Sichuan Woman Denied Medical Parole, Spends Final Months of 4-Year Prison Term in Hospital
(Minghui.org) A Xichang City, Sichuan Province, resident spent the last few months of her four-year prison term in a hospital as the authorities had never approved her medical parole request despite her stroke diagnosis. When Ms. Luo Mingchun was finally released on August 12, 2023, the once healthy and energetic woman has become a frail person with a pale face, an unsteady gait, and a left hand that is too weak to lift or hold things.
Instead of allowing her son to pick her up from the hospital, six other people from various agencies, including the Xichang City Political and Legal Affairs Committee, the Xichang City Police Department, and Ms. Luo’s local village government, attempted to take her straight to a government office for extended detention, but relented upon her strong protest.
Ms. Luo was arrested on August 12, 2019 for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. She credits the practice for lifting her out of depression and curing her pyelonephritis (bacterial infection causing inflammation of the kidneys), but she became a target of the persecution.
The Xichang City Court sentenced her to four years in prison on December 9, 2020, and the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture Intermediate Court rejected her appeal on March 2, 2021.
Ms. Luo served most of her prison term at the Xichang City Detention Center, before being transferred to the Second Ward of Sichuan Province Women’s Prison in Chengdu City on April 10, 2023. She had developed very high blood pressure in 2022, but the detention center never informed her family of her health status and still worked with the prison to keep her in custody. After her prison transfer, her health continued to decline and she was diagnosed with cerebral infarction.
The arrest, indictment, trial, sentencing of Ms. Luo has been extensively reported. The rest of the article focuses on her ordeals in the prison.
Abused on Arrival in Prison
On April 10, 2023, Yang Yong, director of the Xichang City Detention Center, led three guards (including Song Jianping and Jiang Amu) and drove Ms. Luo to the Sichuan Province Women’s Prison.
During the required physical examination upon admission, Ms. Luo was found to have high blood pressure (with a systolic blood pressure reading of more than 180 mmHg when a normal range is 120 or lower), diabetes, and heart failure. The guards ordered the inmates to force feed her hypertension and blood sugar medicines.
Ms. Luo did Falun Gong meditation and the inmates stopped her by pulling her legs out of position. They forced her to sit on a small stool from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, except during meal times. They also played videos for her that slandered Falun Gong and its founder.
Torture reenactment: sitting on a small stool
The guards did not allow Ms. Luo to use any daily necessities and even ordered her to turn in the toilet paper she brought to the prison from the detention center. She refused to comply and soon ran out of toilet paper. She had diarrhea on the very day of her prison admission and soiled her underwear. The inmates assigned to monitor her didn’t allow her to change for several days. They also told her that she must seek permission from the prison authorities in order to purchase daily necessities. But they later said that she must renounce Falun Gong first.
On April 12, 2023, guard Li Junfang, who was in charge of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners in the Second Ward, came to Ms. Luo’s cell and attempted to force her to write statements to renounce Falun Gong by threatening to shock her with an electric baton and pepper spray her. Li bragged that she even got 89-year-old Ms. Chen Baoqiong to renounce Falun Gong and to do hard labor.
It is unclear whether Ms. Luo wrote the statements as ordered.
Denied Family Visits
A prison guard called Ms. Luo’s parents on the afternoon of her prison admission and informed them of her medical conditions discovered during the physical examination. Her parents urged the prison to reject her admission to avoid responsibility should anything happen to her. The guard didn’t agree.
A few days later, the elderly couple mailed an application to the Prison Affairs Division and the Second Ward to have their daughter released on medical parole, but the prison never responded.
In early May, Ms. Luo’s parents mailed the parole application again to the aforementioned two departments within the prison, as well as to the Sichuan Provincial Prison Administration Bureau and another relevant government agency.
The couple didn’t receive any response, but Ms. Luo was taken to the Sichuan Province Prison Administration Central Hospital (located in Jintang County, Chengdu City and also known to locals as Jintang Prison Hospital) on June 5.
Ms. Luo’s parents traveled from Xichang City to Sichuan Province Women’s Prison on June 13, but their request to visit her was denied. Her lawyer went to the prison the next day. Only then did the prison reveal that she was being hospitalized. Her lawyer was allowed to see her in the Jintang Hospital.
Diagnosed with Stroke
Guard Li Junfang and the prison education department head Liao Qunfang picked Ms. Luo up from the Jintang Hospital on June 16, despite her doctor’s objection and her still unstable blood pressure and blood sugar. Li and Liao were eager to take her back to the prison because the higher-up was going to inspect the prison to see how well they had “transformed” Falun Gong practitioners.
On June 21, Li and Liao forced Ms. Luo to read propaganda statements smearing Falun Gong and its founder as part of the inspection process. Ms. Luo cried while reading the propaganda and nearly collapsed afterwards as she knew there was nothing bad about Falun Gong.
In order to “reinforce” the “transformation result,” Li and Liao further forced Ms. Luo to write study notes slandering Falun Gong and its founder. Under the tremendous pressure, she couldn’t fall asleep at night and felt like a zombie.
Starting on June 25, the prison ordered Ms. Luo to also do hard labor, despite her frail health. She began to feel dizzy on July 5. Her systolic blood pressure measured at around 190 mmHg. The guards gave her medication the next day. She was so weak that she didn’t have enough strength to use a nail clipper. On July 7, she couldn’t even pick up a steamed bun and also began drooling.
The prison hospital doctor examined her on July 8 and said that the hypertension medicine (Reserpine) given to her may have caused deficiency in potassium and sodium. He prescribed some drugs to counteract the side effects, but they didn’t alleviate Ms. Luo’s symptoms.
On July 10, Ms. Luo was seen at the prison hospital again and was diagnosed with cerebral infarction. She was then taken straight to the Jintang Hospital, where the doctors there confirmed her stroke diagnosis and paralysis on one side of her body.
On July 17, the guards went to the Jintang Hospital to see if she still held firm to her faith. She said she’d never give up her belief and condemned them for persecuting innocent people like her. The prison forbade the hospital from showing Ms. Luo her own medical records. Even after she was later released on August 12, she was still never given her own medical records.
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