(Minghui.org) Falun Dafa practitioner Ms. Chen Xiurong was arrested on April 24, 2015 in Xiangyang City. The police broke into Ms. Chen's home. They arrested her and changed the door lock. Ms. Chen was sentenced to four years in prison by the Fancheng District Court on October 9, 2015.
Ms. Chen's brother, Mr. Chen Xinan, also a practitioner, went to the Xiangcheng District Domestic Security Division on July 13 to ask for the key to Ms. Chen's home. He was arrested and taken to the Hanjiang Police Station. Officer Li Xuejun and others confiscated Mr. Chen's key and ransacked his home.
He was then taken to the Xiangyang No. 2 Detention Center, but was not accepted for health reasons. Li tried to have Mr. Chen detained in a detention center, but gave up at 10:00 p.m. They took Mr. Chen back to Hanjiang Police Station and handcuffed him. He was released the next day.
Mr. Chen returned home and found that police officers had ransacked his home and confiscated many personal belongings, including a laptop and over a dozen Falun Dafa books.
Mr. Chen has been severely persecuted multiple times in the past. Below are some of the details of his persecution since Falun Dafa was banned in 1999.
1999: Shocked with Electric Batons in Beijing
The persecution of Falun Dafa started in July 1999. Mr. Chen went to Beijing to peacefully appeal for the right to practice Falun Dafa in October 1999. He was arrested at Tiananmen Square.
He was brutally beaten and shocked with electric batons by police in the Qianmen Police Station. The police used two electric batons to shock him simultaneously. They shocked his head and back with one baton, and his genitals with another. Then they tied his hands and legs together and shocked him. They finally untied him because they thought he was about to die. Mr. Chen was then taken back to Xiangyang and released after they had extorted over 1,000 yuan.
Torture reenactment: shocked with electric batons
June 2000: Tortured in Detention Center
Mr. Chen was taken to a brainwashing center in Damianfang in June 2000 and transferred to the Xiangyang No. 1 Detention Center the next day. The guard ordered inmates to beat him for seven days.
He was then taken back to the brainwashing center to be forcibly "transformed.” They demanded that he step on the photo of the founder of Falun Dafa, which he refused. They pushed him to the ground and brutally beat him. They poked his left arm and left leg with metal pins, and burned his right arm and right leg with cigarette lighters.
He was taken back to the detention center the next day. The guards forced him to stand under the burning sun all day long and then beat him at night to prevent him from doing the Falun Dafa exercises.
Mr. Chen went to do the exercises the next morning. In response, the guards took a metal chain, first cuffed his left foot, then wrapped the chain around his shoulders, and pulled it down to his right foot. They used another chain to cuff his two feet together, and then handcuffed his arms behind his back. The restraints were so tight it was difficult for blood to circulate to his fingers, and he could not sleep or walk.
Typically, most prisoners cannot tolerate this kind of torture for more than five minutes, but he was chained like this for 24 hours. It took a long time for the guards to remove the chains and cuffs, because the cuffs had cut deeply into his skin. In the end, they just pulled the cuffs off together with his skin and flesh, and his bones were exposed.
August 2000: Tortured in Brainwashing Center
Mr. Chen was transferred to a brainwashing center, held in a driving school, in August 2000. He told Zhu Jixue, the deputy leader of the city's Political Security Section, to “talk instead of hitting people.” As a result, Zhu brutally beat and kicked him. Another time, Zhu took off all of Mr. Chen's clothes, cuffed his arms behind his back, and hung him in the air for a long time.
Torture reenactment: hands behind the back and hung in the air
December 2000: Taken to Detention Center
Mr. Chen was again arrested at work on December 26, 2000 by Wang Mihao, the security section lead of his work place. He was taken to a brainwashing center located on a military training base.
Every practitioner, including Mr. Chen, was tied and forced to kneel on the ground. The entire morning, the persecutors demanded that practitioners give up Falun Dafa. As Mr. Chen did not agree to give up his faith, he was taken to the No. 1 Detention Center.
2001: Forced Labor
Mr. Chen was transferred from the detention center to the Xiangyang No.1 Forced Labor Camp after the 2001 Chinese New Year. He was forced to perform hard labor, with a workload that was equivalent to two people's workload. He worked from early morning to late at night every day. His fingers and toes had blisters. Some of his blisters broke and oozed pus, yet he still had to work.
Night, after night, he was forced to stand for several hours with his back bent and his arms straight. If his arms moved, several people beat him. Then, they deprived him of sleep after several months. He went on a hunger strike to protest his persecution, but he was still forced to work. In the evening, they force-fed him salt water and salt powder. They used chopsticks to open his mouth, and when they could not open it, they covered his mouth and nose with wet towels.
April 2008: Sentenced to Prison
He was again arrested in April 2008 for doing the Falun Dafa exercises at Xiangyang People's Square. He was sentenced to three-years-and-five-months in prison. He was taken to the Fanjiatai Prison and released on August 12, 2011.
October 2009: Deprived of Pension
He reached his legal retirement age in October 2009. His company notified him on September 29, 2009 that they would not pay his retirement pension because he was no longer an employee as of December 16, 2008, although he had worked for that company for 40 years. That was the day he was sentenced, and when the company had canceled his employment contract. Details can be found in an article here.
