We take a look at a corruption case in China’s judicial system.
Zhang Jian is the former president of a province-level high court in China’s Anhui province. He was tried for bribery on Nov. 26.
Over a 15 year period, he accepted bribes totaling $10 million while working for the judicial departments of Hubei and Anhui Provinces.
Zhang pleaded guilty. He’s set to receive his sentence at a later date.
But one crime wasn’t tried during his court proceedings.
Zhang is also known to have actively followed former Communist Party head Jiang Zemin in his efforts to persecute Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation discipline. The practice promotes the three principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Zhang served as Director and Deputy Director of Hubei’s Department of Justice for 8 years. During that time, around 170 Falun Gong practitioners died as a result of the regime’s persecution. They had been detained in prisons, labor camps, detention centers, and brainwashing centers, according to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website dedicated to reporting on the global Falun Gong community.
In 1999, the Chinese regime initiated a crackdown on Falun Gong, aiming to eradicate it from China.
Under Zhang’s jurisdiction, the so-called “Hubei Legal Education Institute” has been used as a center for brainwashing Falun Gong practitioners. Brainwashing is one of the primary tools used to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith.
If they refuse to give up the practice, they can also be illegally detained without trial for long periods of time. This so-called “education institute” first opened in April 2002. By March 2009, it was holding 6 brainwashing class sessions every year. Each class was made up of 20 to 50 Falun Gong practitioners. As part of the sessions, they were forced to watch videos slandering the practice and desecrate photos of Falun Gong’s founder.
Physical torture methods are also widely used to help coerce recipients into changing their views.
More than 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been illegally detained in that center alone. Reports show these kinds of facilities have been built up across China.
A steady stream of reports have emerged, detailing death cases from inside these centers.
The practitioners usually are forced to watch the CCP propaganda about Falun Gong every day. Because brainwashing directly targets the heart and mind, its effects are often even more devastating to the lives of its victims than physical torture.
At the same time, physical torture is widely used to help coerce the recipient to accept the brainwashing.
The brainwashing started in the morning every day.
The practitioners were forced to watch videos slandering Falun Gong. In the afternoon practitioners had to write reports on what they learned that morning. They were also forced to curse the practice or step on photos of the founder of Falun Gong.
Physical torture is widely used to help coerce the recipient to accept the brainwashing. Beatings, slapping in the face, and being forced to stay in unbearable body positions are common practice.
Sometimes they are forced to stand for days, and their feet become so swollen that they can’t even walk.
