(Minghui.org) Using grotesque and violent means to force Falun Gong practitioners to give up their peaceful belief is nothing new to the cadres of the Chinese communist regime. The persecution at the Tianjin Women's Prison is case in point. Numerous practitioners there have been tortured to the point of mental collapse. Below are a few examples.
Ms. Xu Xueli, a Falun Gong practitioner from Tianjin, was released after eight years of imprisonment on September 25, 2013. Her family was in shock when they saw her: she had suffered a mental collapse.
Ms. Xu was illegally arrested in 2005 and sentenced to an eight-year prison term. She was detained in the Tianjin Women's Prison, where she had been tortured to the verge of death several times. Her husband divorced her due to pressure from authorities. Her parents, both in their 70s, had waited for her to be released from prison.
Once released, her parents were shocked at the changes they witnessed. Ms. Xu couldn't talk rationally and went into a temper tantrum without provocation. She was very fearful, and when she heard the word police, she hid in the corner of the home.
Practitioner Ms. Yang Jian, in her 40s, was tortured until she had a mental breakdown at the beginning of this year in the same prison.
Police had arrested Ms. Yang on September 15, 2010. She was sentenced to a five-year prison term and held in the Tianjin Women's Prison.
A guard called Ms. Yang's family on the evening of January 10, 2013, to tell them that Ms. Yang had been transferred to the hospital due to a mental breakdown.
Prison officials refused to let her family see her the next morning, claiming that she had recovered and was out of the hospital.
Prison guards at the Tianjin Women's Prison order inmates to monitor and torture practitioners in an effort to make them renounce Falun Gong. Practitioners are beaten and cursed at, not allowed to keep themselves clean, and deprived of food, water, and sleep.
According to previous reports, the inmates forced practitioners to take sleeping pills, causing many to become dizzy and confused. They suffered memory loss and were numb to things around them. The authorities also forced practitioners' husbands to divorce them.
A criminal inmate recently released from this prison reported that the persecution of practitioners has worsened, and the methods used to torture them have become more hideous. One of the prison rules is that all practitioners must be “transformed.”
Inmates that monitor practitioners torture them and threaten retaliation against their families by gangsters if they refuse to renounce Falun Gong.
Ms. Li Yanxia is one of the practitioners who was brutally tortured in Tianjin Women's Prison. She was once beaten with stools.
The Tianjin Women's Prison was rewarded by the Judicial Department for its “outstanding performance” in persecuting Falun Gong.