(Minghui.org) A married couple in Shulan City, Jilin Province, were repeatedly targeted after the Chinese Communist Party ordered the persecution of their faith, Falun Gong, in July 1999.
Mr. Xu Hongyu, 69, was given a three-year labor camp term in 2004 and was sentenced to two years and ten months in 2018. His wife, Ms. Sun Xiuhua, was given one year of forced labor in November 1999 and sentenced to two years in 2020. Her health deteriorated over the years and she passed away in early March 2026, at the age of 64.
Ms. Sun’s death has been reported in an earlier article. This article is Mr. Xu’s own account of the persecution he has suffered since 1999.
Earlier Persecution
In September 1999, I went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong with my wife and younger son. My wife got separated from us on Tiananmen Square. My son, then 9, was later arrested for doing the Falun Gong exercises on Tiananmen Square. The police handcuffed him and took him back to Shulan. My wife later returned to Tiananmen Square and was arrested. She was taken back and held at the Shulan City Lockup. She escaped and went to Beijing to appeal again. This time, she was arrested on November 17, 1999, and was given a one-year labor camp term.
In December 1999, I went to Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, for a Falun Gong experience sharing conference. I was arrested with fellow practitioner Ms. Ding Yan (who later died in the persecution) and held at the Tianhe Detention Center. After three weeks, a local police officer, Jiang Litao, took me back to my city and held me at a brainwashing center. I managed to escape.
I was arrested at a practitioner’s home in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, in July 2000. I was held at the Jinniu District Detention Center for one month and then transferred to a different detention facility. I escaped again.
I was arrested again in 2001 and held at the Baiqi Town 610 Office. I was forced to write a statement promising not to go to Beijing to appeal again, and I was released after paying 100 yuan.
Officers from the Baiqi Town Police Station arrested me one more time in 2002. Through connections, I was soon released.
A group of officers broke into our home on July 9, 2003. I wasn’t home. Officer Liu Xuebing of the Fate Town Police Station grabbed my then-13-year-old younger son by the hair and beat him. The police took my wife to the Baiqi Town Police Station and beat her until she lost consciousness. When she came to, she noticed a large pool of blood on the floor and that several of her front teeth were loose.
My wife was transferred to the Shulan City Police Department in the afternoon. In an effort to escape, she jumped from the third floor and suffered fractures in six ribs and a comminuted compression fracture of the pelvis. She was in an intensive care unit for seven days before her condition stabilized.
Although I escaped, I was forced to live away from home to hide from the police.
In May 2004, we moved to Meishan City, Sichuan Province, where my older son was living, and tried to start a new life. While meeting with a local practitioner in November that year, we were arrested. My wife was detained for a month. I was taken to the Dongpo District Detention Center and later given a three-year term at the Xinhua Forced Labor Camp in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province. I was severely tortured for not renouncing my faith.
In 2008, we went to Beijing and restarted our wedding planning and ceremony hosting business. The Beijing police attempted to arrest me in 2010 and later mobilized the community workers to monitor us.
Unable to stay in Beijing anymore, we returned to Shulan in 2012 and continued our wedding business. We often distributed Falun Gong materials while hosting wedding ceremonies for our clients. Once, the head of the Baiqi Town 610 Office was among the wedding guests and he saw us giving out the materials. He reported us to the Shulan City 610 Office and talked about the incident at the Baiqi Town Village Party Committee Meeting. He accused me of being a local Falun Gong “leader” and suggested that village officials put me on the key monitoring list. I didn’t even live in Baiqi Town. The village official told this to a friend, who then passed the information on to me.
In 2016, the Shulan City 610 Office displayed poster boards smearing Falun Gong at the Fate Town Community Fair. My younger son tore up the boards in front of the crowd. He was arrested by Fate Town Police Station officers and detained for 20 days.
Latest Prison Sentence
A group of officers arrested me at home around 10 p.m. on July 18, 2018. They confiscated my three computers, printers, Falun Gong books, informational materials, banners, and equipment I used to host weddings. They took me to the police station and forced me to sit on a tiger bench. When I refused to comply with the interrogation, the police threatened to keep me in prison for the rest of my life.
Two police chiefs came to check on me the next day. Upon learning that I hadn’t provided the information they wanted, they signaled the officers to hit me on my chest. I warned them not to torture me and that I wouldn’t tell them anything whatsoever.
On May 21 and 22, 2019, the Shulan City Court tried me and five other practitioners. I was sentenced to two years and ten months and transferred to the Gongzhuling Prison around November 4, 2019.
As soon as Li Mingyang, the head of the prison administration department, saw me, he threatened to tear my skin open.
In the afternoon, inmate Ma Tao brought me an inmate’s uniform and guard Li Kai ordered me to sign statements to renounce Falun Gong. I refused to put on the uniform or sign the statements. Three guards pushed me to the ground, face down. Ma removed my outer clothes and hit me on the back with his shoes. Then they shocked my head with three electric batons. After 20 minutes, they began to beat me with the electric batons. Li Mingyang also threatened to shock my testicles. Before I could respond, someone shocked me on the neck, causing me to hit my forehead on the ground. I had a big swelling around my eye socket. Only then did the guards stop torturing me and they ordered the inmates to take me to the cell.
Torture reenactment: electric shocks
Inmate Guan Naiyou ordered me to stand facing the wall. When it was time for dinner, they brought me a bowl of cornmeal with excessive salt. I was so hungry that I ate it all. Two inmates serving death sentences with reprieve, including Li Jianyang, took me to the restroom and rubbed coarse salt on my injured back. I remained silent despite the intense pain.
The next day, guard Li Kai summoned me to his office and ordered me to kneel in front of him and two other guards. I refused to comply. Guard Shen Xudong shocked me on the hands and arms with an electric baton for five minutes. They then asked me who else in my family practiced Falun Gong. I said my wife did. They asked for my sons’ numbers and attempted to have my family persuade me to “transform.” I didn’t give their contact information to the guards.
On the third day, guard Li Kai and five inmates took me to the prison hospital for an exam. The doctor saw the swelling around my eye and asked me what happened. I looked at Li and said I was beaten by them. Inmate Guan hit me in the face and I almost fainted. Then he stomped on my leg, dragged me out, and forced me to stand facing the wall in the hallway. After half an hour, Guan ordered me to come inside and sign a piece of paper. I couldn’t see the contents clearly and refused to sign it. Guan grabbed my hand and forced me to sign the document.
At dinner time, they didn’t allow me to eat and inmate Li Jianyang hit me on the head with a bottle full of water. Given the non-stop beating, verbal abuse, standing torture, and starvation, I was very weak and dizzy.
On the fifth day, they took me to the prison hospital again. I was found to have dangerously high blood pressure. From then on, they allowed me to have salted porridge for every meal, with limited water.
Inmate Li Jianyang once said to me that most of the inmates who participated in the persecution of practitioners were felons serving death sentences with reprieve. He said that no one could survive the torture here. Even if one managed to survive, he wouldn’t be able to walk out of the prison on his own. In some cases, he said, one would rather die than live, and they kept you alive to torture you. Once, a very strong practitioner was tortured to death in less than two years. After he died, the prison called the hospital and made a video as if the doctors were resuscitating him. Li added that they once tied up a practitioner to a big wheel and kept turning the wheel; after the practitioner fainted, they put him in a big empty metal barrel and then hit the barrel with wooden sticks; he was unable to stand afterwards.
On the 18th day, Yan Litao, a guard who specialized in persecuting Falun Gong, took three former practitioners, including a relative of mine, to “educate” me. When the guards weren’t present, my relative, Yang, said to me that he gave in after eight months of torture; as his term was ending soon, he didn’t want to die there. I certainly understood what he had gone through. I couldn’t help but cry.
Shortly after, the guards returned, with several copies of statements renouncing Falun Gong. One of the former practitioners, Zhou Qingzhu, grabbed my hand to sign it. Then guard Yan said, “Now you can eat and drink normally.”
After another month, I was transferred to the division designated to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The guards attempted to force me to write more statements to renounce and denounce Falun Gong. I firmly refused. The inmates and former practitioner Liu Meng forced me to watch videos smearing Falun Gong every day, which lasted until my release on May 18, 2021.
One day, guard Hao Kai summoned all the practitioners to a classroom and handed us term reduction paperwork. He then ordered us to verbally abuse Falun Gong and Falun Gong’s founder one by one. When it was my turn, I talked about how I had benefited from the practice. Hao tore up the paper and said, “Don’t expect to get one day of your term reduced!”
In 2020, we heard that the Central Commission for Discipline was coming to inspect the prison. The guards ordered us to sign some paperwork, stating that the prison was “educating us with patience and managing us with care, without beating or verbally abusing us.” I refused to sign.
Related Reports:
Six Jilin Residents Tried for Practicing Falun Gong, Due Process Denied
Shulan, Jilin Province: 12 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested in One Night
Falun Gong Practitioners Held at Gongzhuling Prison Subjected to Electric Shocks and Tie-up Torture
Over 30 Falun Gong Practitioners Tortured in the Ninth Ward of Gongzhuling Prison
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