By a practitioner from China

(Clearwisdom.net) I have personally experienced and witnessed 25 different torture methods Jiang's regime has used to torture Falun Gong practitioners while I was held in a detention center and a forced labor camp. I have summarized these torture methods below.

1. Hung up

There are two forms in this torture: (1) Normal Hanging Up: One is hung by a rope that is tied to the ceiling, with both feet off the ground. Those who have suffered from this kind of torture will feel numbness in their arms for several years. If tortured to a more severe extent, both arms will become crippled. (2) Being Hung up with Hands behind the Back: With both hands twisted behind the back and feet off the ground, one is hung with a rope. The pain is intense, and when used for prolonged periods of time, this torture may cause death.

2. Tied to a big board

The four limbs of the victim are stretched into four directions, and the victim is tied with strips of fabric onto a big wooden board. The whole body, except the head, is held down tightly. The victim is not released from this position, even during eating or relieving himself.

3. Pumping air into one's rectum

With the victim bound, the torturer inserts a high-pressure bicycle pump nozzle into the victim's rectum and pumps air into his body which causes excruciating cramps.

4. Freezing the practitioner

The victim is forced to hold a block of ice in his hands or stand barefoot on the snow for a long time. A more horrifying form of such punishment is putting an icicle into a condom and forcibly penetrating a female practitioner's vagina as a form of sexual torture.

5. Force-feeding with liquids, including excrement and urine

With the victim bound to a bed or chair, the persecutor pries his mouth open and force-feeds the victim using a funnel or tubing reaching into the stomach. The victim is fed with liquid food, or a concentrated saline solution, or sometimes excrement and urine. Force feeding human waste can cause massive infection and death in a short period of time. Some practitioners are subjected to force-feeding through the nostril by use of a rubber tube as thick as one's little finger. In order to try to force practitioner to give in, a doctor named Zhang Jingfu in Qinglong County, Qinhuangdao City in Hebei Province came up with the torture of injecting large quantities of liquid into one's rectum.

6. Hung upside down

The victim is hung upside down. Both feet are cuffed and hung onto a wooden frame. Very quickly, the victim's head is swollen, with the blood rushing to his head. The eyes will especially feel the excruciating pressure. Sometimes the guards put an electric hot plate right below the victim's head, using the heat to further torture the practitioner.

7. Punishment by having burning paper wedged between fingers and toes

With the victim bound onto a bed or a chair, paper is rolled into thin tubes and inserted between the practitioner's fingers and toes, and then lit on fire. The fingers and toes immediately suffer blisters from the burns as the flame travels down the rolled tube very rapidly. Other variations of this torture include burning one's nails with a lit cigarette. Punishment by burning is a most painful torture.

8. Smoke inhalation

The victim is bound in a corner of the room and the head immobilized against the wall, and he is inundated with smoke. It doesn't take long before he is overcome and loses consciousness.

9. Hanging up in a Strait Jacket

Clearwisdom Net has reported such torture methods. The victim's arms are twisted and tied with rope, and then put into a strait jacket. Then the torturers hang up the victim by the arms, which has led to the deaths of several practitioners.

10. Pouring cold water onto the victim

With the victim pushed to the ground, the perpetrator pours cold water onto the victim, one barrel after another. The victim usually is shivering from the freezing cold after several barrels of cold water. There's another form of this known as, "water drops dripping through a stone," which is having water continually dripping onto a person's head for long periods of time in the winter. I know of a practitioner who had over 200 barrels of cold water poured on him.

11. Sharpened bamboo splinters torture

The guards tie the victim onto a bed or a chair, and hammer sharpened bamboo splinters into the victim's fingers under the tips of the fingernails.

12. Letting insects bite practitioners

During insect and mosquito season, the victim is bound on a chair in a place where mosquitoes and insects are swarming. The victim is subjected to great numbers of bites from these insects while immobilized and unable to scratch the bites or fend off the insects, leaving the victim susceptible to disease carried by the insects.

13. Smothering

With the victim is tied onto a bed, the guards put a thick quilt over him, and sometimes as many six layers of quilts. The victim is left in the sweltering heat, wrapped tightly in the thick quilts.

14. Body-folding  

"Body-folding" refers to standing with two legs straight and close, and bending the head down as far as it will go toward the feet and pressed onto the wall. The arms are tied behind the back and lifted high onto a wall above one's head. The head is upside down, making the body to form a 90-degree angle. Maintaining this position for just several minutes will cause one's heart to pound and one would become muddle-headed. The victim also sweats a lot. The victim is typically forced to keep this position until he or she passes out.

15. Holding a Big Tree

The victim is forced to encircle a big tree with both arms, and the guards then cuff his hands together. This is referred to as "normal holding." Sometimes the practitioner is forced to hold the tree behind his back and has both hands cuffed together in that position. In the winter, the victim is forced to hold the tree while wearing a thin shirt or even half-naked, so as to freeze the victim. In the summer, the victim is forced to wear thick cotton jackets and a winter hat and "hold the tree" for several days under the baking sun.

16. Forced to maintain an awkward posture

The victim is pushed against the wall. With the heels off the ground and only toes touching the floor, his knees and nose are pressed onto the wall. The victim is forced to stretch his arms and curve his legs. Only after a few minutes, the victim will be exhausted but still forced to maintain this posture.

17. Striking with Sticks

The perpetrator strikes the practitioners' back, hips and legs with a pickaxe handle or rubber clubs. Those who have been beaten cannot walk, even two weeks later. Moreover, the more vicious police apply salt onto the wounds and bruises to exacerbate the pain.

18. Little White Dragon (Hitting with a white plastic pipe)

The guards use white plastic pipes, which is used in construction, to strike the victim. The victim is stripped naked and forced to lie on his stomach on the ground. The guards beat the victim from the upper body to the ankles. After this abusive punishment, the victim cannot move at all and has to stay in bed for over two weeks before he can stand on his own.

19. Pulling out Hair

The victim is tied down first. Then the guards will pull out his moustache, beard or pubic hairs to cause pain.

20. Punishment with Toothbrush

This refers to placing a toothbrush between the fingers of the victim and pinching and twisting the fingers. Such torture can abrade the skin on the fingers to the extent that the bones become visible. In addition the toothbrush is also used to harshly scrub the arches of a victim's feet and genital areas.

21. Sleep Deprivation

The victim is deprived of sleep for a long time. As soon as the victim closes his eyes, the guards will strike his face with a shoe.

22. Punishment by Taking the Riding Posture

The victim is forced to stand in the posture as if he were riding a horse. If the victim tries to move a little bit, the guards will beat him fiercely.

23. Hung up on a Tree

The guards hang a practitioner onto a tree with both hands twisted behind the back and tied with rope. Both feet are off ground, and the two arms are behind the back and high above one's head. The guards hang up practitioners in all kinds of postures. In winter, practitioners also suffer from extreme cold. This torture makes one's arms and hands numb and swollen. In Hebei Province's First Forced Labor Camp, there are nearly 100 persimmon trees and poplar trees used together with utility poles as torture instruments, dedicated to torturing practitioners.

24. "Swallow Flying"

The practitioners' hands are pulled backwards, behind the back, and tied with a special bandage on the wrists. Then one is hung onto a beam or a window. Practitioners' heads are bent upside down and become swollen.

25. Confined to a Metal Cage

The guards lock up a practitioner in a specially-made metal cage and hang him with arms above the head. Then the guards shake and wobble the metal cage.

Posting date: 9/10/2004
Original article date: 9/10/2004
Category: Eyewitness Accounts
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/8/19/82121.html

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