(Minghui.org) A woman in Tianjin has been repeatedly persecuted since the Chinese Communist Party ordered the persecution of her faith, Falun Gong, in July 1999.
Ms. Li Xiuyan was given two forced labor camp terms for a total of three years in the early years of the persecution. She was also subjected to brutal torture while serving a 7.5-year prison term following her most recent arrest in 2018.
Ms. Li was arrested at work on July 18, 2018, by officers from the Tanggu District Domestic Security Office and Xiangyang Police Station. The police also ransacked her home, confiscating her Falun Gong books and her computer.
Ms. Li was reported by her daughter’s school after telling the school that her daughter would not be joining the Young Pioneers and telling them about Falun Gong. The police also went to her daughter’s school and harassed her daughter, causing stress to both her daughter and her husband.
Ms. Li was held at the Tanggu District First Detention Center. She was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by the Tanggu District Court in January 2020.
Ms. Li was transferred to Division Six at the Tianjin Women’s Prison in May 2020. She suffered long-term, systematic, cruel torture there. During this time, her workplace also fired her.
Wang Tian, the head of Division Six; Dong Wei, the deputy head; Wang Rui, the supervising captain; and Huang Xin, the captain in charge of Falun Gong practitioners in the division, established a task force to target practitioners who remain firm in their faith. They also recruited inmates Yu Bingxin, Cao Yue, Dong Lijun, Zhang Yang, and Zhang Huanan as their assistants. The guards usually don’t torture the practitioners themselves, but instigate the inmates to do so.
Some of the torture that Ms. Li suffered includes the following:
1. When she first entered prison, it was the hottest time of the year. For more than 20 days, Ms. Li was not allowed to shower or drink water.2. She was not allowed to use the bathroom.3. She was not allowed to eat. The inmates would keep the palatable portions of her meals and throw away the rest.4. She was not allowed to sleep and was subjected to constant torment throughout the night.5. She was forced to stand for long periods while the inmates beat her. They directed their kicks at her genitals.6. In the workshop, the inmates set up an area where others could not see and where there were no surveillance cameras. They would then stuff a towel into her mouth and beat her at will. Sometimes they stabbed needles into her thigh and taped up her legs to immobilize her. Sometimes they would make her stand for days on end and not let her sit for a moment, causing her legs to swell.7. She was also subjected to ceaseless verbal abuse, threats, and intimidation.
The perpetrators also used a system of collective punishment, whereby if they failed to “transform” Ms. Li, they would also be punished. This made the inmates really hate her, thereby encouraging them to torture her even more. In a short time, Ms. Li wasted away until she was unrecognizable.
During this time, the prison also refused to allow Ms. Li’s family to visit her. The guards even called her family members, complaining about her “poor behavior” and threatening to torture her even worse. She was also restricted to spending just 80 yuan ($11.93) on daily necessities. This spending restriction lasted three years.
Despite all the abuse that Ms. Li suffered during her prison term, before she was released, the guards forced her to sign a statement saying that she was never beaten or abused, and that no guards or wardens had ever subjected her to any corporal punishment.
Ms. Li started to practice Falun Gong in the spring of 1998 while she was studying at a university in Shandong Province. She held herself to the standards of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance in her daily life, cultivating her heart toward goodness. She was strict with herself, but lenient with others, changing her previously irritable and easily angered temperament and her pessimistic, weary worldview.
In June 2002, she was reported for distributing copies of Falun Gong lectures and was given two years of forced labor. While held in Banqiao Forced Labor Camp in Dagang District of Tianjin, she was forced to stand for prolonged periods of time, repeatedly beaten, forbidden from sleeping or resting, and forced to do slave labor.
After her release in June 2004, her workplace forced her to sign a guarantee statement saying that she would no longer practice Falun Gong. In August 2004, she submitted a solemn statement to her workplace declaring her guarantee statement null and void. Her workplace then worked with the police to send her to a detention center, where she was held for 15 days.
In 2010, the police searched her workplace and found Falun Gong materials. She was given another one-year labor camp term, but was allowed to serve time at home due to pregnancy.