Victim:  Xin Minduo, Liaohe Oil Field, Panjin City, Liaoning Province, China

Location: Panjin Labor Camp, Panjin City, Liaoning Province, China

My name is Xin Minduo. I am an employee of the Measurement Branch of the Physical Exploration Company. After July 1999, I was illegally sentenced to three years of forced labor and sent to the Panjin City Labor Camp. At the labor camp, I was threatened, physically beaten, abused, and tortured. After half a year of undergoing a painful hunger strike to protest the forced labor and being held for a total of eleven months, I was on the verge of death. After 20,000 Yuan were extorted from my family, I was sent home weighing less than 90. The following account provides more details about my experience:

When the Sixteenth National People’s Congress was held in November 2001, the police in Panjin City arrested many practitioners. They also came to arrest me at my home. I avoided this tribulation by leaving my home, even though I still had not recovered and could barely walk steadily.

On April 2, 2003, I was abducted again without any reason by the police. They did not notify my family. A policeman stole 1,000 Yuan from me, which he later denied. A policeman with the last name of Zhao said viciously, “This time, I will not stop until I send you to prison.” While I was in the Panjin City Labor Camp, I was tortured in the “fixed position”[1] for one month. Both my hands and legs were handcuffed to the ground and stretched out like the Chinese character 大. I was force-fed with tubes inserted into my nose. The prisoners were ordered to clean away my feces and urine.  Afterwards, I could hardly move my arms for several days. The police asked the prisoners to drag me by my arms during daily breaks, and they called this “helping move [my] arms slightly so that [my] arms would not be disabled.” The pain was beyond description. At the beginning, I felt so much pain that I had to cry out. Later, I did not even have the strength to cry out. I spent 26 days and nights in this state. My arms were severely injured, and I was in critical condition. Finally I was released, but only after my family paid the 20,000 Yuan as I mentioned. One week after I arrived home, the police came to harass me again. During that time, both of my arms were in such pain that I hardly slept or took off my clothes. After the police left, I was forced again to leave home in a fragile condition in order to avoid further harassment or possible arrest. Even today, the scars on my arms are still very visible. If I did not firmly believe in Falun Gong’s principles, I might have been tortured to death or suffered a mental collapse long ago. For almost a year now, I have not been able to live at home. The danger of being arrested at any time is always there. When a thief is arrested, he is detained for 15 days. If he cooperates with the police, he might be released on the spot. If Falun Gong practitioners are arrested, they are sentenced to three years of forced labor. Meng Jian, an English teacher from Panjin Experimental Middle School, was sentenced to 13 years for practicing Falun Gong.

At the detention center and labor camp, many methods of torture are administered. The various torture methods seen in the movies, such as “tiger bench[2],” “soldering iron,” and “nailing toothpicks into the fingers,” etc. are happening to us daily. New, unheard-of methods of torture are also being used. At the Liaohe Oil Field Detention Center, I have been force-fed many times. This is also a type of torture. I was pushed to the ground by a group of prisoners, my front tooth was knocked loose, and my gums swelled up. Thick salt and corn porridge was forced into me. Many times, I nearly suffocated to death.

At Panjin Labor Camp, I once was put inside a cage and hung off the ground for seven days. Tan Xiaobiao, the team leader, spit on my face and shocked me with an electric baton every day. I was also hung up for three days and nights on another occasion. My feet became swollen and I could not put on my slippers. Also, the front of my body was severely shocked with electric batons. My head was slammed against the ground once. I was once beaten by a group of police with police batons. A policeman named Chen Changli beat me in the yard until he was out of breath. Every day, I was restricted from using the washroom. I was beaten for going to the washroom. For three months, my arms were tied with a broom to the bed so that I could be force-fed intravenously. I was forced to sit on a plastic stool for 18 hours every day for almost two months. I was savagely force-fed very often.