Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province: Former Political and Legal Affairs Committee Secretary Arrested

(Minghui.org) Liu Handong, the former secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee in Jiangsu Province was officially arrested by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in March 2024 for corruption and abuse of power. He previously resigned from office in January 2023 and was placed under investigation on April 16, 2023.

During the five years Liu served as the secretary of the Nanjing Political and Legal Affairs Committee between 2001 and 2006, he actively participated in the persecution of Falun Gong. Many practitioners were arrested, sentenced, had their homes ransacked, and were harassed for refusing to renounce their faith. Some became mentally disoriented and other succumbed to the mental pressure and passed away. The practitioners’ families and their workplaces were also implicated.

Perpetrator Information

Full Name of Perpetrator: Liu (last name) Handong (first name) (刘捍东)Gender: MaleCountry: ChinaDate/year of Birth: August 1959Place of Birth: Shucheng County, Lu’an City, Anhui Province

Title or Position

November 2001 – September 2006: Member of the Standing Committee of the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee, Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, Secretary of the Jiangpu County Party Committee and county magistrate, Secretary of the Pukou District Party Committee

September 2006 – April 2008: Member of the Standing Committee of the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee and Secretary of the Jiangning District Party Committee

April 2008 – January 2012: Deputy Secretary and Mayor of the Zhenjiang Municipal Party Committee

January 2012 – January 2018: Director of the Department of Finance of Jiangsu Province, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Provincial Local Taxation Bureau

February 2018 – January 2023: Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Congress

Liu Handong

Below are select persecution cases that Liu was directly involved in.

Seven Deaths Due to Persecution

Ms. Chen Jiafang, 65, a resident of the Dachang District, Nanjing City, was the local Falun Gong volunteer contact person. In 1999, she was given a forced labor camp term. Due to the persecution, her previous illnesses relapsed, and she was released for medical treatment. She died in January 2005.

Ms. Jiang Xiuyun, of Gulou District, Nanjing City, was arrested at the end of 2000 and sent to the Judong Women’s Forced Labor Camp for a year. She was forced to do hard labor without pay and to undergo brainwashing. She became extremely weak and developed liver problems. In June 2001, she was released on medical parole. However, after she returned home, the Yijiangmen Police Station and local 610 Office personnel still came to harass and monitor her, causing her health to further decline. She died in October 2005, at the age of 68.

Ms. Ning Peihua, of Pukou District, Nanjing City, went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong in November 2000 and was arrested. The authorities continued to harass her after she was released. Her lung cancer relapsed due to the mental pressure and she died in April 2003. She was 70.

Mr. Xu Taibin was a faculty member of Nanjing Agriculture University. After the persecution started in 1999, he was detained in a forced labor camp, where he suffered a stroke due to the persecution. He died in the winter of 2004.

Mr. Wang Fuxin was a resident of the Dachang District, Nanjing City, and an employee of the Nanjing Chemical Industry Cooperation. When the persecution started in 1999, staffers from the street residential committee, along with the police, often harassed him at home and ordered him to renounce Falun Gong. He succumbed to the mental pressure and developed several ailments. He died in spring 2004.

Ms. Zhou Suzhen was from the Daqiao Village, Pukou District, Nanjing City. She started to practice Falun Gong in 1996 and her heart disease that bothered her for over thirty years soon disappeared. Starting in 2000, the local police and officials from the village committee repeatedly harassed her. They threatened her, searched her home and confiscated her personal properties. Two of her daughters who also practiced Falun Gong were detained in forced labor camps. Ms. Zhou fell ill and died on March 13, 2004. She was 72.

Prison or Labor Camp Terms

Mr. Zhang Xuefeng was born in 1965 and was an employee of the Architecture and Engineering College of Nanjing City, now known as the University of Industry of Nanjing City. His wife, Ms. Liu Kaimei, born in 1966, was an engineer of infrastructure assessment for the Education Bureau of Gulou District, Nanjing City. Both of them lost their jobs because of the persecution. In 2002, the Xiaguan District Court sentenced Mr. Zhang to eight years and Ms. Liu to seven years.

Ms. Chen Yujie was held at the Judong Women’s Forced Labor Camp in 2003. Guards Zhao Yulan and Zhou Ying forced her to write a guarantee statement to renounce her faith. They often locked her in a confinement room, forcing her to stand still and depriving her of sleep. Her legs and feet became so swollen that she was unable to put on her shoes as the result of the torture. Her physical condition deteriorated quickly; she couldn’t keep food down and vomited everything she ate. Guards Zhao and Zhou directed 4 inmates to forcefully pour an unidentified liquid medicine into her nose, eyes, ears and mouth, which caused her ears to get infected and she became deaf. She became very thin and her weight dropped to 98 pounds from 160 pounds. She became paralyzed and couldn’t take care of herself.

Ms. Zhao Wenying went to Beijing to appeal in August 2000 and was arrested. She was taken back to Nanjing City and sent to a forced labor camp. She became mentally disoriented after the persecution.

In the same month, practitioners Ms. Yu Xixiang, Ms. Xu Renlan, Ms. Liang Dongmei were arrested and detained for a month for doing the Falun Gong exercises at Jiangpu County Martyrs Tower Public Ground. Ms. Yu and Ms. Liang were given forced labor camp terms in January 2001 together with five other practitioners, including Ji Lianzhen, Dai Shujin, Yu Shuxia, Chen Xiangxiu, and Geng Yingchao.

The 610 Office

In the persecution, both the Political and Legal Affairs Committee and 610 Office, two extralegal agencies, are the main organizations overseeing and orchestrating the specific persecution policies.

In 2004, the 610 Office and neighborhood committee held traveling exhibitions to slander Falun Gong.

In 2005, the Nanjing City 610 Office issued monetary rewards to the local police when they arrested Falun Gong practitioners.

Also in 2005, the 610 Office spent more than 300,000 yuan to rent a factory and use it to persecute practitioners. Luo Zhijun, the Party secretary of Nanjing City instructed that if practitioner made a solemn declaration on Minghui (to rescind any statements they made against Falun Gong), they would be given three years of forced labor.

Practitioners were locked in an enclosed room when the weather was 40 degree Celsius. During the winter, practitioners were taken to a cement room and were not allowed to use the restroom, wash themselves or change their clothes. Some practitioners were wearing light clothes despite the cold weather and were forced to stand for an entire month without sleeping. The guards placed basins of water around the practitioners’ feet and didn’t allow them to move. A practitioner became emaciated after nine months of torture. Those who went on a hunger strike to protest were forced-fed and the guards also pinched their noses during the force feedings.

Torture in the Mental Hospitals

For many years, the 610 Office sent practitioners to mental hospitals. Practitioners Hu Zhiming, Dou Wenxiang, Wu Chunru, Kong Lingzhen, and Zhu Dongmei were sent to the mental hospitals in March 2001 after refusing to renounce their faith. Three of them were locked up for nearly two years. Their treatment fees were initially paid by their workplace but were later deducted from their salaries.

The following were some of the torture methods used in the mental hospitals:

Drug abuse: Forced to take medicine and forcibly injected with drugs that damage the central nervous system.

Forced to sleep for long periods of time: Practitioners were locked up with mentally ill patients in a small room and forced to sleep for about 20 hours every day.

Electrocution: There were generally two methods. One was to tie practitioners to a metal bed every day and electrocute them until they were unconscious for three to four hours. The purpose was to destroy the central nervous system, the normal thinking and memory abilities. Another method was to use electric batons to shock practitioners’ palms, soles of their feet, necks and other sensitive parts of the body for a long time.

Financial persecution: Family members of practitioners were forced to pay 5,000 to 6,000 yuan per month for “treatment fees.”

Every practitioner locked in the mental hospitals are tortured repeatedly until they had a mental breakdown or died.

Ms. Wu Shunzhen was arrested and tortured three times in a mental hospital. She also served two forced labor camp terms, one prison term and was detained twice in a brainwashing center. Following a three-year term at the Judong Women’s Forced Labor Camp given by the Guanghua Road Police Station on November 29, 2002, she was taken to a mental hospital and isolated in solitary confinement for a long time. She went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution, and her term was extended for six months.

The Brainwashing Center

In addition to mental hospitals, brainwashing centers are another facility used by the Political and Legal Affairs Committee and the 610 Office where practitioners are tortured.

The Nanjing municipal brainwashing center (there were also many district-level brainwashing centers in Nanjing) was located in the Bole Hotel, next to the Yanziji New Year Machinery Factory and Xiaozhuang Normal College. The Nanjing Brainwashing Center used a vicious system to persecute practitioners.

Ms. Wang Sanxiu was taken to the brainwashing center around April 2005. She was deprived of sleep for a few days and forced to stand motionless facing a wall written with words to slander Falun Gong and its founder. If she moved a little, the guard slammed her head against the wall. After she fainted from the torture, the guards continued to force her to stand when she came to. Her lower body became very swollen.

Crimes Committed During Tenure as Mayor of Zhenjiang City

When Liu was the deputy secretary and mayor of Zhenjiang City from April 2008 to January 2012, practitioners in the area were persecuted severely. Five practitioners, Fu Zhuhua, Ai Junqing, Xu Wei, Yang Suting, Bao Shuangdi were arrested on September 5, 2008 and sentenced on June 8, 2009. Xu, in particular, was sentenced to eight years at the Suzhou Prison.