persecution. Several people then carried me to his office. I asked to be moved to another cell. The guard said, “You have to eat, if you don’t eat, the clinic will force-feed you.” I was sent back to the original cell. In the afternoon, I was carried to the clinic; they handcuffed my hands in the back to prevent me resisting. In the ensuing ten days, my two hands were handcuffed behind my back the whole time. I felt severe pain in my legs and I had to sleep on the cold cement floor. During the day, several people stayed near me to keep me sitting upright. They measured my blood pressure twice a day, the first measurement showed my blood pressure dropped to a dangerously low level. The second measurement was made by a female doctor. However, no matter how hard she clutched at my pulse, she could not get a blood pressure reading. They stopped measuring because they were afraid that others might see the appalling reading. At the beginning, two people in the cell lifted me up and down from the bed; later, just one person was left to drag me up and down from the bed.

On the thirteenth day, I discovered that my ten toes had turned black. The doctors in the clinic sent me to the hospital during the night. There, they forcibly injected me with a yellow-colored solution. The next day, the primary doctor told me that my toes had to be amputated. The guards in the detention center were afraid to take the blame; they brought me a pair of crutches and large sized slippers (because my feet were very swollen). Then they left me alone on the train to Baoding City, Hebei Province. Before they left, they threatened me not to tell others what they had done. ....

At the end of July 2000, many practitioners went to Tiananmen Square to appeal for Falun Gong. Since many practitioners did not reveal their own names in order to not be escorted back to their hometowns, detention centers in Beijing could not hold so many practitioners, and some were sent to nearby cities or counties. Practitioners who were sent to Yuanshi county of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province were tortured. The practitioners were pushed to the ground with iron sticks. Each two policemen from the criminal police team stepped on an iron stick and rolled on a practitioner’s arms, hands, and legs. It is extremely painful. One female practitioner was hung up for two days and one night.

In Jingxing County, all the male policemen in the criminal police team forced female practitioners to take off their pants. These policemen then beat and electric shocked them. Female practitioners suffered inhuman torture and humiliation. Unable to stand such maltreatment, the female practitioners, in tears, revealed their addresses. Practitioner Wu Xiaoping from Harbin, Heilongjiang Province was electric shocked by male policemen on her mouth and vagina for a whole night. She was then sent back to her hometown, and no further information about her has been heard since then. Practitioner Li Naimei is from Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. Half of her breasts had been removed as a result of the breast cancer before. But the policemen severely electric shocked the scarred wound on her breasts, her private parts and the inner side of her legs. These parts of her body turned purple and black from the bruising caused by the electric shock. ....