(Minghui.org) A 72-year-old resident of Zhoukou City, Henan Province has been arrested nine times and subjected to various torture for upholding her faith in Falun Gong, since the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution in 1999. As a result, she is unable to walk on her own and she has no strength in her left arm. Yet the police have continued to harass her relentlessly.
A New Life from Practicing Falun Gong
After Ms. Wu Guifang’s husband died of heart disease at a young age, she struggled to raise their three sons on her own. She developed many illnesses and often felt desperate about life.
Ms. Wu’s life was changed after she started to practice Falun Gong on August 15, 1996. She regained her health in a short period of time. Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance helped her find the true meaning of life and rekindled her hope for the future.
However Ms. Wu’s life was ruined after the Chinese communist regime started the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. She was arrested nine times, held in a lockup twice for a total of 4.5 months, and later in a detention center twice for a total of another 5.5 months. She was also given a three-year forced labor camp term, but it wasn’t enforced due to her physical condition. Her home was ransacked six times over the years.
Tortured in Detention
Officers Gao Feng and Liu Min, from the Domestic Security Division of Zhoukou City, seized Ms. Wu from her home on October 3, 1999 without showing any legal documents. When Ms. Wu asked for the reason of her arrest, they replied that since the beginning of the persecution, no one had ever checked in with Ms. Wu about her attitude towards Falun Gong. She was thus regarded as “a fish that slipped through the net” and detained for 15 days.
About one year later, at 3 p.m. on November 9, 2000, police offers Wang Guosheng, Hou Hongqi, Li Defang and Liu Feng broke into Ms. Wu’s apartment without showing a search warrant. They ransacked her apartment and confiscated dozens of Falun Gong books and 500 yuan in cash. They took Ms. Wu to the Domestic Security Division and started to interrogate her at around 6 p.m.
Police officers Li Yuzheng and Liu Dou forced Ms. Wu to kneel down and tied her up with a heavy nylon rope. Li slapped her in the face about 30 times. One of her teeth was knocked out and many other teeth became loose. Li continued hitting Ms. Wu’s head which caused her to have persistent severe hair loss over the next six years. Li didn’t stop until he was exhausted. Ms. Wu almost passed out.
Ms. Wu was forced to kneel for three to four hours before the officers removed the rope from her. However, the abuse didn’t stop. A police officer forced Ms. Wu to hold a wooden stick above her head for half an hour before officer Huang Jinqi took her downstairs to his office. The instructor, Wang Guosheng, was there. He tied Ms. Wu up with a thin nylon rope and then whipped her with a bundle of rope and hit her with a wood stick. He didn’t stop until he was exhausted. After beating her for a few hours, the police ordered Ms. Wu to hold a wooden stick for half an hour, before taking her to another room.
Officer Liu Dou thought the torture was over and hinted Ms. Wu to lie down on a bed. She was in so much pain that she struggled to lie down.
As soon as Huang Jinqi saw her lying down, he yelled at her, “Wu Guifang! How dare you lie down!?” He dragged Ms. Wu off the bed to his office and started a new round of torture. He and instructor Wang tied Ms. Wu up again. They also tightened the rope by pushing her back with their knees. Then they hit her with a wooden stick. They beat her so hard that the stick was broken. They started to beat Ms. Wu with their leather shoes, until the shoes were also broken.
The torture continued until dawn. Wang tightened up the rope again. This time, the pain caused Ms. Wu to faint. After she came to, she was untied. Wang held her arm and Huang grabbed her hand to fingerprint a document without telling her what it was for.
The weather in November was very cold. Ms. Wu had been kneeling on the concrete floor with a thin pair of pants for over ten hours. When Huang and Wang dragged Ms. Wu out of the office, she couldn’t feel her legs. Her face was also disfigured. It has been 22 years since the torture, and she is unable to walk on her own. She has to rely on a small tricycle to get around. She still cannot hold a rice bowl with her left arm. Her right arm shakes uncontrollably.
On January 10, 2001, the police started another interrogation session that lasted four days, after someone exposed the previous torture of Ms. Wu on the internet. They again tortured her.
Later, Ms. Wu learned that the delegation of an international human rights organizations came to Zhoukou to investigate the torture. In order to cover up the persecution, a large number of Falun Gong practitioners were transferred to a different city and given forced labor camp terms.
Ms. Wu was given three years of forced labor in February 2001, but because of her disability from the torture, no detention facility was willing to admit her and she was therefore released on March 4.
After she returned home, the police constantly came to Ms. Wu’s home to harass her, sometimes knocking on her door in the middle of the night. She and her family couldn’t live one day without fear.
More Arrests and Detention
Under the instruction of Li Fengli, the director of the police department, the police took Ms. Wu to a brainwashing center on May 2, 2001. However, the brainwashing center refused to accept her since she couldn’t take care of herself.
The police broke into Ms. Wu’s home in the middle of the night on December 29, 2001 when she was asleep. They confiscated her Falun Gong books, tapes and video disks. They forced Ms. Wu’s son to carry her to the police car and took her away. However, the next day they had to drive Ms. Wu back home due to Ms. Wu’s mobility difficulties.
Ms. Wu was arrested one more time on June 9, 2003 and taken to the Zhoukou City Detention Center. The next day, the police tried to extort 8,000 yuan from Ms. Wu’s family, but they couldn’t afford to pay it.
In the detention center, guard Kang Yuejin put a pair of 25-kg metal shackles and the smallest handcuffs on Ms. Wu. She was unable to move at all. The inmates and the detention center staff pleaded on behalf of Ms. Wu before Kang agreed to remove the shackles.
Ms. Wu developed serious heart disease and high blood pressure due to the torture in the detention center. Her life was in danger. To avoid potential responsibility, the detention center urged the police officers to take her back home.
In July 2005, the police ransacked Ms. Wu’s home again while she was away.
On September 15, 2009, when seven Falun Gong practitioners were at Ms. Wu’s home to study the teachings of Falun Gong together, dozens of plainclothes officers broke in without a search warrant. They arrested Ms. Wu and her guests on charges of “disrupting social stability.” While three of her guests were released the next day, three others were taken to a detention center and detained for three days. Ms. Wu and the remaining guest were taken to the Shangshui County Detention Center.
As soon as they arrived at the detention center, Ms. Wu had a heart attack and was in critical condition. The medical examination showed that she had high blood pressure, heart disease and brain atrophy. The police released her two days later.
Continued Harassment
In March 2021, residential community director Wang Zhenying came to Ms. Wu’s home with a pre-printed statement to renounce Falun Gong and ordered her son to hand copy one. They threatened that if she didn’t renounce Falun Gong, her grandsons would be barred from attending school or finding jobs. Ms. Wu refused to comply.
A week later, Wang came back with the same statement. After Ms. Wu still refused to sign, they threatened to report her to the police.
Since then, they came once a week, ordering her to sign the statement.
On April 14, Gao Xinfu and Ren Pansuai, from the residential community, along with several police officers, came to Ms. Wu’s home. They claimed to be helping a new police officer locate Ms. Wu’s home.
On the morning of April 23, the police ransacked Ms. Wu’s home again. She was taken to the Zhoukou City Police department and held there for a day.
Since then, the community personnel have come to her home to check on her every three weeks. When Ms. Wu was cooking lunch on June 30, she looked up unintentionally and saw that her room was suddenly full of people. She was so traumatized that she had a heart attack. Those people left.
The harassment caused her younger son, who was just discharged from the hospital, to suffer a relapse and he required treatment in an intensive care unit for two days.
Over ten officers harassed Ms. Wu again on July 30. They threatened, “We can arrest you at any time. Whether you are sick or not, it is none of our business.”
For more information about the persecution of Ms. Wu Guifang, please read the article Partially Paralyzed from Torture, 72-year-old Woman Harassed for Her Faith.
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