(Minghui.org) A woman in Anlu City, Hubei Province, has been on a hunger strike since she was arrested on October 24, 2023, for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Because Ms. Kong Jiuhong’s husband and child live in a different city, they didn’t find out about her arrest until several days later when her husband returned home. Their front door had been pried open, the garage searched, and Ms. Kong’s computer, printer, and Falun Gong books confiscated. Her husband looked for her everywhere and finally found her at a brainwashing center in nearby Beifan Town, which is under the jurisdiction of Anlu.
Ms. Kong’s husband confirmed that she’d started a hunger strike to protest the persecution on the day of her arrest. He insisted the Anlu City Police Department immediately release her but to no avail.
This wasn’t the first time that Ms. Kong, a former textile factory employee, has been targeted for upholding her faith. She was arrested in February 2000 for going to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. She was escorted back to Anlu, held in the Anlu City No.1 Detention Center for two and a half months, and fined 2,000 yuan. She was arrested again in October 2002 and force-fed over 90 times within a month. Her next arrest was on May 25, 2016, after being reported for talking to villagers about Falun Gong. She was taken to the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, on June 1 that year and held for an unknown amount of time.
In October 2002, when Chen Xunqiu and Zhao Zhifei, the director and deputy director of Hubei Provincial Public Security Bureau, went to Anlu for a meeting, they ordered the police to conduct a mass arrest of local Falun Gong practitioners. Li Mianchu and Nie Hanzhang of the Anlu City 610 Office worked with Tang Jianguo of the Anlu City Domestic Security Office to mobilize a large police force to arrest over 70 practitioners overnight, including Ms. Kong. The two detention centers in Anlu were packed with arrested practitioners.
Ms. Kong was held in isolation in one of the detention centers. Seven male inmates monitored her around the clock in three shifts. They also followed her when she used the restroom. She held a hunger strike to protest, only to be force-fed.
The inmates pried open Ms. Kong’s mouth with a pair of pliers, put a plastic bottle against her tongue and then fastened it by tying a towel across her mouth and head. One person pinched her nose while the rest of them held her hands and feet to prevent her from moving. Then they poured porridge mixed with a large amount of salt into the bottle. They wouldn’t stop to let her breathe until the porridge in the bottle all went into her mouth. Then they poured more food into the bottle and repeated the procedure several times. They didn’t stop until her stomach was visibly bloated and the food almost came up from her stomach into her mouth.
After the force feeding, the inmates restrained Ms. Kong on the bed to prevent her from throwing up. When she tried to vomit, the guards threatened to repeat the force-feeding. She shouted in protest and the guards ordered the inmates to shut the door to prevent others from hearing her. Sometimes the inmates beat her and poured the leftover food onto her hair or down her collar. Her hair would freeze when the guards exposed her to low temperatures.
Liu Liguang, the head of the detention center, once said to Ms. Kong, “Aren’t you on a hunger strike? We will play with you until the end.”
Another guard, Yue Zhonggui, said, “If you don’t behave, we will force-feed you with spicy water.”
Due to the excessive salt in the porridge, Ms. Kong always felt intense, burning pain in her internal organs after the force-feeding. Each force-feeding was like an extreme torture session. She often spit out blood afterwards. She was force-fed over 90 times during the month-long detention.
When the guards took Ms. Kong to the Shayang Forced Labor Camp, she was so emaciated and weak that she couldn’t keep her balance. The labor camp refused to admit her, so the guards had to take her back to the detention center. They made another attempt to get her admitted to the labor camp two weeks later, but the camp still refused to take her due to her fast heart rate and high blood pressure. She was taken back to the detention center again and continued to be subjected to beatings and other forms of torture for refusing to renounce Falun Gong.