(Minghui.org) Over the past 16 years, a 66-year-old woman who owned a resin factory in Heilongjiang Province was forcibly taken into custody three times, detained twice, and put in prison for five years. She has suffered relentless mistreatment simply because she has refused to give up her practice of Falun Gong, a spiritual belief persecuted in China since 1999.
Ms. Wang Shulun (王淑兰) from Harbin City began to practice Falun Gong in 1994. Before she became a practitioner, she had heart problems, back pain, and migraine headaches. Her symptoms disappeared shortly after she learned the practice.
Two local policemen broke into Ms. Wang's home in March 2003. Without giving a reason, they took her to the police station and cuffed her onto an iron chair before they filled in the arrest warrant. The police then ransacked her home and confiscated her Falun Dafa literature and personal belongings. While she was being detained in the 2nd Detention Center in Harbin, the guards extorted money from her family under false pretenses.
After being locked in the detention center for three months, Ms. Wang was officially arrested and tried in court. She wasn't given legal representation and her family was not allowed in court. The judge sentenced her to five years, and she was put in Heilongjiang Women's Prison in December 2003.
When she first got to the prison, she resisted when treated like a criminal, refusing to comply with demeaning orders. The captain slapped her, and a guard then kicked her and struck her with a baton.
A prisoner was assigned to watch Ms. Wang around the clock. Ms. Wang treated the prisoner with kindness and explained to her why the persecution was wrong. Three months later the prisoner was transferred to another division, but continued to send Ms. Wang food to express her gratitude.
Two more prisoners were assigned to watch Ms. Wang. Every day they forced her to watch video programs that slandered Falun Gong. As prisoners were promised sentence reductions if they managed to force practitioners to give up their beliefs, the prisoners often tortured them in a solitary cell. The practitioners would be tied down in an extremely painful position with their mouths taped shut or deprived of sleep.
Ms. Wang began to do the Falun Gong exercises in prison in February 2006 to keep herself healthy. The captain then locked her in a solitary cell, where she was chained to the ground and left in the cold without proper clothing or heating. A month later she returned to her cell, only to be taken to another room and tortured. She was handcuffed to a desk with her arms spread far apart from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. for a week.
In an intensified effort to force practitioners to renounce their beliefs, the authorities had four prisoners monitor each practitioner and keep them from talking to each other. Practitioners were forced to sit still on a small stool for a long period of time every day. If a practitioner made a “wrong move,” she and the four prisoners would all be punished, drawing harsher treatment by the monitoring prisoners.
Ms. Wang was released in March 2008.
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