Young Chinese Female Lawyer Bares Torture After Arbitrary Detention for Her Defense of Persecuted Christians
A young female Chinese human rights lawyer has revealed the suffering she underwent in jail after she and other human rights lawyers were arbitrarily arrested in China for their defense of persecuted Christians.
On a social media post she made last month after she finally regained her freedom, Li Shiyun said she was "brutalized" in prison by Chinese jail authorities, China Aid reported.
Li said she was kidnapped and arrested by Chinese authorities on July 10, 2015 as part of a nationwide crackdown on human rights attorneys.
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For six months, she was locked up and isolated in a dark cell. She was then transferred to another detention facility.
Li said she was drugged during her time in jail. China Aid says this is a method of torture commonly used against arrested human rights lawyers.
She was also forced to stand still for 16 hours and chained to a chair designed as a torture device for a week, with the guards not allowing her to move.
Moreover, she was made to sleep "head-to-head" with a criminal who had been sentenced to death.
In another case of arbitrary detention, a Chinese pastor has been charged with "intentionally sabotaging public and private property"—a month after he was kept in police detention.
Pastor Chen Shixin of Caili Church in Huaibei, Anhui province was officially "arrested" again on May 18 even though he was already in police custody for about a month, China Aid reported.
The Christian human rights organization said Chen was a victim of police deception.
The pastor had no idea he would be locked up in jail when he complied with a police summon to visit the police station for questioning on April 12.
Chen earlier filed a case to stake church ownership on a piece of land from a group of "influential people" illegally occupying the property.
According to China Aid, these people had illegally taken over the land.
However, Chen's church won a case that granted the latter about 7 acres of the property.
After church workers removed the weeds and dead trees in the land, the original owner of the property, identified as Jin Xingcai, sought to reclaim his property, upon the coaxing of the illegal occupants who wanted to build a temple on the land.
Jin then filed a complaint to the police, accusing the pastor of damaging his property. The police then promptly summoned Chen to the police station where he was subsequently detained.
