(Minghui.org) By the time Ms. Zhang Yuhong finished serving four years in November 2022 for practicing Falun Gong, the once-healthy woman had become incapacitated due to a stroke induced by torture.
When the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison informed Ms. Zhang’s son to pick her up, he refused to do so and insisted that the prison bear responsibility for her condition. The prison took Ms. Zhang to a sanatorium and attempted to sue her son for deserting her.
So far, only Ms. Zhang’s sister has been allowed to see her in the sanatorium. As soon as Ms. Zhang saw her sister, she asked to go home. She told her sister that the prison guards hung her up and beat her. She also saw the guards pouring boiling water over another Falun Gong practitioner. Ms. Zhang became very emotional when she described the torture she suffered in the prison.
Only a few days later, Ms. Zhang was taken to the hospital again and unable to talk anymore. The doctor told her sister that she suffered another stroke. As she already had two craniotomies following an earlier stroke, the doctor couldn’t operate on her anymore and recommended only conservative treatment. It’s not clear whether Ms. Zhang suffered any more abuse during those few days.
Ms. Zhang, a Fuxin City, Liaoning Province resident in her 50s, was arrested on November 7, 2018 after being followed by the police. She was sentenced to four years in July 2019 and taken to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison on September 24, 2019.
Ms. Zhang suffered a stroke in late June 2020 and remained in a coma for months. When her family went to the intensive care unit to visit her, the guards would not let them get near her and refused to answer any questions. A doctor told her family that she had injuries on her back, but the prison guards prevented her family from examining her and didn’t allow the doctor to give them any details on her condition.
The guards also forced her family to sign several documents clearing the prison of any responsibility concerning Ms. Zhang’s condition. While it was the prison guards that didn’t allow Ms. Zhang’s family to visit her, they blamed her family for not visiting her on a regular basis, alleging that was what “caused her to become ill.”
The doctor later operated on Ms. Zhang twice. The guards prevented the doctor from communicating with her family, but told them they had to pay 100,000 yuan to cover Ms. Zhang’s medical expenses.
Ms. Zhang’s family had a video meeting with her in early February 2021. She was no longer on a ventilator and was able to speak, but not clearly. She also had trouble moving the right side of her body.
She was later transferred from the fifth ward to the eleventh ward for the elderly and disabled prisoners. The prison authorities demanded 200,000 yuan from her family in exchange for her release. As her family couldn’t afford the extortion, Ms. Zhang was kept in the prison until the end of her term.
When her family was finally allowed to visit her again in November 2021, they were devastated to see her in a wheelchair and a large area on one side of her head had sunken.
The prison guards blamed Ms. Zhang for not behaving well (meaning that she refused to renounce Falun Gong) and they only allowed her to spend 200 yuan on daily necessities each month.
Her family questioned how could the guards continue to persecute her when she was already like this. Ms. Zhang kept crying during the entire visit. The guards ended the meeting before the scheduled time, fearing that she may become too emotional.
In addition to the physical torture she suffered in the prison, the local social security bureau suspended Ms. Zhang’s pension and demanded that her family return the pension she had received during the first two years following her arrest, citing a policy that Falun Gong practitioners serving time are not entitled to any retirement benefits.
Related reports:
Liaoning Woman Recovering from Stroke Denied Medical Parole and Transferred to the Elderly Ward
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