A recent official notice of a role change has raised concern over the chief of a security organization in the north China city of Tianjin. A China expert says its possible that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official could fall from grace.
A notice on Feb. 14 said that Zhao Fei, head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) in the city, would serve as deputy director of the standing committee of the local legislative body, according to state media outlets. His new post is apparently less influential than his previous one. The PLAC, a Gestapo-like network operating within the CCP’s system, is tasked with overseeing police, prosecutions, and judicial systems.
The change to Zhao’s duties is part of a common practice of transferring corrupt or disloyal CCP officials to less important positions prior to laying formal allegations over misconduct.
Trampling Religious Freedom
Zhao had an active role in persecuting the faith group Falun Dafa (also called Falun Gong), starting in 2011, as a key officer either in the police or the local PLAC, according to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that documents the CCP’s campaign of persecution of the practice.Shortly after he was promoted to police chief for China’s megacity Tianjin in July 2014, he used financial benefits to encourage police officers and security agents to arbitrarily arrest or harass Falun Dafa practitioners, according to Minghui.
Within two days of being under Zhao’s direction, Tianjin police launched a campaign of organized arrests of at least 37 Falun Dafa adherents from March 2 to 4, 2015. This occurred prior to the annual meetings of China’s rubber-stamp legislature and its top political advisory body. The detainees included Yang Hong, Jiang Yahui, Zhou Xiangyang, Li Shanshan, and Wang Huizhen. Wang died from torture 19 days after the arrest.
In the first half of 2016 alone, 473 Falun Dafa practitioners were sentenced to jail terms in Tianjin, according to Minghui.
“He reportedly suffered severe abuse while in custody, including sexual abuse involving 13 inmates who pinched his genitals and bit his nipples,” the report noted. “By the time authorities took him to receive medical care, he was already suffering complete organ failure. His family reported his body as being black and blue and having traces of bamboo sticks under his toenails.”
Thirteen days before his death, Yang told his lawyer Wen Donghai that he had was beaten by guard Liu Zhaogang in the Wuqing District Detention Center, who also ordered more than 10 inmates to beat and sexually abuse him, according to Minghui.
Wen said he had informed the police of the torture Yang said he experienced before his death but received no response. Instead, the local authorities made concerted efforts to prevent any lawyer from accessing the case file.
Moreover, before he became police chief in Tianjin, Zhao Fei was held liable for at least 30 arbitrary arrests and 10 persecution-related deaths of Falun Dafa adherents during his tenure as police leader of Wuhan in his home province of Hubei.
