The story of a man killed after living on both sides of torture
Sources in China recently related to us the story of Mr. Han, a Falun Gong practitioner
whose journey took him from being tortured to becoming the torturer, and finally
back again, until he was ultimately killed by the very same system.
Beijing
resident Mr. Han Junqing had been a petty criminal and troublemaker in the days
before he started practicing Falun Gong. After taking up the practice of Falun
Gong, according to a source that knew his story well, Mr. Han turned over a new
leaf. He strove to follow Falun Gong’s teaching of being kind to others and
became a genuinely good person.
After Jiang Zemin ordered the persecution
of Falun Gong in July 1999, Han, like many others, used various peaceful ways
to appeal for an end to the persecution of his fellow practitioners. He, himself,
was eventually arrested and sent to a forced labor camp for “re-education,”
a process in which a person is forced from their faith.
In the labor camp,
in spite of suffering severe torture, Mr. Han remained determined not to give
in to the coercion and not to give up the spiritual path that had positively changed
his life. He told the guards who tortured him, “You can break my neck and
shatter my bones, but I will still practice Falun Gong!”
But the pressure
was just too great. Not only do prisoners in these labor camps endure physical
torture, they are deprived of proper nourishment and sleep. Sanitary conditions
are extremely poor, and they are forced to toil almost around the clock making
various products for export. The mental strain is tremendous.
What broke
Mr. Han, however, were the collaborators.
“Collaborators” are
former Falun Gong practitioners who, unable to endure the torture, not only give
up their practice, but are even pressured into collaborating with the guards.
They spend their days applying physical and psychological torture techniques to
those who were once their fellow practitioners, inmates, and close friends.
After
eight months, Mr. Han could not endure anymore and he joined the collaborators.
Now he was torturing those who had previously looked up to his great ability to
endure.
“He reverted back to his old self,” says the source. “I
witnessed how he tortured determined Falun Gong practitioners. He verbally abused
and beat them, tied them up and poured boiling water on them. He also beat me
and left many scars on my body.”
Demonstrating his cooperation with
the guards, and deemed sufficiently “transformed,” Mr. Han was released
from the camp.
For the past several years, Chinese authorities have carried
out organized brainwashing or “transformation” classes in labor camps,
detention centers, state-run businesses, and universities throughout China. The
sessions are designed to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their beliefs,
often utilizing a combination of physical torture, sleep deprivation and severe
psychological assaults.
Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners,
both young and old, have been forced to undergo these sessions, for as long as
it takes to either break their wills or end their lives.
Once Mr. Han returned
home, however, with the encouragement of his peers and after encountering Falun
Gong’s teachings anew, he realized what he had done. He set his mind to make
amends for it.
Mr. Han then bought a photocopying machine and put it in
his home. He used it to make flyers that counter the state-run propaganda by telling
the truth about Falun Gong and what kind of persecution millions of practitioners
face. He also helped other former practitioners-turned-collaborators by giving
them articles to read that spoke to the crimes of conscience they were participating
in.
Last April, however, Mr. Han was seized once more by police while delivering
such articles to former collaborators in Hebei Province.
His home was ransacked
and he was again sent to detention and tortured.
Last month, after going
from being tortured to being the torturer to being tortured once more, 47-year-old
Mr. Han was killed.
Posting date: 10/Jul/2004
Original article date:
8/Jul/2004
Category: News from China
