(Clearwisdom.net) Since July 20, 1999, some police officers from the police station and detention center in Zhangbei County, Hebei Province broke into Falun Gong practitioners' homes without showing a search warrant. Without legal procedures, they confiscated family property, searched bodies and arrested practitioners. They sentenced practitioners and took them to forced labor camps without going through any legal procedures. At night, they not only interrogated practitioners, but they also hired some jobless social hoodlums to brutally beat them. Some policemen threatened the female practitioners who refused to write a statement renouncing Falun Gong, saying, "We will strip off your clothes and lock you up with male inmates if you don't give up practicing."
The detention center also deprived the practitioners' relatives the right to visit. The bureau chief said, "None of the practitioners are allowed to be visited by their families." Changbei County is piercingly cold in the winter. However, the leaders of the detention center did not allow practitioners to use the cotton-filled quilts, leather bed covers, or blankets their families sent to them.
The practitioners clarified the truth about Falun Gong to the center's chief Fan Yanbin. However, he not only ignored the truth, but also whipped the practitioners with a leather belt. Recently he suffered from retribution. Half of his body is in pain, he has lost mobility, and his hand shakes when holding a pen. Only after this, did he begin to show some restraint.
Li Dianxian, the secretary of the Political and Judiciary Committee in Zhangbei, was "complimented" and "rewarded" by the upper authorities because he persecuted Falun Gong practitioners.
In November of 2000, Ms. Wang Yuemei was sentenced to one year of forced labor because she wrote a letter to the county leaders to clarify to them the truth about Falun Gong. To this day, even though her imprisonment term has been illegally extended for more than three months, she is still imprisoned in the detention center of Zhangbei because she refused to write the statement to give up practicing. Her child was forced to quit school due to lack of money.
On June 11, 2001, five policemen arrested practitioner Ms. Zhang Fengying at home without cause. They searched her body, ransacked her home, and forced her to acknowledge that it was her who asked other practitioners to hang up banners. Although she suffered torture several times, she did not say a word. After being illegally imprisoned for half a year, she remained steadfast in her belief in Dafa. In December 2001, the police did not inform her family, nor did they go through any legal procedures, but secretly escorted Zhang Fengying to Goayang Detention Center in Bao Ding City.
Dafa practitioner Ms. Peng Cuiling was arrested because she hung up Dafa banners. After being tortured four times, she went on a hunger strike for one week to request to be released with a verdict of not guilty. The police said, "As long as you have one breath, you must write the statement, otherwise we will not release you." Until now, she has been illegally imprisoned in the Zhangbei County Detention Center for nine months, and has not been released yet.
Zhangbei County telephone number is 86-313-5222530, ext: 801 (chief's office).
