(Minghui.org) Mr. Li Zhongyuan has been illegally detained repeatedly because he refuses to give up his spiritual beliefs. He was given three years of forced labor in 2002 and sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2007. During his years of incarceration, he was brutally tortured and forced to do hard labor.
Mr. Li submitted his legal complaint against Jiang Zemin on July 6, 2015, suing him for launching the illegal persecution of Falun Gong.
The following is Mr. Li’s account:
Since the onset of the persecution in July 1999, I have been persecuted by the 610 Office, as well as the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, Public Security Department, Domestic Security Bureau, local police station, my work unit, and the neighborhood association.
On October 11, 2000, more than ten Falun Gong practitioners in Yinchuan District, including myself, were arrested, and our homes were ransacked. I was detained for 30 days for criminal offenses at first, and then another 15 days for security offenses. The guards pressured me and forced me to do manual labor. I was forced to work till after nine in the evenings, but was given meager meals. I was forbidden from doing the Falun Gong exercises. I soon fell ill, and often coughed severely.
Over two dozen people, including an undercover policeman and the neighborhood association head, came to my apartment on June 9, 2002. I was not home at the time, but they waited outside the apartment building.
They forced their way into my apartment early the next morning as my daughter was just about to step out. These people ransacked my apartment after arresting me, and then detained me in the Domestic Security Office. Their captain Sun Lizhong interrogated and tortured me to try to extract a confession.
They cuffed my hands and then hung me from the wall for fourteen hours. Sun claimed that with support from his superiors, he was not afraid of anything, and added that anybody that assists in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners would be given privileges.
“I can give you a three-year forced labor term myself,” Sun bragged. A few days later, I was indeed given a three-year forced labor term.
I was forced to dig ditches when I was held in the Tieling City Forced Labor Camp. If I failed to finish the daily quota, guards hit me with wooden planks. My legs became swollen, and I was wracked with back pain. More than 20 practitioners were locked together in a 3.5 x 7 meter cell, and the window was shut.
There was one plastic bucket for us to use as the toilet, and the air in the cell was congested and filthy. We were made to sit on small stools for very long periods of time, and we were given steamed buns that had gone bad. The guards forced us to watch videos that slandered Falun Gong.
The long term physical torture and malnutrition devastated my health. One year later, I was bailed out for medical treatment. After practicing the Falun Gong exercises again, I was able to recover.
However, the local policemen and neighborhood association soon came to my home to harass me and my family. My residence was closely watched, and people from the neighborhood association and police followed me everywhere I went.
I was arrested on August 13, 2007, for telling people about Falun Gong and the persecution. The new Domestic Security captain Xie Xiangjun and policeman Yang Dongsheng ransacked my home.
I was then illegally detained in the Domestic Security Team. The policemen there used different kinds of torture, including tying me to the Tiger Bench for fourteen hours to try to force me to denounce Falun Gong. Xie Xiangjun shocked me with electric batons, put shackles on me, and then forced me to walk. The Tieling District Procuratorate eventually gave me a three-year sentence.
I was incarcerated in the Shenyang City Prison for two months, where I was forced to sit on a small stool for fourteen hours at a time. On January 3, 2008, I was incarcerated in Benxi Prison in Liaoning Province, where I was brutally tortured. I was forced to sit on a small stool for seventeen hours and hit with rubber hoses. The guards stripped off my clothes in the winter and then poured ice water on me, and then kept the window open to freeze me. In addition, I was forced to do hard labor.
Background
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners in the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.
