Shanghai Visiting 70-year-old Liu Dongbao was severely injured by hired personnel from the Shimen Second Road Police Station in Jing’an District and sent to the Chongming Island Black Prison, where he was at risk of fatal beatings again. He was released on October 24th, but now he is unable to take care of himself.
On October 25th, Liu Dongbao told Epoch Times that on July 26th, while he was sleeping, four police officers from the Shimen Second Road Police Station came to forcibly take him to the police station, followed by six men not wearing uniforms who stormed into his house and lifted him into a police car.
Before Liu Dongbao could react, the car had already started moving. The six men pinned him down, punching and kicking him, heavily hitting his head and chest, knocking out two of his teeth. This caused Liu Dongbao, who already had heart disease and severe diabetes, to feel dizzy and faint, with only a faint breath left.
The car arrived outside a run-down cabin in the Black Prison, where Liu Dongbao was carried into a dirty and smelly room. Over the next three months, he received no medical treatment and was forced to stop taking his medication.
Liu Dongbao said the room was unbearably hot, with poor conditions that made it impossible for him to sleep normally. The guards demanded he sit up straight every day, but since he refused, thinking he was not a criminal, he was beaten, causing his blood pressure to spike to 200 millimeters of mercury and blood sugar to soar to 14.8, nearly leading to his death.
As Liu Dongbao’s life hung by a thread, the police did not take him to the hospital. “I was in extreme distress, almost dying. If I had died, they would have said it was due to a heart attack or diabetic coma, not from being beaten to death,” Liu Dongbao choked up, saying, “It was the heavens that saved my life, I survived!”
After returning home on October 24th, Liu Dongbao is now completely unable to care for himself and relies on a wheelchair for mobility.
In his younger days, Liu Dongbao had run businesses such as restaurants and department stores, living a prosperous life. Thirty years ago, his only home in the Shimen Second Road neighborhood in Jing’an District, Shanghai, was demolished by the government without proper compensation, forcing him to rent a house. With advancing age and declining health, his financial situation worsened, and his family of three struggled to make ends meet in a cramped rental apartment.
Liu Dongbao persisted in fighting for his rights, shouting “Down with the Communist Party!” at street committees, urban management teams, district governments, and district disciplinary committees. He was detained criminally nine times for a total of nine months and incarcerated in the Black Prison four times. In the past year and a half, he spent 13 out of 18 months in the Black Prison.
Liu Dongbao’s ordeal is not an isolated case but a reflection of the suppression of visiting citizens by local Chinese Communist Party governments. The authorities in Shanghai have escalated the use of Black Prisons to persecute visiting citizens. Song Jiahong, a visiting citizen in Shanghai, said that Black Prisons have become places of evil where visiting citizens are killed. During so-called sensitive periods, large numbers of Shanghai visiting citizens are sent there to endure inhuman torture, even leading to deaths.
Ma Yalian, a visiting citizen in Shanghai, said, “In such a country, the government still has the audacity to claim democracy and rule of law, reaching unprecedented levels of darkness and shamelessness. Under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, mainland society is in an era of officials worse than bandits, officials trampling on the people.”
Ma Yalian’s house was forcibly demolished in 1998, and the interim housing designated by the High Court was also seized by hired thugs, leaving Ma Yalian homeless, residing in a hotel to this day. Authorities have dispatched three to four people to monitor and track her 24 hours a day.
Ma Yalian continues to expose the oppression and persecution of demolition victims and visiting citizens by the authorities, leading to two labor camp sentences, torture, having her legs broken by the police, and needing crutches for life. Her almost 80-year-old mother fell seriously ill and was hospitalized due to the stress.
Ma Yalian stated that the current situation in Shanghai and throughout China, where officials and criminals act wantonly, brutally, and killing people, has sparked outrage among ordinary citizens. “Chinese people, stand up! Without a change in the system, there is no hope for China.”
Calls from the international community urge an immediate independent investigation into the behavior of Black Prisons to protect the basic human rights of citizens.