(Minghui.org) Ms. Wu Shuhua, 68, from Chaigoubao Town of Huaian County, Hebei Province, has been arrested and detained in a forced labor camp several times for practicing Falun Gong. She was shocked with electric batons and subjected to other tortures while detained.
After the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999, Ms. Wu went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice. She was arrested in Tiananmen Square on December 26, 2000, and taken back to Huaian County.
Ms. Wu was held in a detention center for over 10 days and was released after her family was fined more than 1,500 yuan. The police often harassed her afterward.
The police tried to arrest her for the second time on the evening of July 20, 2002, while Ms. Wu and her grandson were having dinner. She escaped through the back and hid in the hills behind the village as the police searched for her through most of that night.
To avoid further arrests and harassment, Ms. Wu left home and became destitute.
She went to visit her daughter in Xuanhua County in September 2002, but her son-in-law reported her to the authorities. She was arrested and sent back to Huaian County.
Ms. Wu was detained at the Huaian County Detention Center for 45 days before serving a three-year term at the Gaoyang Forced Labor Camp. She was brutally tortured in the forced labor camp.
She was ordered to sign a guarantee statement promising to quit practicing Falun Gong. When she refused, a guard slapped her face so hard that she became dizzy and had ringing in her ears. The guard also kicked her legs and hit her in the chest.
One winter evening, Ms. Wu was taken outside to an open field while wearing only a thin layer of clothing. Two guards chained her to the ground and began shocking her with electric batons while yelling at her to give up Falun Gong. When she again refused, they took turns kicking her legs, slapping her face, and shocking her head, feet, and hands.
The guards tortured her from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Her face became deformed and unrecognizable, and the area around her ankles were burned from the electric shocks.
Ms. Wu was later locked in solitary confinement and tortured because she still refused to give up her belief in Falun Gong. The guards hit her head against the wall and pulled her hair while shocking her with two electric batons.
The guards also pushed her to the ground, took off her shoes and socks, and began to shock her hands, feet, and neck.
Ms. Wu was taken to a room one afternoon and cuffed to a metal ring on the floor. Electric wires were then tied around her thumbs and connected to a power outlet. Ms. Wu immediately lost consciousness from the first shock.
The guards later threatened to put nails in her feet if she continued to refuse to renounce her belief. When she told them that she would rather die than give up Falun Gong—because it was not wrong to try to be a good person according to the teachings of the practice—they stopped torturing her.
Before Ms. Wu began practicing Falun Gong, she had many diseases including hepatitis, gastritis, arthritis, rheumatic headaches, and neurosis.
She could not afford to get treatments or buy medicine. Her father-in-law sometimes shared some of his medicine with her to help alleviate her pain. Her husband was not sympathetic, however, and treated her harshly.
She started to practice Falun Gong in March 1997. She followed the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and tried to consider others first at all times. All of her symptoms miraculously disappeared soon after she began practicing.