(Minghui.org) While detained for his faith in Falun Gong, Mr. Li Hongwei was subjected to brutal torture and force-fed highly salted milk for 29 days in a row. His health was severely damaged as a result. After struggling with severe diabetes and other health issues for three and a half years following his medical parole, Mr Li passed away on June 8, 2021. He was 58.
Mr. Li Hongwei before the persecution
Photo of Mr. Li Hongwei taken on December 30, 2017, three days after he was released on medical parole
Mr. Li, a former Real Estate Bureau employee in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, took up Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline, in 1998 and soon saw his severe diabetes and fatty liver cured without medical intervention. He never wavered in his faith after the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution of Falun Gong a year later. As a result, he was given one year of forced labor following his arrest in 2006 and sentenced to four and a half years in prison following his arrest in 2016.
Tortured by Police
Mr. Li was arrested in October 2006 by officers of the Shandongmiao Police Station and given one year at the Shenxin Forced Labor Camp. During the term, he was also taken to the Zhangshi Brainwashing Center and ordered to renounce Falun Gong.
Mr. Li was arrested again on June 26, 2016 while he was putting up information about Falun Gong. Officers of Wusan Police Station stripped him to his underwear and put him in a small metal cage at round 6 p.m.
Zhou Xu, the deputy head of the police station, bound Mr. Li’s ankles to a metal chair, taped his torso to the back of the chair and covered his nose and mouth with tape that made it difficult for him to breathe. He was not allowed to use the restroom from 8:00 p.m. to after 11:00 p.m.
Torture illustration: locked in a metal cage
On the following morning, officers handcuffed and shackled Mr. Li, still only in his underwear, and pushed him inside a police van. One officer kicked Mr. Li out when he found out it was the wrong van. Mr. Li fell to the ground head-first, causing a lump. His shackled arms and legs were scratched.
Officers transferred Mr. Li to another van and took him to his residential community. As he refused to tell them his address, they took him through one building after another.
When they finished checking all the other buildings and reached the last one, the team commander ordered four officers to stay inside the van and watch Mr. Li while he went upstairs to figure out which apartment belonged to him. He took his home key and tried one door after another. When he finally located the right one, he called for an officer to search every room.
The officers held Mr. Li down, taped his mouth, and called over several men to beat and kick him. They stuffed mattress filling in his mouth. One whose nickname was “Tiger” beat him particularly hard until he became delirious. He was bleeding and stained the bed sheet.
Five officers and others removed his underwear, taped his legs and knees, forced him into a crouching position, and tied him up.
Torture re-enactment: folded and tied up
Officers used a bed sheet to wrap Mr. Li up, put him on a wooden board, and dragged him inside the elevator. When they reached the first floor, they pulled him out to the parking area, opened a van door, and threw him inside.
Upon arrival at the police station, they threw him to the ground, as if unloading a shipment. They dragged him inside the office. His skin was severely scratched as a result.
Mr. Li refused to respond when interrogated. The officers turned on an electric fan pointed directly at him.
When he shouted, “Falun Dafa is good! Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good!” officers taped his mouth and nostrils shut and tied his body in a folded position. Mr. Li almost suffocated, and his face turned black and blue. One officer noticed and poked open a small crevice so he could breathe.
The officers went to sleep and left an assistant officer to monitor Mr. Li. He was not unwrapped until he asked to use the restroom. He could not walk and had to crawl to the restroom slowly.
At around 2:00 a.m., Mr. Li was taken to the Hunnan Detention Center.
Force-fed with Salt for a Month
Three days after Mr. Li was taken to Hunnan Detention Center, he was tortured and injured so badly that the staff had to take him to the military-run General Hospital of Shenyang, where he was given intravenous injections. After he returned to the detention center, inmates without medical training continued to give him IVs while he was tied to a chair.
One day, when the IV drip of a 500-ml bag started at around 9 a.m. but still hadn’t finished by 7 p.m. – the time for the inmates to return to their cells, an inmate named Ji Peng squeezed the bag, trying to inject the liquid into his body quicker.
Mr. Li went on a hunger strike in protest. The staff took him to Hunnan Central Hospital and force-fed him. Guard Yu Shenqiao sat on his shackles and slapped him in the face. Wang Shiqiang, the deputy captain, shouted at him, “Are you not eating? Now we’re adding salt to the milk to see if you’ll drink it or not.”
On the way back to the detention center, Mr. Li vomited the milk and passed out. The guards all verbally abused him.
Back in the detention center, Mr. Li was dumped on the floor as Captain Zhao Zhisheng grabbed him by his hair and stomped on his toes. Zhao shouted at him again, “Are you eating or not?” He pulled out handfuls of Mr. Li’s hair.
One time Mr. Li’s family witnessed one of the force-feeding sessions when they visited him in the hospital. From then on, the force-feeding was done in the detention center and became more brutal. The detainees held him down before a tube was inserted through his nose into his stomach. The inside of his nose and esophagus were badly irritated. He would leave a trail of blood stains as he was dragged back to his cell. He sometimes vomited blood all over in his cell afterward.
Every time Mr. Li was force-fed, deputy captain Wang Shiqiang was present, either kicking him or verbally abusing him.
The repeated force-feeding caused Mr. Li’s nose and throat to be severely swollen, and it became impossible to force-feed him. The guards had to take him back to the hospital, where he was cuffed and shackled. The captain continued to stomp on his face and chest despite his condition. They threatened to beat him to death if he shouted “Falun Dafa is good” to protest.
During Mr. Li’s 53 days of hunger strike, there was a consecutive 29 days when he was force-fed with highly salted milk. The salt caused severe constipation. His abdomen was hard to the touch and painful. He had to dig out the stool by hand, and his anus bled as a result.
Tortured in Prison
Two weeks after Mr. Li was tried by the Hunnan District Court on August 3, 2016, the judge sentenced him to four and a half years with a 10,000-yuan fine.
Mr. Li was taken to Benxi Prison on October 10, 2016. He was assigned to the eighth ward and ordered to do unpaid labor from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
While he was sitting on his bed on October 25, an inmate named Zheng Zhong told him to get out of the bed and slapped him in the face. “I’m beating you on behalf of the government. This is the right the government gave me,” Zheng said to him.
Due to fatigue, Mr. Li couldn’t keep his eyes open while he was working on November 20, 2016. When guard Chen Geng saw him, he came over and slapped him in the face. Mr. Li became confused. He turned around and saw Chen standing behind him. Chen laughed at him and said he wasn’t allowed to sleep while working. This incident caused Mr. Li psychological stress, and he often felt the guards were about to beat him.
When guard Chen was on duty on the evening of November 24, he ordered Mr. Li to recite the prison rules. Mr. Li refused to comply, and Chen shocked him with electric batons until he couldn’t stand up anymore.
After a brief moment of recovery, Mr. Li staggered back to his cell and blacked out after crawling onto his bed. Since then, his health began to decline, and his diabetes that had been cured by practicing Falun Gong relapsed. He often felt dizzy and suffered from blurred vision and chest tightness.
Guard Chen slapped Mr. Li in the face and stomped on his thighs again on December 28. Mr. Li fell to the ground. After he went to the workshop, he suffered from intense dizziness and shortness of breath. He lay on the machine and couldn’t move. The next day, his eyes began to bleed. His chest tightness worsened.
As Mr. Li insisted that he wouldn’t recite the prison rules, guard Chen ordered him to go to a warehouse without surveillance cameras on the afternoon of March 23, 2017. Two more guards, Jiang Tiemin and Hui Wang, as well as inmate Tang Yichang, were present.
Feeling light-headed, Mr. Li couldn’t stand and sat down. Chen stood behind him and scraped his right heel against Mr. Li’s left shoulder. The tip of his shoe rubbed against his temple. Then Chen scraped against his abdomen, although it was already difficult for Mr. Li to remain seated.
Chen repeated the scraping against Mr. Li’s left shoulder, with his shoe rubbing against his temple as well. After he finished, he went in front of Mr. Li and said to him, “I have nothing in common with you to talk about.”
Mr. Li couldn’t stand up or talk after the torture. After a long time, he struggled to stand up and left.
With his vision continued to decline, he couldn’t finish the work quota in time and was slapped in the face by guard Ning Tianliang on May 8, 2017.
Seeing that he was truly dizzy-headed, the guards took him to the hospital on the same day and found that his blood pressure was dangerously high. For the next two days, they took him back to the hospital and measured his blood glucose. The results showed that his fasting blood glucose level was up to 20 mmol/L, while the normal range is 3.9 ~ 7.1 mmol/L.
When his family visited him on September 21, 2017, he was carried out by two people. His right pant leg was rolled up, and there was a large pustule on his right calf that was purple and black. His eyesight was so poor that even with his face against the glass partition, he was unable to clearly see his family member facing him on the other side.
The severe diabetes caused him to remain heavily dizzy, emaciated and weak. He developed paralysis on the right side of his body and constantly felt thirsty.
On December 27, 2017, Mr. Li was released on medical parole. His health continued to deteriorate, and he passed away three and a half years later on June 8, 2021.
Related reports:
Refusing to Give up Belief, Man Force-fed with Salt for a Month in Detention
Shenyang Practitioner Arrested, Tortured by Police
Mr. Li Hongwei's Health Failing Due to Torture in Benxi Prison
Mr. Li Hongwei Jailed and Tortured for His Faith
Liaoning Man Sentenced to 4.5 Years for His Faith
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