Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has been sweeping through the country’s security apparatus—ever since the once-powerful security czar Zhou Yongkang was put under investigation and stripped of his post in 2012.
The latest security official to get taken down is Ni Xingyu, the former vice-president of the Jiangsu Province Police Academy.
On March 2, the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), announced on its website that Ni has been expelled from the Party and will be transferred to judicial authorities for prosecution.
Ni has been charged with bribery and engaging in inappropriate sexual relations, according to the CCDI.
The 59 year-old is a veteran of the police force, known as public security in China. He worked at the Yangzhou City (in Jiangsu Province) public security bureau for a long time; from 1993 to 2003 he served as its deputy bureau chief.
From 2003 to 2007, he was the director of the local 610 office: an extralegal Party organization that was established for the sole purpose of carrying out the persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong, a meditation practice based on Buddhist and Daoist moral teachings. Believing its popularity to be a threat to the Party’s authority—up to 100 million adherents by 1999, according to Western media outlets that quoted Chinese officials—former Party leader Jiang Zemin launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate the practice.
Adherents were arrested, detained, sentenced to labor camp, and forced into brainwashing centers where psychological torture was employed in an attempt to coerce them into giving up their faith.
Along with mobilizing the existing security apparatus, Jiang also ordered the creation of the 610 office, which has been in charge of persecuting Falun Gong in local areas.
Ni headed the 610 office in Yangzhou, which happened to be Jiang’s birthplace. There, Ni worked closely with Ji Jiangye, a confidant of Jiang who served as the party secretary and mayor from 2001 to 2009. In 2015, Ji was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for bribery.
In 2010 and 2012, the U.S.-based, nonprofit research organization World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) publicly identified Ni as a perpetrator of human rights crimes during his tenure in Yangzhou and later, Huai’an, a neighboring city, where he was the public security chief and deputy mayor. The organization tracks cases of Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted and those who are responsible for their mistreatment.
While serving in Huai’an from 2007 to 2014, Ni directed the city’s public security forces to abduct practitioners. They were later forced into brainwashing classes, sentenced to prison, or sentenced to labor camp.
Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that serves as a clearinghouse for news about the persecution of Falun Gong in China, documented an example of a Falun Gong practitioner and resident of Huai’an, Du Mingliang.
From 2005 to 2009, Du was imprisoned at a local brainwashing center and prison. She underwent various forms of torture, such as solitary confinement, deprivation of sleep for long periods of time, round-the-clock monitoring, and forced detention at a mental asylum.
She was again detained in 2011. Du was abducted on the streets and taken to the Huai’an Detention Center, where she was detained for a month. Her home was also ransacked and valuables were confiscated.
Public security forces attempted to send her to a local forced labor camp, but the facility refused to accept her, according to Minghui.org.
In December 2017, Ni was put under investigation by the CCDI. The year prior, he was relieved of his post at the police academy. The latest news is confirmation that he will be punished by the Party.
Zhuang Zhengming contributed to this report.
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