(Minghui.org) Mr. Gao Shilin, 61, was arrested after he was reported to the Tumen City 610 Office by a woman on April 18, 2012. He was later imprisoned and tortured, resulting in the loss of most of his teeth.
The “610 Office” is an extralegal agency created by the Communist Party leadership solely to eradicate Falun Gong. It has the power to command police and judicial systems in carrying out its task to arrest and imprison Falun Gong practitioners all over China and coerce them to renounce their belief.
While selling vegetables in Tianqiao Market, Mr. Gao handed a Shen Yun Performing Arts DVD to a woman. “Have you watched this? It's is the highest level of Chinese dance in the world. Go home and watch it.” The woman did not say anything. She took the DVD, turned around, and left.
As soon as she got home, she called the 610 Office. Thirty minutes later, five officers arrested Mr. Gao and interrogated him at the Domestic Security Division. An officer from the Xinhua Police Station wanted to record a video, but Mr. Gao refused.
Domestic Security officers towed Mr. Gao's motor tricycle, valued at 10,000 yuan, to the back of the Tumen City Police Department and destroyed it.
Assaulted During Interrogation
Officers then searched Mr. Gao's apartment and demanded to know who had made the Shen Yun DVD. Mr. Gao told him that he had downloaded it from the Internet and made the disk himself. When an officer continued to press him, Mr. Gao said, “I'm not going to tell you even if I knew. If I tell you, I know you'll persecute these people and make an entire family suffer!”
The officer slapped Mr. Gao's face over a dozen of times and left.
Sentenced to Three Years
Before Mr. Gao's trial, a man from the prosecutor office told Mr. Gao that he was his attorney. Mr. Gao said, “If you were my attorney, how could you help them interrogate me?”
The people who testified against Mr. Gao included the woman who reported him and two Domestic Security officers. All three claimed that Mr. Gao gave them DVDs.
Prosecutors claimed that they found 57 sheets of Falun Gong informational materials in Mr. Gao's home, but could not show the materials in court.
Mr. Gao was sentenced to three years in prison and he was taken to the Jilin Provincial Prison, where he was severely tortured.
