Woman Tortured While Serving Four Years Because of Her Faith
(Minghui.org) A woman from Qingyuan County, Liaoning Province, was recently released from Liaoning Women’s Prison after suffering four years of torture for refusing to give up her belief in Falun Gong, a mind and body improvement practice that has been persecuted in China since 1999.
Ms. Zhang Shouhui was arrested on April 24, 2015, for attempting to hang up a Falun Gong banner. She was sentenced in 2006 and released on April 23, 2019.
This was Ms. Zheng’s fifth arrest since the persecution began. Before her recent imprisonment, she was held in forced labor camps twice for a total of about three years. She was released before the end of each term when she was near death from torture.
In the forced labor camp, Ms. Zheng witnessed Ms. Wang Xiuxia being tortured to death, which almost destroyed her mentally. Ms. Zheng was also cuffed to an iron chair and beaten, soaked with cold water, exposed to bright light for long hours, tormented in a mental hospital, and made to wear heavy shackles. She almost died several times.
The following is Ms. Zhang’s account of what happened to her after after her April 2015 arrest:
In the evening on April 24, Ms. Jin Fengzhi, Ms. Xu Ping, and I were about to hang up a Falun Gong banner when, out of nowhere, eight police officers showed up. Officer Peng Yue from the Fushun Domestic Security told me that if I would not press charges against him and if I gave him some cash, he would let me go. I refused. They took my keys and confiscated my belongings.
They took us to the Fumin Police Station and then to the Fushun Detention Center that same night. Without a warrant, officer Peng ransacked my home and confiscated my computer, Falun Gong books, and personal belongings at 1 a.m. the next day, leaving my husband in shock.
Tortured in Detention Center
I was forced to do slave labor in the Fushun Detention Center. If I couldn’t finish the assigned quota, I would be forced to stand four times a night, an hour each time. My blood pressure skyrocketed because of the constant physical strain. The guard warned everyone that if I failed to stand for an hour, everyone would have to stand for two and a half hours. The peer pressure was intense.
The amount of work kept increasing, and I had to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Most people fell sick due to exhaustion. To protest the abuse, one day everyone refused to eat lunch. I refused to apologize for what we did and was hung on a wall with my hands cuffed for four days.
Torture illustration: Hung up with hands cuffed
The guards often instigated other detainees to abuse Falun Gong practitioners to earn rewards or reduced sentences. One night, six detainees beat and kicked me when I did the Falun Gong exercises to stay healthy. One of them grabbed my hair and banged my head against the floor. A guard later accused me of attacking them.
Physical Torment and Humiliation
I was sentenced to four years in prison in July 2016 and transferred to Liaoning Women’s Prison in February 2017. When I refused to follow an inmate’s orders, a guard instigate other inmates to strip and videotape me, threatening to post the video on the Internet. To try to force me to renounce Falun Gong, the inmates left the windows open in the winter and denied me a blanket and access to hot water. When I refused to sign statements to renounce my practice or to slander Falun Gong, the inmates held me down and pressed my fingerprints on the statements.
I told the authorities that my statements were forged. The guard retaliated and made me stand still for long hours. After I fainted, the inmates poured water on the floor and dragged me back and forth until the floor was dry.
They punished and humiliated me in other ways, too. I was denied toilet use and often targeted and physically assaulted. The prisoners posted stickers with words slandering Falun Dafa and Master Li on my bed and clothes. For four months I wasn’t allowed to change clothes or given any toilet tissue.
I was transferred to a different ward, where everyone had to do slave labor from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The first night I worked until 9 p.m. It was impossible to finish the daily quota and overtime was a norm. Oftentimes I had to skip meals.