Activist/reporter Jiang Lijun tortured, and many others too

(March 14, 2015) Boxun received human rights activist Jiang Lijun’s elderly father’s letter to Xi Jinping. In it he reveals the cruel torture suffered by detained activist Jiang Lijun. The torture in the jail is widespread, and some have even been tortured to death. Those who are torturing Jiang Lijun are candid about the reason. It’s because he offended the Shenyang City, Liaoning Province Public Security Bureau director Xu Wenyou, and now detained-for-corruption Shenyang chief procurator Zhang Dongyang, and his henchmen are exacting revenge.

Jiang Lijun’s police interrogator reported the case to Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu, and it went all the way up to Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. If the Shenyang police can act in this lawless way without any obstacles, then China’s claims to be ruled by law are empty.

On May 16, 2014 my son Jiang Lijun was abducted by the Shenyang City, Liaoning Province Public Security Bureau criminal division. On May 18, 2014, on suspicion of incitement to subvert state power and creating a public disturbance, he was criminally detained in Shenyang Municipal Number One Detention Center. Between the time he was abducted and formally criminally detained—approximately one month—Shenyang Municipal Public Security Bureau criminal division director Yue Peng and others ruthlessly extorted a confession by torture from him. He went through extreme physical and psychic hardship and his mental state was severely damaged.
Shenyang Municipal Public Security Bureau Criminal Division Deputy Director Jiang, Brigade Director Yue Peng, Wang Kelin and others extorted Jiang Lijun’s confession through torture. In addition to punching and kicking him like a sandbag, they bound his arms together behind his back “Su Qinbei-sword-style” and hung him in the air this way. They poured cold water down his mouth and nose. They stripped him bare and poured cold water over his head, shocking him into having a heart attack. They squeezed his fingernails with metal clippers and threatened to insert large needles under his fingernails. Several times they abducted and threatened his son, and prepared a confession for him to sign. Yue Peng’s and the others’ cruel savagery seriously injured Jiang Lijun. As a result of this he has acute headaches and dizziness, his limbs are numb, he lost vision in his right eye and the nerves in both his wrists were damaged. Until now he’s received no medical treatment.

Yue Peng said to him: “You have to cooperate or I’ll kill you! If you die it will be considered ‘commiting suicide to escape punishment.’ You’ll be lucky if you survive.”
A policeman named Wang Kelin said to him: “Even if the procuratorate or court releases you, I’ll still go to your home and break both of your legs.”

Yue Peng had Li Wei and Wang Kelin strip off Jiang Lijun’s clothes and tie him to the “Tiger Bench” (translator’s note: an inmate is cuffed to a metal bench in a way designed to keep their legs bent upwards for a long period of time. If they struggle, the cuffs tighten). While suffocating him with cold water they asked: “Do you know that your articles critical of provincial and municipal-level leaders already constitute the crime of subversion of state power?”

Jiang Lijun replied: “Criticizing and supervising the government is a civil right, what does it have to do with the crime of subverting state power? Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai aren’t representatives of the entire national government, do local Shenyang city and Liaoning provincial officials represent state power?”

Yue Peng said: “Who I say represents state power represents state power.”

Special Investigative Team assistant team director Jiang created an even more frightening atmosphere of violence: “Our criminal division is the sharp knife of not only the Shenyang Municipal Communist Party Committee but also the Liaoning Provincial Communist Party Committee. We can stab anyone we want, and whoever we stab dies!”

Torture is widespread, people are killed

In Shenyang’s Number One Detention Center, Shenyang police investigators torturing suspects in the investigation of a case to extract confessions is a very common phenomenon. There are a large number of cruel tortures, they use ruthless methods. In addition to cuffing and kicking, they use water-boarding, electric shocks, freezing, inserting needles under fingernails, Su Qinbei-sword-style binding victims’ arms behind their back, hanging and beating, forcing horseradish into the mouth and nose of prisoners, using mustard oil, hanging water buckets from a prisoner’s neck, sitting on the “tiger bench,” all are commonly used torture methods.

While in prison cell number 118, Jiang Lijun learned that in addition to himself there were 35 others （(张艳军、高明升、佟晓徽、闫云柱、陈厚金、翁鹏、黄鹏、张家银、李成刚、孟庆东、果奇、欧阳洪波、王彦权、邵波、吴永华、段传志、侯东升、张宏忠、赵红 炎、马志国、瞿利家、唐容、齐向阳、吴玉忠、赵大志、朱远宏、王俊、段泽民、董刚、高云、杨林、曹云震、高晗、赵晓春、孙勇) whose confessions were extorted by torture. Among these were Gao Ming, whose hair was pulled out by Yue Peng. Guo Qi, whose genital hair was burned off. Qi Xiangyang, whose ear was perforated. Wu Yonghua, whose front teeth were knocked out. Duan Chuanzhi, whose ribs were fractured. Gao Han (a Shenyang Physical Education Institute student) had his arms bound to a machine and then violently shaken for an hour. Ms. Tang Rong’s ribs were broken, resulting in incontinence. But the most brutal and fatal treatment was of Yang Lin, who was suspected of narcotics trafficking. The Shengyang Municipal Sujiatun Public Security Bureau Narcotics Division extracted his confession by torture, during which he vomited blood and died. It was reported that the officials offered his family ¥700,000 in compensation, but demanded that the family say he died of illness in the detention center and to not call the authorities to account. The Shenyang police in enforcing the law violated the law, wantonly trampled on the rule of law, maliciously infringed on these peoples’ rights, and violated all human and civilized behavior in a barbaric, savage, shocking fashion that is simply appalling.

About Jiang Lijun

Jiang Lijun was born in 1965 in Tieling City, Liaoning Province. In 1999 he was sentenced for the crime of inciting subversion of state power. After his release from prison in 2006, he continued to assist petitioners and other disadvantaged groups in the Liaoning provincial capital of Shenyang, Benxi, Tieling and other localities in their legal rights struggle.

Since 2008, Jiang Lijun has published on his blog and through other media criticism of the actions of the Liaoning provincial government, and offered recommendations and opinions on how to deal with corrupt and crime-committing individual officials. For example, he called on the Ministry of Public Security to investigate the 2012 shooting death of a peasant by a Panjin police station deputy director while carrying out a forced land acquisition. Six shots were fired and Jiang Lijun calls on the Liaoning Provincial government to assume its leadership responsibility and determine if this brutal shooting constituted intentional homicide.

On September 23, 2012, because Jiang Lijun demanded that the Public Security Ministry investigate the Panjin police officer gun death case, Liaoning Province Public Security Bureau former office director Xue Heng ordered Jiang Lijun detained for 15 days. On June 3, 2013, because Jiang Lijun and his Shenyang friends got together in a hotel to eat, he was detained by the Shenyang Municipal Public Security Bureau on suspicion of assembling a crowd to disrupt public order and incarcerated for 22 days. He was finally released on bail for lack of evidence.

On May 16, 2014, the Shenyang Municipal Public Security Bureau used as an excuse Jiang Lijun’s assisting farmers in protecting their rights and posting on social media Faku County farmer Wang Zhonglian’s complaint to the Central Commission on Discipline Inspection about the local government’s diversion and embezzlement of compensation funds for conscripted land and again abducted Jiang Lijun.

Shenyang City, Faku County, Liaoning Province farmer Wang Zhonglian and other villagers’ forests and cropland were occupied by the Liaoning Province East-West Water Transfer Project. The local government is suspected of embezzling billions of yuan in compensation funds. The government and businesses using the land refuse to compensate the farmers. Jiang Lijun was entrusted by the villagers to report these corrupt and perhaps illegal actions by the local government to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in Beijing and Anti-Corruption czar Wang Qishan. This has elicited the extreme dissatisfaction and anger of both local Shenyang and Liaoning Province leaders, and they’ve abused their authority and official powers to take violent revenge on Jiang Lijun, Wang Zhonglian and others. Wang Zhonglian has been arrested for the crime of fraud and faces a severe prison sentence of more than 10 years.

Reported and translated by BOXUN