(Minghui.org) A resident of Yingde City, Guangdong Province, was sentenced to two years in prison in July 2001 for practicing Falun Gong. The guards in Chini Forced Labor Camp beat him, tied him up tightly into a ball, and hung him up. As a result of the torture, Mr. Li You’s lumbar spine fractured and his health was damaged permanently. 

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual belief and meditation practice that has been persecuted in China since 1999. 

Torture re-enactment: The victim is tied up and hung up by the wrists. 

Mr. Li came across Falun Gong in 1996 while he studied in South China Normal University in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. Two weeks into his practice, he was surprised to find that he was no longer a spreader of the hepatitis virus. When he went back to the hospital for a checkup a while later, he no longer carried the hepatitis virus. 

When the Chinese Communist Party launched the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, Mr. Li was working in Wuhan City, Hubei Province. He went to the Hubei provincial government the night of July 22, 1999, to protest the persecution. He was arrested and detained for 7 days. 

Mr. Li and three other practitioners went to Beijing to speak out for Falun Gong in June 2000. Several officers charged toward them as soon as they opened up a banner that said “Falun Dafa Is a Righteous Practice.” The officers beat them and locked them in a detention facility in Beijing. They were transferred back to Guangzhou and locked in Yingde City Detention Center for a month, during which time they had to do labor-intensive work. They were forced to make festive lanterns for 10-plus hours every day. Their fingers became blistered and bled. 

Mr. Li fled home in January 2001 to avoid frequent harassment by the police. Agents from the 610 Office began to look for him and four months later on May 3, officers from Shahe Police Station in Tianhe District raided his apartment. To escape, he climbed out of the window and jumped from the 3rd floor. His spine and leg were injured as a result. 

At the police station, he refused to provide his name. The officers beat him for an hour and repeatedly stomped on his lower back with military boots. They cuffed him to a chair while beating him. One of them hit him with a flashlight until it broke. Another put a magazine on his chest and fiercely punched it in order to damage his heart without leaving visible marks. 

It wasn’t until two years after he was freed that he found out his lumbar spine was fractured from the stomping. 

The police transferred him to Tianhe Detention Center the same day he was arrested. He was badly injured at the time and vomited blood. Knowing that he couldn’t take care of himself, the guards forbade others from helping him and ordered him to do unpaid labor. He had to work for a dozen hours a day every day, spending most of his time assembling plastic flowers. The physical abuse plus the terrible food took a heavy toll on his health. 

The authorities arbitrarily gave him two years in Chini Forced Labor Camp, also known as the Guangzhou City No. 1 Forced Labor Camp. At first, the guards forced him to watch videos slandering Falun Gong for more than 10 hours every day. Later on they forced him to do labor-intensive work. After a while they forced him to sit still on a small short stool all day long. This torture put a lot of pressure on his lower body, causing swollen legs and ruptured skin on the buttocks. In addition to being tortured at the Chini Forced Labor Camp, he was moved back and forth between other forced labor camps and subjected to brainwashing. 

Seeing that he refused to give up his belief, the authorities intensified the torture. The guards put him in a dark room without windows. The walls inside the room were covered with slogans slandering Falun Gong. There was only one stool in the room and nothing else. He had to sit on the stool all day with two men watching closely. They punished him even if he just moved a little. They only let him use the toilet twice a day. On his way to the toilet, he wasn’t allowed to look around or have any facial expression. They beat him if he used the restroom a little longer. 

One evening a guard and four collaborators (former Falun Gong practitioners who had given up their belief under pressure) put him in solitary confinement. They used a long sheet of cloth and tightly bound him into a ball-shape and hung him up through the piece of cloth. This caused extreme pain and injured his neck and lumbar spine. His legs and wrists were also damaged. He still suffers from the sequela today.