(Minghui.org) A 57-year-old woman in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, has been missing since January 2025 because she practices Falun Gong, a spirtual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Huang Qian’s family lost contact with her in early January 2025. Her neighbors told them that she was taken away from home by the police. When the family went to the local police station to inquire about her case, the officer on duty refused to reveal her detention location, but said, “She has gone to the place where she belongs.”
Ms. Huang Qian
Ms. Huang used to work at the Guangzhou City Book Shopping Center. For upholding her faith, she was fired from her position, given a three-year labor camp term, and two prison terms of four and five years. While in custody, she was beaten, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electric batons and had cold water repeatedly poured over her head outdoors when the temperature was below freezing.
Arrested Three Times for Appealing for Falun Gong in Beijing
Ms. Huang went to Beijing in May 2000 to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. She was arrested, beaten, and escorted back to Guangzhou for detention. She was covered with bruises from the beating. The Guangzhou Book Shopping Center fired her as she refused to renounce Falun Gong.
Ms. Huang returned to Beijing to appeal in July 2000 and was arrested again. She was first held at the Fangshan Detention Center in Beijing and then transferred to the Wuqing County Detention Center in Tianjin. In order to force her to reveal her name and address, Zhang, the Wuqing County Police Department chief instructed three inmates to strip off her clothes, burn her thighs with cigarettes, slash a sharp object against her chest, the front of her body including her genitals. She was covered in cuts. The inmates also slapped her in the face with a shoe, causing her face to swell and become black and blue. They threatened to beat her into blindness. She was later escorted back to Guangzhou and held at the Dongshan District Detention Center.
Ms. Huang went to Beijing to appeal a third time in December 2000. She was arrested and taken to the Tiananmen Square Police Station. She was repeatedly sprayed with a fire hose and shocked with electric batons for refusing to reveal her identity. The police threatened to insert pen refills into her nails.
Three Years of Forced Labor
Ms. Huang was given a three-year term at the Chatou Women's Forced Labor Camp in June 2001. Guard Xiang Fan held her in a small room and didn’t allow her to use the restroom or sleep. She started a hunger strike to protest. Four days into her hunger strike, the guards tied her up with both legs crossed, and her hands behind her back. They stepped on her legs to increase the pain and tied her hair up to humiliate her. She wrote in her blog, “It was so unbearable, I almost collapsed. It left a deep wound in my heart.”
For a long time after that, she had frequent nightmares and would sometimes suddenly lose feeling in her legs. It was also difficult for her to get up from a sitting position.
Torture illustration: Tied with legs and hands behind one’s back
Torture and Injuries Sustained at the Detention Center
Ms. Huang’s younger brother, Mr. Huang Jiang, was held at a brainwashing center from March to May 2007. Agents from the 610 Office suspected that Ms. Huang had been involved in an attempt to rescue him. Four months later, on September 23, 2007, she was arrested and taken to Tianhe Detention Center.
She was tortured while in detention, with a method called “thread the needle and shackled” for 52 days, starting on July 3, 2008.
For the first 12 days, she was placed in foot shackles with one shackle fastened to a ring embedded in the ground. Her hands were then cuffed with one hand behind one leg and the other in front. The guards later unchained the shackles from the ground ring, but she remained shackled and cuffed around the clock.
She was shackled in that position even when she had a fever. The torture caused excruciating pain and made it extremely difficult to sleep. Her back was kept bent for so long that her spine became deformed.
Torture illustration: Thread needle and shackled
First Prison Sentence of Four Years
Ms. Huang was tried by the Tianhe District Court on April 11, 2008 and sentenced to four years by on July 14, 2008. The judge ordered that her desktop computer, laptop, printer and other personal properties be expropriated. She was transferred to the Guangdong Province Women's Prison on August 25, 2008.
Ms. Huang was subjected to forced labor, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, involuntary drug administration, and denied restroom use while in prison. The prison authorities did not allow her to take showers, nor did they provide any necessities such as toilet paper, wash cloths, and sanitary pads. The prison guards also forced her to read materials that slandered Falun Gong.
Ms. Huang’s health deteriorated to the point that she could only sit or stand for short periods of time.
Second Prison Sentence of Five Years
Ms. Huang was arrested again on February 3, 2015 for blogging about the persecution she had suffered. At the Nanzhou Detention Center, she was cuffed to a metal chair and interrogated. The guards wouldn’t let her get off the chair even when they weren’t interrogating her. As a result of the torture, she suffered frequent fever, headache and cramps. Instead of allowing her to seek treatment, the guards forced her to work without pay.
Ms. Huang appeared at the Haizhu District Court on December 15, 2015 and was sentenced to five years on December 30, 2016. She was admitted to the Guangdong Province Women’s Prison in June 2017, after her appeal was rejected. She wrote to her lawyer to apply for the motion to reconsider her case, but all of her letters were intercepted by the prison. The prison also forbade her from attending her mother’s funeral when she passed away.
Related Reports:
Imprisoned Woman Almost Driven Insane, Pleads for Help
Former Bookstore Employee Sentenced for Posting “Gulag Memoirs”
Guangdong Woman Tried for Blogging About Her Previous Five Arrests for Practicing Falun Gong
Ms. Huang Qian Arrested for Exposing Persecution on Internet
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