(Minghui.org) A Pingdu City, Shandong Province resident was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2017 for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. Ms. Li Li was brutally tortured while serving time at Shandong Province Women’s Prison.
Prior to Ms. Li’s latest imprisonment, she had been twice sentenced to four-year terms and once given a two-year forced labor term, simply for upholding her faith.
Arrest
Ms. Li, 49, was arrested on January 31, 2017, the fourth day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, by officers from Taishan Road Police Station. She was released on the same evening.
Officer Xu Zenquan led five others and broke into Ms. Li’s home on the morning of April 11, 2017. After taking her to the police station, the police ransacked her home without her presence and confiscated a printer and some Falun Gong-related belongings.
Ms. Li was later taken to Pudong Detention Center, where she was forced to go through a physical examination. Police officer Xu Zenquan grabbed her by the hair, pinned her to the ground, and drew her blood.
Pingdu City Court sentenced her to three and a half years in prison on October 11, 2017. After seven months of detention at the detention center, Ms. Li was taken to Shandong Province Women’s Prison on November 11, 2017.
Below is Ms. Li’s account of the torture she suffered in the prison.
Gagging
Upon arriving at the prison, I was locked up in a bathroom for shouting “Falun Dafa is good.” The bathroom did not have a surveillance camera, and six inmates, including three very tall and strong women (Tang Weiwei, Lu Meng, and Zhang Yaoyun), took turns torturing me.
They swirled shoe brushes and rags inside my mouth every day, which caused my entire mouth to fester and bleed. Every time they pulled the rag out of my mouth, it was stained with blood. My mouth was so swollen that I couldn’t close it and had trouble eating.
They often push the rag down my throat, making me want to vomit all the time.
They also came up with a cruel way to torture me: after gagging me with a rag, they covered my mouth with a towel, then took another towel, wrapped it around my mouth, and tied it at the back of my neck, and then twisted it hard. A lot of hair was caught while they twisted the towel, and that part of my scalp ended up with blisters. They also twisted hard to make my head tilt to the left or right, which suffocated me. My whole body was in excruciating pain.
Exposure to Freezing Cold
Inmate Lu Meng once tortured me on a freezing cold winter day until midnight. Then she poured two basins of cold water from the top of my head. My whole body was wet and I immediately began shivering. She also opened the window to freeze me.
During the second half of the night, she gagged me, covered my mouth with a towel, and threw me onto the floor. I was forced to sleep in the wet clothes. I was freezing and shivering and could not fall asleep.
Later, following the guards’ order, Lu Meng deprived me of sleep and forced me to stand facing the open window at night, when the temperature was below freezing. They also gagged me and wrapped my mouth and head with an additional towel. The torture lasted for an entire month.
Forced to Do Leg Split
Later, I was confined in a padded, soundproof solitary cell on the second floor. The windows were sealed, and the cell was dark. The pungent smell of the padding made it hard for me to breathe and caused me headaches. An inmate told me that many practitioners gave up their belief because they could not stand the confinement.
I meditated with my legs crossed to keep my mind alert. When inmate Li Ying saw me meditating, she instructed the other inmates to spread my legs in a split position. Two inmates each took a stool and put each of my legs under one stool. They each sat on one stool and constantly moved the stool backward so my legs split more. Sometimes, one inmate pushed my upper body to bend against the ground and stomped hard on my back.
The tendons on my inner thighs were in excruciating pain. Inmate Wang Bona, who was a dancer, told the other inmates that this position won’t break my legs.
Wang also often beat me with the toilet brush, targeting my inner thighs, which bruised badly as a result. She also used the brush to poke my private part harshly.
I was tortured day and night for nearly a month, until I was on the verge of death.
One day, inmate Zhang Yaoyun yanked me up from the floor, kicked me to the wall, and stomped on my shoulders. The guards were watching us via surveillance camera and they asked the inmates to take a picture of me for the name tag. As I was too weak to open my eyes, they just took a picture of me like that.
Then they dragged me away from the wall and kept my legs in a split position. I couldn’t support my body, so I pressed my hands against the ground. Zhang stomped on my hands and crushed all the fingers and the backs of my hands. Both of my hands became black and purple afterward. Many of my finger joints were permanently damaged.
Zhang did this to me for days, while blocking the surveillance camera.
Close Monitoring
Later, when I was locked up in solitary confinement, the guards ordered inmate Yu Airong to closely watch me. All the inmates who monitored me and other practitioners were required to record every move we made, including how many times we blinked our eyes.
Yu was ordered to watch another practitioner in the confinement cell after me. She demanded the practitioner report whatever she did. Since she did not comply, she was not allowed to use the restroom and she ended up relieving herself in her pants. Yu did not allow her to change and forced her to sleep in her bed with soiled pants.
Yu also deliberately urinated on the ground, wiped it with the practitioner’s towel, and then on the practitioner’s body. She did this for days. She also closed the door tightly for a long time to make the room smell worse.
Then she was assigned to monitor a third practitioner in a confinement cell, a disabled woman in her 60s who was unable to walk and had to move around with the help of a stool. Yu still forced her to fetch the water in a bucket and wipe the floor with a rag, scolding and insulting her at the same time.
Related reports:
After Ten Years of Detention, Shandong Woman Detained Again
A Shandong Woman’s Defense: Falun Gong Taught Me to Be a Good Person
Ms. Li Li and Ms. Jiang Tao from Shandong Province Illegally Sentenced
Police Accept Falun Gong Practitioner’s Bail Request After Her Lawyer’s Unwavering Efforts
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