(Minghui.org) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began its suppression of Falun Gong in 1999. On the 23rd anniversary of the suppression, Falun Gong practitioners in 38 countries submitted an updated list of perpetrators to their respective governments, urging that those on the list (and their family members) be barred from entry into their country, and their assets frozen.
The 38 countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Czechia, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus, Malta, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Israel, Mexico, Chile, and Dominica.
Please refer to “ New List of Perpetrators Submitted to 38 Governments on the 23rd Anniversary of the Persecution of Falun Gong” for details.
Shao Lei, former director of the Prison Administration of the Ministry of Justice, is on the list.
In the persecution of Falun Gong, Shao has actively participated in it as deputy director and Director of the Prison Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Justice. Under his leadership, the Prison Administration Bureau and the prisons at all levels played a significant role in persecuting practitioners. Shao is responsible for crimes committed against Falun Gong practitioners. The persecution included being tortured, injured, maimed, killed, and/or even having their organs harvested while in prison.
Perpetrator Information
Full Name of Perpetrator: Shao (last name) Lei (first name) (邵雷)
Gender: Male
Country: China
Date/Year of Birth: Unknown
Place of Birth: Unknown
Title and Position
January 2015 – Present: vice president of the Prison Work Association of the Ministry of Justice.
June 2005 – January 2015: director of the Prison Administration of the Ministry of Justice.
November 2002 – June 2005: deputy director of the Prison Administration of the Ministry of Justice.
The following are examples of crimes committed under Shao’s leadership.
Major Crimes Known to Have Been Committed
1. Torture and Brainwashing in the National Prison System
Since the CCP launched its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in 1999, it turned the public security, judiciary branches, and prison systems into the known persecution pipeline.
During Shao Lei’s tenure as director of the Prison Administration of the Ministry of Justice from 2005 to 2015, he proactively carried out all orders given by his superior Wu Aiying.
To force Falun Gong practitioners to give up their belief and increase the so-called “transformation rate,” the prison implements a number of methods when torturing practitioners. The torture includes violent beatings, electric shocks, confinement, sexual abuse, force-feeding, slave labor, brainwashing and drug administration, which are commonly used.
According to the “Investigation Report on Torture and Killing of Falun Gong Practitioners by the CCP” by Minghui published in 2013, among the 3,653 confirmed death cases, 404 (11%) took place in 122 prisons across China.
The following contains examples of the torture methods used:
Violent beatings
Beating is one of the most common torture methods used in prison. About 21% of the death cases mentioned above were caused because of violent beatings carried out by prison staff and inmates.
In addition to beating practitioners with their bare hands, the guards also used their feet, knees, elbows, and other parts of their body. Some guards do not hesitate to beat practitioners with implements, such as sticks, iron tools, stools, whips, and glass bottles.
The beating can further be classified as slapping, pinching, chopping, grinding, stepping, pushing, dragging, pulling, and grasping. Torture victims are hit on the head, face, limbs, and sensitive areas such as the genitals.
Only six days after Mr. Guo Xiaowen was taken to Jinzhong Prison in Shanxi Province to serve a three-year term, he was beaten to death on March 12, 2013. He was only 40 and survived by his wife, a 10-year-old child, and parents in their 70s.
Torture Instruments
There are as many as 70 torture instruments used in prisons, such as handcuffs, shackles, compression belts, ropes, tiger bench, death bed, knives, fire, and others. Practitioners are hung by their wrists, restrained on tiger benches, shackled, and hung by ropes, which caused excruciating pain and often claimed lives.
Mr. Li Xiwang was taken to the Gangbei Prison (now known as Binhai Prison) in Tianjin on July 18, 2011, to serve an 8-year term. Mr. Li was subjected to the “ground anchors” on July 29. In the torture, the victim’s legs are kept straight and fixed, while his hands are shackled to the ground. His back is arched and his legs are immobile. While the maximum endurance for the inmates is two hours, Mr. Li Xiwang was anchored for over 10 hours, before he was found to have died by midnight. He was 49.
Electric Shocks
High-voltage electric batons are commonly used in prisons and labor camps. The guards often simultaneously use several high-voltage batons to shock the practitioners on their genitals, face, limbs, head, breasts, neck, back, waist, ribs, and anus.
When Mr. Zhang Hui was held in Gongzhuling Prison in Jilin Province, the guards put him in solitary confinement and tied him to a bed. They shocked him with three electric batons until the batons ran out of battery charge. His anus and intestines were severely injured, and he died in April 2009.
Force-feeding
When Falun Gong practitioners go on hunger strikes to protest the persecution, the guards do not hesitate to force-feed them. The purpose of force-feeding is not to sustain the practitioners’ lives, but to torture them. The guards didn’t only use violence in the force-feeding but also increased the practitioners’ suffering by force-feeding them with brine, chili powder, mustard powder, mustard oil, raw corn powder, boiling water, and hot soup.
Mr. Qin Yueming, of Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province, who was sentenced to 10 years at Jiamusi Prison, was force-fed in the prison’s bathroom on February 25, 2011. Even though Mr. Qin told the prison doctor that the inmate inserted the feeding tube into his lung, the doctor didn’t do anything to treat him but carried him to an empty room at the end of the hallway. He died the following day. He was only 47 years old. His face showed he had been in excruciating pain. His lips were purple, and there was blood in his mouth and nose.
Inhuman Treatments
The prison authorities also subject the practitioners to various inhumane treatments, including sleep deprivation, starvation, and denying restroom use, or communication with others.
Some guards force-fed the practitioners with feces, urine, phlegm, chili water, soapy water, and other filth, before gagging them with smelly socks, rags, cloth, or tape. Some Falun Gong practitioners are stripped naked to humiliate them.
In 2005, Ms. Zhang Shuxia, a 60-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Heping District, Shenyang City, was taken to Liaoning Women’s Prison, where she was tortured by Wang Chunjiao and Miao Shuxia, two inmates.
She recalled, “These two inmates soaked red peppers in boiling water, added salt, and poured them into my mouth. Wang washed my buttocks with chili water and made me drink 20 tablespoons of the same chili water. She also scooped up the pepper peels from the floor and stuffed them into my vagina. They poured icy water down my neck until my padded cotton jacket and pants were so wet that they began to drip water.”
Corporal Torture
Prisons and labor camps often impose corporal torture on Falun Gong practitioners. They subject the practitioners to prolonged squatting, kneeling, crawling, running, standing, and sitting on the floor or small benches. They would also force the practitioners to raise their arms behind their backs, making them bow down for a long time.
Psychotropic Drugs and Poisons
Prisons routinely use psychotropic drugs, and poisons to torture Falun Gong practitioners. They will force-feed Falun Gong practitioners with drugs that damage the central nervous system, or clandestinely poison the practitioners.
According to the 2013 Minghui report, “Investigation Report on Falun Gong Practitioners Tortured and Killed by the Chinese Communist Party,” 234 (6%) of the 3,653 confirmed death cases resulted from drug administration.
Among 126 deaths, 18% occurred in prisons, 33% in labor camps, 30% in brainwashing centres and psychiatric hospitals, 10% in police stations, and 8% in detention centres.
Ms. Zhu Yifang was twice hospitalised when serving time at Chengdu Women’s Prison. In the hospital, four male inmates pressed her down on the bed, tied her hands and feet to the four corners of the bed, and her body and knees to the sides of the bed. They then administered unknown drugs to her. Once the unknown drug was infused, she experienced fast heartbeats. Her blood vessels were painful, and her stomach was swollen. She died from the injection on March 6, 2012.
To force the guards and inmates to work hard to torture practitioners, the authorities also linked the guards’ annual performance with the practitioners’ “transformation rate” and instigated the inmates to torture the practitioners by promising sentence reductions.
2. Large-scale Organ Harvesting from Living Practitioners in the Prison System
Among all the persecution methods used against practitioners, the worst is forced organ harvesting.
Ever since the persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin, the former head of the CCP, through the Central Political and Legal Affairs Committee, the Central 610 Office, and the Central Military Commission, have turned the military, armed police, judicial system, and medical institutions into a massive pipeline to kill the practitioners for their organs. Prisons are also an integral part of this criminal system.
According to available evidence, the CCP’s prisons, labor camps, and other institutions have colluded with the medical system to harvest organs from Falun Gong practitioners.
Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China written by senior Canadian lawyer David Matas and former Canadian Asia Pacific Director David Kilgour, documents their investigations of the appalling crime.
The prison system, part of the Ministry of Justice under Shao’s leadership is part of the systematic, top-down organised crime of organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.
Chinese version available
(Clearwisdom)