82-year-old Chinese writer Tie Liu alleges torture by police

(BOXUN) Tie Liu stated in an article: “China’s police are lawless, they censor speech and make random arrests. Whether you’re guilty or not, they detain you first and then investigate the case. Anyone who’s locked up is assumed to be guilty. Your integrity is insulted and freedom taken away. You can’t breathe free air, and can’t see the blue sky. You can’t have a hot shower or drink fresh water. You have to shout reports and ask permission for everything. When you leave your prison cell you have to wear a black hood, are interrogated at all hours, sit in an iron chair while wearing handcuffs, answer all the questions that the interrogator asks, sign whatever they require you to, no matter how it curses or teaches. If the investigation doesn’t uncover evidence, they just change the charge. You have to confess or they’ll never let you out.”

Liu Xiaoyuan is Tie Liu’s attorney. Liu Xiaoyuan said that while Tie Liu was in custody he repeatedly detailed the torture he underwent.

Tie Liu said in the article that he was the oldest prisoner in a tiny cell with men in their 20s and 30s, and was subjected to torture to extort a confession. “Two dozen men were confined in a cell that was less than 15 square meters. The air was so fetid that you couldn’t sleep. If you weren’t squeezed to death then you were suffocated to death. When ill in hospital you still had to be shackled and handcuffed! The police compulsion amounted to extorting confession by torture. You had to confess to false charges under torture. Their methods don’t have the least bit of humaneness. I was incarcerated this way for 165 days. It was living death!”

Tie Liu was detained by the Beijing police in September 2014 on suspicion of the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Prior to this he’d published many articles criticizing Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan. He criticized Liu as being the patron of corrupt Chinese media groups and a deadly enemy of the advancement of China’s reform and opening effort. Tie Liu claimed that the Chinese regime’s practice of detaining prisoners of conscience for speech, opinion, and thought it didn’t like and then gathering evidence amounted to “coercive measures” in violation of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Last Wednesday December 9, 2015, the United Nations Committee Against Torture stated that torture against prisoners is still widespread in the Chinese police and prison systems. Recently, this Committee held two days of hearings about Chinese torture. But China denied that it has political prisoners and claimed that its government bans torture. (BOXUN)