(Minghui.org) While he was incarcerated for practicing Falun Gong, Mr. Tian Yuchun vomited and lost consciousness on June 20, 2024. He was diagnosed with an intestinal obstruction. Despite his condition his family is barred from visiting him.
Mr. Tian, 75, of Changchun City, Jilin Province, was arrested at his home on April 18, 2024, by four officers from the Jinqianbao Police Station in Erdao District. They said that they targeted him because their supervisors ordered them to fill a quota and arrest a certain number of Falun Gong practitioners by May 1 (China’s Labor Day).
The Chinese Communist Party is notorious for intensifying its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners around it’s “sensitive dates.”
The arresting officers confiscated Mr. Tian’s Falun Gong books and valuables. They promised to release him after they interrogated him, only to take him to the Changchun City First Detention Center the next day. During the required physical examination, Mr. Tian was found to have high blood pressure, stroke symptoms, and retina detachment. By law, he was unfit for detention, but the detention center still admitted him.
Mr. Tian’s family appealed to the detention center, to no avail. They then turned to the local association of people with disabilities, but they refused to help. The family hired a lawyer but the detention center said Mr. Tian was a “political inmate” and was not allowed any visitors (either family or lawyers).
The detention center even threatened to have the lawyer’s license revoked if he dared to keep representing Mr. Tian. After Mr. Tian had the aforementioned medical episode on June 20, the detention center still did not allow his loved ones to see him.
This is not the first time that Mr. Tian has been targeted for practicing Falun Gong, which he credits for curing his heart disease and nephritis, and enabling him to quit smoking and drinking. He was previously arrested numerous times and given one year of forced labor after one of the arrests.
Mr. Tian was arrested on March 11, 2002 and held at the Changchun City Detention Center for 30 days before he was given one year of forced labor at the Chaoyanggou Labor Camp.
During his first seven days at the labor camp, Mr. Tian was forced to sit on a small stool motionless from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, with only three meal breaks. The slightest movement caused him to be beaten. He was also forced to recite the detention center rules. His buttocks festered due to the extended sitting.
One week later, Mr. Tian was assigned to Team Four. As soon as he was brought there, a team captain and an inmate shoved his head in the space between the ladder rungs on a bunk bed. They next twisted his hands behind his back and flogged his buttocks with a wooden plank.
The only food he was given was cornbread and cabbage. Due to the poor living conditions, Mr. Tian developed scabies all over his body. The itching was unbearable and the blisters oozed pus and fluid.