Trying to escape Bo Xilai's shadow: How victims still bear scars
In the third part of our four-part series Revisiting Chongqing, victims of Bo's crackdown recall a time that still affects them
Despite being tortured for 37 days in a Chongqing motel room, businessman Chen Guixue remained defiant.
Chen said the police replied that Bo was the policy and that his police chief, Wang Lijun, was the law.
"Don't you realise that our secretary, Bo, will become the president in the future, and that our police chief Wang will become minister Wang," they said. "But you may not live to see that, you zombie. You're going to die if you don't confess."
Chen, now 58, incontinent and suffering from a host of health problems attributed to the abuse he suffered in detention, was arrested on December 23, 2010. The next day, he said, there were many times when he thought he was about to die.
More than 20 police forced him into the motel room without showing any legal documentation. They cut off his clothes, leaving only his underpants and a T-shirt, and poured cold water on him, from head to foot. They turned the air conditioner to its coldest setting, stood in a circle around him and began beating him. At one stage, two police officers held him against a wall as others kicked his legs to force him to do the splits - tearing his groin muscle. Other forms of torture he endured were being hung by his wrists, having the soles of his feet beaten and being subjected to electric shocks.
