(Minghui.org) The police in Kunming City, Yunnan Province arrested a disabled local woman on September 24, 2022 because of her faith in Falun Dafa, a meditation practice also known as Falun Gong that has been persecuted in China since July 1999.
The officers put Ms. Guo Ling, who could barely walk, in Haishan Police Station overnight, interrogated her the next day, and collected her blood sample and fingerprints against her will. They did not put her in a detention center because she failed the health exam. After her release, the police continued to monitor her, and frequently went to her home to photograph and harass her.
Ms. Guo, 65, retired from a specialty food company in Kunming City. She suffered polio when she was little, and couldn’t walk normally after that. She later contracted multiple illnesses, and suffered years of pain until her practice of Falun Dafa healed her. She thus became a steadfast practitioner, even after the persecution started.
In the past 23 years of persecution, the authorities arrested her multiple times and she spent a total of 11 years in prison because she refused to renounce her faith. Inside Yunnan 2nd Women’s Prison, the guards forced her to sit still 16 hours a day on a tiny stool for two years. The lack of blood circulation caused permanent tissue damage in her hip joints, which resulted in necrosis.
The frequent incarceration in solitary confinement took a toll on her mental health and caused her to suffer from agitated hallucinations. The authorities still refused to release her, until her family filed charges against the prison authorities. By the time she was released on medical parole in November 2011, she had become paralyzed.
Torture reenactment: Sitting still all day on a tiny stool
The police and community officials continued to harass Ms. Guo after she returned home, and forced her to routinely report to the police. Not being able to withstand the mental pressure, her husband filed for divorce. She was forced to move out and rent an apartment, and lived on her meager pension. To further persecute her, the Bureau of Social Security in Wuhua District in Kunming City suspended her pension, and demanded that she return the pension received while she was in prison.
Details of Latest Arrest
Four men stopped Ms. Guo on her way home in the evening of September 24, 2022. They claimed that they were the police, but only one of them showed his police badge. They forced their way into her house and, without a search warrant, ransacked her place and confiscated her keys and cash. During the search, Li Jiankun, deputy chief of Haikou Police Station, brought over a blank search warrant and flashed it in front of her. The police camera only pointed at her and not the other officers. The police never gave her a list of confiscated properties.
Later the police went to ransack Ms. Guo’s daughter’s home and confiscated her belongings at around 10:30 p.m. when no one was home. Again they did not issue an inventory of the confiscated objects. By the time they took Ms. Guo back to Haikou Police Station, it was midnight, and they simply left her in a waiting room for the night.
The next morning, two officers interrogated her without telling her why she was being arrested. When she refused to answer the questions, the officers dragged her outside and forcibly took her photos, fingerprints and blood samples without her consent.
Three officers took her to a hospital for a health checkup. The results showed that her left hip was injured and right leg fractured. As the local detention center rejected her admission, the officers took her back to the police station. They ordered her to sign a piece of paper without letting her read the contents. After she refused to sign, the police announced that that they’d monitor her after they sent her home and threatened to put her in prison. She was released later in the evening.
The authorities continued to harass her after she went home. Four officers from Haikou Police Station went to her place on September 30 to warn her not to go out. Three days later, deputy chief Li led three officers to her home and warned her that she was being released on bail and that she was still facing prosecution for practicing Falun Gong.
Beginning in October 5, an officer went to her residence every day for a week to photograph her. After that he came every few days to do the same. One day when she went to see a dentist, the officer called as soon as she arrived at the dentist’s office and ordered her to go home immediately.
The following is Ms. Guo’s own account of how she started the practice of Falun Gong and how the Chinese Communist regime persecuted her in the past 23 years.
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Free of Illness After Practicing Falun Dafa
When I was nine months old, I had a very high fever and developed polio. When I was 20 years old, I had multiple illnesses: a tumor in my brain, boils in my ears, rhinitis in my nose, an oral cavity ulcer, and cervical vertebra ossein proliferation. Every joint was unbearably painful. Three months after my daughter’s birth, I suffered from an urinary tract infection and frequent bloody stool. All of the treatments that I tried failed.
One day in April 1997, a neighbor brought me a copy of Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Dafa.
I finished reading Zhuan Falun in three days. My neighbor introduced me to another practitioner and I was given more Falun Dafa books. Shortly after that we established a practice site at my home. We did the exercises in the morning and read the book in the evening. There were five to six practitioners initially. Then it expanded to more than 20 practitioners. Just one month later, I discharged a substantial amount of blood and pus. Since then, all of my illnesses except some polio sequelae were gone.
Persecuted Repeatedly
Arrested and Family’s Property Seized
On July 20, 1999, the communist regime started persecuting Falun Dafa. One day in September that year, Jiang Shaowen, the police chief, came to my home and forced me to hand in my five Falun Dafa books. Three months later, Yang Lingxiao, the Party secretary of the company where I worked, came to my home with the security head and ordered me to write a “guarantee statement.”
I was arrested on February 19, 2000 for doing Falun Dafa meditation in a park. Dozens of officers surrounded me and took away my audio tapes and tape-player. They interrogated me in the afternoon and released me. A month later, I was given 15 days of detention.
I was arrested again one afternoon in the summer of 2000. The police raided my home and took away dozens of Falun Dafa books, three recorders and other things, including more than 900 yuan in cash.
After that, the police took me to the police department. A section head interrogated me until after 11:00 p.m. The police took me to a hospital for a physical examination and then sent me to the Wuhua Detention Center.
About one month later the police gave me one year at the Yunnan Women’s Forced Labor Camp. Because I am disabled, the labor camp officials refused to accept me, and I was sent home, only to be taken to a brainwashing center two months later.
Two officers searched my home again in early fall 2001. They again confiscated my Falun Dafa books, tapes and other informational materials. They accused me of distributing Dafa materials. When I refused to go with them, a male officer dragged me for over ten meters and pushed me into the police car. My wrist was injured and my eyes became swollen after being beaten by him.
I was working at a bicycle pavilion on July 22, 2002, when numerous police officers turned the pavilion upside down. They took away my Dafa books, exercises tapes, informational materials, 1,000 yuan in cash, and other personal belongings. They took me to my mother’s home and searched her place. My mother, who was in her 70s, was terrified.
Around noon, the police came to my home. My husband and daughter were terrified and did not dare to talk to me. The police took away my pictures of Master Li (the founder of Falun Dafa) and Dafa books.
After leaving my home in Kunming, they took me to my other residence in Songming County and confiscated more Falun Dafa materials there.
Then they held me in a small, gloomy room at the police station overnight. I was taken to the Kunming No. 2 Detention Center next morning. During my eight months of detention there, I was ordered to sort beans and peppers every day without pay. The police also came occasionally to interrogate me.
Sentenced to Seven Years of Imprisonment
I stood trial at the Songming County Court at the beginning of 2003 and later sentenced to seven years.
In March 2003, I was sent to the Yunnan No. 2 Women’s Prison. Three inmates monitored me around the clock. Each morning the guards forced me to read books slandering Falun Dafa. I was forced to do unpaid labor in the afternoon, including sorting coffee beans and making bracelets or bead embroidery.
When I refused to do the labor, the guards put me in solitary confinement. I was given thin bedding at 11:00 p.m. that would be taken away at 6:00 a.m. I could only sit there. I was held there for about 10 days.
Less than two months later, I was put into a solitary cell a second time, for about two months. The third time was in February 2004. As I went on a hunger strike in protest, several inmates dragged me to the prison hospital. They immobilized my head and hands, while the prison doctor inserted the feeding tube into my nose. My nose was bleeding. I was taken back to the confinement cell after the force-feeding and held there for another two months.
In March 2005, I was put into the solitary confinement cell again for two months. After that, they sent me to the ward for the elderly and disabled people. Guard Liu Yan forced me to write a daily “thought report.” I was released from the prison on February 23, 2008.
Sentenced to Four Years of Imprisonment
While handing out Falun Dafa booklets on January 15, 2009, I was reported and arrested. The police interrogated me and confiscated the Falun Dafa materials that I had, my cell phone, MP3 player and more than 2,400 yuan in cash. I was taken to the Wuhua Detention Center that night and held there for more than seven months.
The Kunming Intermediate Court held a secret trial of my case in June 2009. I received a four-year sentence in August that year.
Femur Necrosis Due to Abuse in Prison
I was taken to the Yunnan No. 2 Women’s Prison on September 8, 2009. As soon as I arrived, I was forced to sit on a small stool from 6:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and was forbidden to move or change positions. After two years of such torture, I developed femur necrosis in June 2011 and then a back injury two months later further prevented me from moving.
The authorities never informed my family of my case since they arrested me in January 2009. My family did not know when I was tried and where I was imprisoned. A guard called my family a few months before I was released and claimed that I wanted to see them for emergency reasons. My husband and daughter came the next morning on June 15, 2011 and was kept waiting for 1.5 hours before they could see me. An inmate had to carry me to the meeting room. My family was saddened to see that I looked emaciated and exhausted.
A guard took my husband to another room during the visit and ordered him to sign a Notice of Medical Conditions, on which it said that my hip necrosis was an aftereffect of my polio, and that I suffered agitated hallucinations. My husband declined. He said that I was in good health before the arrest and my right leg became crippled due to polio, yet it was my left hip that became necrotic. He demanded the authorities to explain what had happened to me in the past two years.
The guard then attempted to force my daughter to sign the Notice, but she refused to comply as well.
My family later filed a lawsuit against the prison for torturing me. They recalled the torture I suffered in the Yunnan Province Second Women’s Prison while serving a seven-year given in 2003. They said, “The guards took away Guo Ling’s crutches and forced her to walk a long distance to do labor intensive work. She refused to renounce her faith in Falun Dafa and the guards many times put her under strict management and in solitary confinement.
“During solitary confinement the guards would not allow her to wash up, shower, wash clothes, talk, and she could use the toilet three times a day. The guards put her in solitary confinement several times, and appointed an inmate to watch her around the clock so that she couldn’t talk to others. When under strict management, she’d have to sit still on a low tiny stool from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. with her hands on her knees. Once she moved, the guards would beat her. She went on a hunger strike for 56 days to protest the torture, and the guards made other inmates force feed her.”
Based on what happened to me during the first imprisonment, my family suspected that the guards tortured me in similar ways the second time in prison. “A healthy person would be in extreme physical discomfort after sitting still on a sofa for 16 hours a day, let alone a person with a disabled leg on a tiny stool. Also an ordinary person would mentally collapse when being monitored and yelled at all day every day and forced to do things against their will.”
My family demanded that the prison release me and pay for my medical treatment. They also demanded that the prosecutor look into the torture I suffered and hold the prison responsible.
Not wanting to shoulder responsibility, the prison released me on medical parole in October 2011.
Continued Harassment
In all these years I was imprisoned, the police often harassed my husband and daughter at home. As I was almost completely paralyzed when I was released, Yan Hao from the Taoyuan District ordered my husband to report to her every week, and then police officer Li Xinhua talked to him every month. Unable to take so much pressure, my husband divorced me a month later. After I was forced to move out and had my pension suspended, Yan continued to call me and ordered me to report my daily activities to her.
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