(Minghui.org) A resident of Xindian Town, Xingtai City, Hebei Province, was incarcerated for three years after she spoke up for Falun Dafa, a meditation practice that has been persecuted in China since July 1999. The police arrested Ms. Qiao Yunxia, then 37, on October 25, 1999, for appealing for the right to practice Falun Dafa and gave her three years of forced labor in Shijiazhuang City Women’s Forced Labor Camp, where she was tortured because she refused to renounce her faith.
The guards shocked her with electric batons, force-fed her chili powder, hung her up, suffocated her with wet towels, and beat her. As she stayed firm in her faith, the guards put unknown drugs in her food and subjected her to various tests in a hospital.
Quickly her face and limbs deformed, her internal organs failed, her eyes became nearly blind, and her memory faded. She had difficulty breathing and lost her mobility. She was barely alive when the guards let her family take her home in January 2001.
Physical tortures
Ms. Qiao refused to wear the inmates’ uniform or do unpaid labor after she was taken to the labor camp on December 22, 1999. She said she broke no law by upholding her faith. In March 2000, the guards forced all incarcerated practitioners to stand still outdoors against a wall for 17 hours every day for two weeks. The practitioners’ legs swelled up, their facial skin peeled off due to extended sunburn, and some fainted.
One day Ms. Qiao was called to the guards’ office. Seven guards took turns stomping her to the ground. They tied a rope around her neck and to her arms that were twisted behind her back and pulled the rope tighter and tighter. She could barely breathe and felt that her shoulders could dislocate at any time. After they took the rope off, her limbs were numb and her joints were sore. She could not feel her right arm for six months.
Another time the guards bashed her with batons after she refused to do the forced labor. The pain caused her heart rate to go up and she could barely breathe. Even though her legs were numb and she was covered in bruises, the guards still forced her to run, march or stand still all day every day for the next 47 days.
Ms. Qiao was transferred with several practitioners to the 3rd Brigade. The guards ordered some detainees to monitor them and not allow them to leave the cells. When she recited the Falun Dafa teachings or did the exercises, the detainees beat her, grabbed her by the hair, and poured cold water on her head. They also rubbed her mouth with a wet towel until her mouth bled and pried her teeth with a spoon. One detainee claimed that she could use the practitioners to practice killing, and called in a dozen other detainees to beat the powerless practitioners.
In August 2000, a guard instigated the detainees to force-feed Ms. Qiao chili power because she recited the Falun Dafa teachings. She rolled on the ground due to the burning pain. The detainees restrained her by wrapping a towel around her neck and stuffing a towel in her mouth to stop her from screaming.
When she warned the guard that they could have killed someone, the guard told her that there were ways to shirk responsibility. Later the head of the management division made a gesture of injection and told her, “You won’t listen, and I will give you a squirt a few days later.”
Human Drug Experiment
Ma Yulian, a drug addict, offered to get food for Ms. Qiao before everyone started eating. Shortly after the meal, Ms. Qiao began to vomit, and her vomit came with an unusually foul smell. A few days later she lost the physical strength to care for herself. The guards instructed Ma to care for her and collect her urine samples.
One time the guards put Ms. Qiao in a hospital and gave her several shots, claiming to be glucose. She became mentally slow and could not move at will. Her eyesight blurred, and her heart rate sped up. She needed help from others to be able to walk. She was later sent back to the hospital and two men drew her blood sample.
Torture illustration: injection of unknown drugs
The guards took her to the hospital for a reaction test, for which she had to sit in front of a machine and push a button as soon as she saw a light dot on the screen. Another time the people at the hospital clipped her hand and connected the clip to a piece of equipment. She immediately felt a strong current going into her brain, like a hammer striking her head. The current became stronger each time it hit her. The pain was indescribable.
The camp authorities sent Ms. Qiao’s family a critical condition notice in early December 2000, but would not let her family take her home. They continued to take her to the hospital to perform various tests on her.
Ms. Qiao was on the verge of death around mid-January 2001 and the guards took her to the same hospital. Sitting on the bench she could barely breathe and she had chest pain. Her mind was unsettled. A head guard gave her a pill, telling her that it would reduce the pain during her health check. Three men came and sat in front of her as if they were waiting for something to happen. She took the pill, and instantaneously vomited it out, which upset the head guard.
Ms. Qiao developed peripheral neuropathy, and her internal organs and muscles degenerated. She became non-responsive and her face and limbs deformed. She had almost no eyesight and lost her memory. Her heart beat fast and she could not catch her breath. Her body was cold and could barely move. She felt excruciating pain as if someone was scraping her bones and stripping her tendon. She also had bursts of a burning feeling, as if a flow of sulfuric acid water or electric current went through her body. The sharp pain in her head felt like being stabbed by awls, which also caused her face, eyes, and mouth to twitch. Every second felt like an eternity and hard to endure. But she maintained a strong will to live and refused to die there.
With her only having one breath left, the labor camp authorities asked her family to pick her up on January 20, 2001. They wanted her to sign a statement to renounce Falun Dafa before they could let her go. She refused to comply. Three days later, the authorities called her family several times in a day to hurry up and take her home, as she was dying and they did not want to shoulder the responsibility. She returned home on January 23.
While home, she routinely studied Falun Dafa teachings and did the exercises. Without seeking medical attention, Ms. Qiao, a person who once suffered multiple organ failure and was on the verge of death, recovered.
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Category: Torture of Women
