(Minghui.org) A woman in Panjin City, Liaoning Province was sentenced to one year in prison for giving out materials about Falun Gong. She suffered brutal torture during detention and wasn’t released until March 2, 2021.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Arrest
Ms. Sun Xiaojing went to distribute Falun Gong materials on the street on the afternoon of March 4, 2020. A young woman named Zhang Yu received a copy of the materials and reported this to her boyfriend Pei Shuai, a police officer from Xinglong Police Station. Pei then instructed Zhang to follow Ms. Sun.
Shortly afterwards, Pei and five police officers arrested Ms. Sun. The police later raided her home and confiscated two computers even though they were broken. Ms. Sun was taken to Xinglong Police Station and interrogated while being handcuffed to a metal chair.
Ms. Sun was taken to Panjin City Detention Center the next day. She had a fever, but was admitted anyway.
Brutal Forced-Feeding
To protest the illegal arrest, Ms. Sun first refused to wear the uniforms, and then held a hunger strike. On the fifth day of her hunger strike, she was forcibly given infusions, while being handcuffed and shackled. A few days later, the guards began to force-feed her in the quarantine room. She almost suffocated during the force-feeding and her chin was scratched and broken.
Once during the forced-feeding, she was unable to breathe, so deputy director Lin ordered a junior doctor to use the gastric tube. The doctor failed to insert it since Ms. Sun resisted. Another doctor was called in and did it. Ms. Sun began to cough and vomit after the tube was inserted. She then threw up a blood clot, as big as the size of a heart. The inmates assisting the forced-feeding were terrified and cried. They thought it was her heart that had come out.
The detention center forced Ms. Sun to pay for the costs of infusion, gastric tube and blood tests, totaling 1,700 yuan.
Ms. Sun's family deposited another 2,000 yuan to her account, but the police did not allow her to purchase any daily necessities, saying that there was no balance in her account. She did not have toilet paper and had to borrow from others. The guards only allowed her to buy daily necessities after she was transferred to a regular cell on May 9, but the balance on her account became 1,000 yuan. No one told her who used her money without her knowledge.
Framed and Illegal Hearing
Later, Xinglongtai District Procuratorate arraigned Mr. Sun Xiaojing via a video call. She recounted how the police from Xinglong Police Station framed her with the false evidence. She argued that no law ever criminalizes Falun Gong in China or labels it as a cult. Additionally, the Chinese publication bureau has also lifted the ban on Falun Gong books in 2011.
The prosecutor indicted Ms. Sun and moved her case to Xinglongtai District Court on July 20, 2020.
Ms. Sun was tried through a video conference call on September 2, 2020. She refused to accept the court-appointed lawyer, who was instructed by the authorities to enter a guilty plea for her. She acted as her own lawyer and defended her innocence.
She requested the judge read out the contents of Falun Gong materials she gave out. But the judge refused to do so and said he had thrown it away.
The police claimed that they found 89 Falun Gong pamphlets, 11 DVDs, 251 fliers, and two computers, when ransacking her home. But Ms. Sun argued that she didn’t have such things at home. What were taken away by the police were a few letters she wrote to her supervisor at work, after she was fired for practicing Falun Gong. She didn’t know how the police counted those letters as 251 fliers. She demanded the police show the footage of home-ransacking recorded by their body cameras, but the judge refused claiming that the video could not be played, and they would watch it later.
Force-Feeding and Severe Group Beating
After the hearing, Ms. Sun went on a hunger strike again at the detention center, demanding her acquittal. Deputy director Lin talked to her on the sixth day of her hunger strike, but she did not back out.
She was transferred to cell 312 on October 2, 2020, where the cell head was known for torturing people. As soon as Ms. Sun arrived at the new cell, she was beaten by the cell head with more than ten cellmates. Division chief Zhao told the cell head, “No matter what method you use, as long as you can make her eat, you can have your meals. Otherwise, no food for you either.”
So the inmates in her new cell began to torture her together. Some slapped her face with the soles of their shoes, one stomped on her body, and one grabbed her hair and slammed her head against the wall. While beating her, the cell head cursed, “I’d rather beat you to death, I’d rather pay your life with mine.” After the beating, they began to force-feed her for two hours.
Every force-feeding session was a torture for Ms. Sun. Even the guards watching it through the surveillance camera said to the inmates, “It’s horrible to watch you force-feeding her.” Ms. Sun’s chin was again scratched up badly in less than two days.
During one feeding session, she almost suffocated. She was also deprived of sleep at night. One inmate stayed up, poking her every half an hour to wake her up. They also taped her eyes so to prevent her from closing her eyes during the day.
Later Xinglong District Court sentenced her to one year in prison. She appealed with the Panjin City Intermediate Court, but it ruled to uphold her original verdict.
After the hunger strike, Ms. Sun suffered severe chest pain all the time. Instead of taking her to the hospital as she requested, the deputy director Lin slapped her twice, and ordered her cellmates to torture her. They dragged her to the bathroom, where there was no surveillance cameras, and force-fed her with water. She strongly resisted and her clothes were drenched.
In mid-December 2020, the guards forced Ms. Sun to stand up for long periods of time despite her weak condition from the last hunger strike, which made her even weaker. To protest the persecution, she held another hunger strike and refused to wear the uniform or sit on a small stool. So all of her cellmates started to torture her together again.
One of the inmates named Gao Haimin tortured Ms. Sun the hardest. She stripped Ms. Sun’s clothes in the winter, leaving her in only her underpants. Then she left the window open to freeze and humiliate her. She also pulled some of Ms. Sun’s hair out and pinched her to cause her body to bruise.
Ms. Sun was forced-fed, while having her limbs chained to the bed. The guards kept the window open during the force-feeding and several older inmates got a cold themselves afterwards. After the force-feeding, the guards left her chained to the bed and kept the feeding tube and urinary catheter in her for about a week.
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