(Minghui.org) It has recently been confirmed by Minghui.org that a Wuhan City, Hubei Province resident was arrested earlier this year for talking to people about Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong), a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Zhu Chunmei was first held in the Wuhan City First Detention Center and later transferred to the Ankang Hospital after she developed a medical condition in custody. Further details about her case aren’t clear.
This isn’t the first time that Ms. Zhu, the owner of two dry cleaning establishments, has been targeted for her faith. She was previously arrested in Shiyan City in the same province on August 26, 2013, for her efforts to rescue Mr. Xu Xudong, a school teacher in Shiyan arrested on February 26, 2013 for practicing Falun Gong.
Ms. Zhu was taken to the Wuyan Brainwashing Center in Shiyan the next day. She was monitored around the clock and ordered to renounce Falun Gong every day. The authorities specifically hired “brainwashing experts” from Beijing to work on her and other practitioners. Officers from the Zhangwan District Police Department also came in several times to interrogate her.
In addition to the brainwashing, Ms. Zhu also suffered physical torture. She was often handcuffed to a bed or chair, and beaten and kicked. To keep others from hearing her screams, the guards isolated her in a room and kept her handcuffed.
Three guards once beat Ms. Zhu for hours, striking her on the back. She kept shouting “Falun Dafa is good” in protest. The guards didn’t stop until they were exhausted themselves. Ms. Zhu sustained injury to her heart as a result. She was very weak and in a delirious condition. Within a short period after that, she lost 22 teeth.
After one month at the brainwashing center, on September 29, 2013, Ms. Zhu was transferred to the Shiyan City Detention Center. Her arrest was approved on October 30, 2013. The police later submitted her case to the Zhangwan District Procuratorate, which soon indicted her.
Ms. Zhu appeared in the Zhangwan District Court on March 24, 2015. The prosecutor alleged that she broke the law because she hired lawyers to represent other detained Falun Gong practitioners. Ms. Zhu’s lawyer countered that even the police said the practitioners had every right to hire lawyers and he questioned how was it possible that his client was being prosecuted for her kind act of helping others seek legal counsel. The judge and prosecutor remained silent.
Ms. Zhu’s lawyer also testified against the police for beating her during interrogation and causing her teeth to become loose. The judge again remain silent.
Ms. Zhu was later sentenced to six years. While serving time at the Hubei Province Women’s Prison in Wuhan, she was twice handcuffed behind her back, each time for over three days. She said later that the pain was excruciating and every second was unbearable. She had sharp chest pain the second time and the guards finally removed the handcuffs.
Instead of rendering her proper medical treatment, the guards forced Ms. Zhu to take some unknown drugs. She suffered nose bleeds as a result and her head was also covered with blood blisters.
The guards also subjected Ms. Zhu to cold wind in the winter. In the summer, they refused to give her water to drink while keeping her in an air-tight room without air-conditioning.
Ms. Zhu was starved throughout her prison term. She was so weak that she couldn’t climb the stairs. The guards once dragged her by the feet from the first floor to the eighth floor. She was also restricted from buying daily necessities and sometimes the inmates would steal the very limited supplies she had.
As a result of the torture, Ms. Zhu developed dangerously high blood pressure and became paralyzed on the left side of her body. After she was taken to the prison hospital, she was given unknown drug every day. The doctor drew three to five tubes of blood from her every day without specifiying the purpose. She also wasn’t given enough food.
When Ms. Zhu was finally released, she was so weak that she lost the ability to work. Her husband also divorced her. During her prison term, her family borrowed 65,000 yuan to contribute to her retirement account. Before she could pay back the money, the 610 Office, Political and Legal Affairs Committee, and local community ordered the Xinzhou District Social Security Bureau to suspend her pension, with the excuse that she refused to renounce Falun Gong. They even ordered her to return the 40,000 yuan pension payments she received during her prison term.
Related Reports:
Ms. Zhu Chunmei Tried for Hiring Attorneys to Represent Falun Gong Practitioners
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