The persecution of Falun Gong practitioners extends to a young construction worker in the remote Xinjiang region.

Mr. Zhong Kai Dies in Beiye Prison in Xinjiang

Mr. Zhong Kai, 32, lived in Aksu City, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. He was a student at Xinjiang Petroleum Institute. On December 26, 2008, he died while in custody at Beiye Prison located in Shihezi City. He was an orphan and his older sister was imprisoned for practicing Falun Gong. Since she was released, she has been reported missing.

As an orphan, Mr. Zhong used to live in the Bachu County Construction Corp School dorm. After the persecution began in July 1999, he was expelled from the college for refusing to give up his belief in Falun Gong. Later he was sentenced to two years and nine months in the Wujiaqu Forced Labor Camp.

The local Construction Corp personnel went to the labor camp to pick him up after his term ended in April 2003. It was at that time that the school told him that they would no longer accept him as a resident in the dorm. The 610 Office ordered the local Water Power Company to monitor him 24 hours a day. In addition, they confiscated his personal ID, completely cut off his source of income, and threatened his friends, telling them not to contact him.

In June 2003, Mr. Zhong started working as a backhoe operator at a construction site. Two months later he was forced to attend a brainwashing session, where guards tortured him with extended periods of sleep deprivation. One morning he managed to escape the brainwashing center. When he told the construction site administrators how he was tortured, they let him continue working at the site, but only paid him a few hundred yuan at the end of the year.

In February 2004, the Water Power Company and the 610 Office forced Mr. Zhong to go to the brainwashing sessions again. After the guards tortured him with extended periods of sleep deprivation, he tried to escape again. This time officers from the local police station and 610 Office chased him, causing him to fall down the side of a mountain, fracturing his feet.

The 610 Office then locked him up in a motel, preventing him from seeking medical treatment for his feet. This caused his feet to be permanently deformed even after undergoing an operation. The Construction Corp administrators cursed him many times during this period.

In June 2005, the Construction Corp was preparing to a hold brainwashing session again, but failed. The general manager of the company refused to pay Mr. Zhong, saying that the 610 Office ordered him to withhold his salary. Mr. Zhong then quit working at the construction site. He was arrested in November 2005 while living at his apartment. Later he was sentenced to four years in a prison located in the Southern Xinjiang Third Farm Corp.

There were only a few practitioners in that prison when Mr. Zhong arrived. Later, in 2007, all of the practitioners there were transferred to the Beiye Prison in the Eighth Farm Corp in Shihezi City. Practitioners from eighteen farm corps are locked up there. In 2004, 2007, and 2008, all of the practitioners detained in the prison were tortured. Mr. Zhong was tortured with sleep derivation and the guards only allowed him to have a half of a bun per meal. He was starved for long periods of time.

In November 2008, the practitioners held at the Beiye Prison experienced another round of brutality. Guards forced Mr. Zhong to go from ward to ward where he was humiliated, criticized, and beaten by the prisoners. On the morning of December 26, 2008, Mr. Zhong died after falling from the top of the ward building. The ward never issued a statement explaining the cause of his death. Instead, they declared his death a suicide and coached the prisoners on how to back up their story. The case is still under investigation.