(Clearwisdom.net) Ms. Zhou Qiaohang from Qingan County, Heilongjiang Province, is a 32 year-old Falun Gong practitioner. When she attended Harbin Industrial University, many professors and students practiced Falun Gong. She was fascinated by the profound principles of Falun Dafa and also started to practice. While she was studying for her Master's degree at the university, she went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa. She was illegally arrested and refused to tell the police her name in order to protect other people. She was subjected to various tortures including the "hanging up" (1) torture. They then left her in a wilderness area in the suburbs. After she returned to school, she studied very hard and received her Master's degree in 2001. She also wanted to pursue a Doctorate degree. Since she refused to give up practicing Falun Gong, she was not allowed to take the doctorate degree qualification test. Additionally, she was deprived of her right to work.
In November 2002, she and another practitioner, Mr. Wang Dayuan (he used to teach in the Computer Science department at Harbin Industrial University and at the age of 34 was brutally beaten to death by the police), were illegally arrested by officers from the Harbin Police Department substation. In a private residence, the police used various tortures attempting to force a confession from her. They shocked her with electric batons, put her on a tiger bench (2), and deprived her of sleep. Zhou Qiaohang was subjected to inhumane tortures, but she didn't give the police any of the information they wanted.
In June 2003, Zhou Qiaohang was secretly tried at the Nangang District Courthouse in Harbin City. During the trial, she spoke righteously and said to the judge, "I'm innocent. People like you are supposed to enforce the law, but you break the law yourself. You're the one that is guilty. I'm covered with cuts and bruises. Why didn't you check my injuries and sentence those who injured me to prison?" Without any supporting evidence or applicable law, the judge sentenced her to 10 years of imprisonment. She is currently detained at the Heilongjiang Women's Prison.
In February 2006, in the east wing of the fifth floor of the fourth prison ward, practitioners who were illegally detained practiced Falun Gong exercises together and refused to wear the prison uniform to protest the persecution and tortures. Four prison guards including Lu Jinghua and Wang Xiaoli, and four inmates put handcuffs on practitioners Zhou Qiaohang and Wang Shulan. They sealed practitioners' mouths with plastic tape and put them into solitary compartments. The two practitioners were held there for one month. In October, inmates Li Meilan, Zhang Qingmei and Xu Lihui said slanderous things about Falun Dafa. With good intentions, Zhou Qiaohang tried to stop them. The inmates pushed Zhou Qiaohang to the ground and started kicking and beating her, causing her vagina to bleed, and her whole lower abdomen turned black. In November, some practitioners were again put into solitary compartments. Zhou Qiaohang went to help the practitioners. The deputy head of the fourth ward, Dong Lihua, instigated the criminals Hu Xiaoguang, Ren Yanjun, Zhang Qingmei and Xue Shuhua to viciously beat Zhou Qiaohang. Zhou Qiaohang's lower body was covered with bruises. She had excruciating pain in her abdominal area, and had major swelling in the oviduct area. At the upper end of her thighs, the bruises were especially bad, and the lymph nodes swelled, causing her to have difficulty walking. The above describes only some of the tortures to which Zhou Qiaohang was subjected.
Notes:
Hanging up: During this torture, practitioners' hands are handcuffed and then pulled up from behind their back and hung on a hook that is high above the ground. The feet are not touching the ground.
Tiger Bench: Practitioners are forced to sit on a narrow bench with legs tied to the bench for a long period of time.