A Peasant Woman from Hunan Province Arrested Seven Times and Tortured

Name: Zhong Mingying
Gender: Female
Age: 53
Address: Hengyang, Hunan
Occupation: Farmer
Date of Most Recent Arrest: May 12th, 2008
Most recent place of detention: Xidu Detention Centre in Hengyang County, Henan Province
City: Hengyang
Province: Hunan
Persecution Suffered: Sleep Deprivation, Forced Labour, Beatings, Imprisonment, Torture, Extortion, Physical Restraint, Home Ransacked, Detention

I started to practise Falun Gong on May 13th, 1998. I have benefited greatly from this wonderful practice and words cannot begin to express my gratitude.

After July 20th, 1999, when the government's persecution of Falun Gong began, police officers harassed me several times. I was arrested by local officers many times, was detained, and later sent to a forced labour camp and inhumanly tortured. My home was ransacked many times as well.

The first time the police ransacked my home was around 11:00 p.m. one night in August 2001. A person with good intentions informed me that Peng Zengming, the chief of the police, and the assistant chief, Cai Yongguo, along with two other officers from the Goulou County Police Station, had been asking around for my address in an attempt to arrest me. Thanks to that goodhearted person, I was able to get away. These officers arrived at my home, ransacked the place, and confiscated Falun Gong books, and exercise CDs.

The second time they arrested me was in March 2002. At that time, we did not have any home made leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong, so I put up signs that read "Falun Gong is good" on telephone poles. Eight days later, Wang Chunliang, the chief of the county police station, arrested me and took me to the county detention centre. While in the detention centre, I didn't have to do hard labour but I was beaten badly by prison guards. Later, they sentenced me to one year of forced labour and sent to Zhulzhoul, Baimalong in Hunan Province because I refused to be "transformed¹." In the labour camp, I had to endure brutal tortures.

The third time they arrested me was on February 17th, 2004. In Jibingtan Town I was telling people the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong and was reported. Officers from the Jibin Police Station arrested me. In the police station, I was handcuffed for several hours. I used all of my strength and yelled out, "Falun Gong is good; Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good!" Later I escaped.

The fourth time they arrested me was in June 2004. When eight other practitioners and I were exchanging cultivation experiences in a fellow practitioner's home, we were reported and arrested by local policemen. Two of the practitioners were released after their family members paid off the police. The other six practitioners and myself were held in a local detention centre. The next morning, Zhang Wei, the assistant warden, rushed into the cell and was very angry. He said his name had been posted on the persecutor's person's list on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. He thought that I was the one who had leaked his name, and he started to beat and kick me until I fell down. My head and many parts of my body were black and blue with bruises. Combined with old and new injures, I was in agony, had excruciating pain, and was not able to get up for a long time. Several months before my fourth arrest, I had had an accident: a cement tractor machine crushed and injured my spine and other body parts. The inmates present in the cell all expressed their sympathy, saying how terrible the beatings were!

Afterward, I was sent to a forced labour camp for 15 months. When we practitioners in the camp refused to give up our practice or to be "transformed," we were subjected to vicious tortures. After Luo Gan, the Central Political Science and Law Committee Secretary, one of Jiang's cronies, visited the area in August 2004, the camp authorities intensified their malicious torture of practitioners. At that time, my wounds had not yet healed, so I filed a petition to the authorities, trying to avoid having to do hard labour. In the petition, I included the history of my accident and why I didn't go to the hospital for treatment because I had a firm believe in Falun Gong and the miracles that had happened. The camp authorities said that I had used my health history just to talk about Falun Gong. Immediately, they sent me to a heavy security unit where they assigned three drug offenders to monitor every step I made. They forced me to sit very straight on a small backless iron chair for a long time and deprived me of sleep. Due to my spinal injury, this was extremely difficult for me to tolerate. One time blood trickled from my mouth due to the long period of torture, but the guards still would not release me from the iron chair. In the small cell they had locked me in, the window was covered with a cloth and the door closed 24 hours a day.

The fifth time I was arrested was around 10:00 a.m. on August 17th, 2007. Dai Xiaoju, the local county director, conspired with Yu Zhongchun, the head of the 610 Office²; Cai Yongguo, the chief of the local police station; and other officers. All of them arrived at my home. They searched through all of the cabinets and furniture in my house and turned them upside-down, looking for evidence. They confiscated some materials and Falun Gong books. I was carried out of my house by four officers, and they put me into the trunk of a police vehicle. They took me to the local detention centre where they held me for 15 days.

My sixth arrest was on September 12th, 2007. When I was on my way to an outdoor food market, I first stopped at Jibing High School and distributed information materials about Falun Gong. I was reported by He Yangsheng, the high-school principal, and was arrested by Liu Xiangdong, the chief, and other officers from the Jibing Police Station. Once again, the police ransacked my home. I was detained for half a month and missing the tea harvesting at our farm, which resulted in losing several thousand yuan³ of income. While I was held at the detention centre, Cai Xuhui, the head of the county Party; Zhang Zhaofang, the head of the village; and one other person went to my place, ransacked it, and burned the exercise CDs.

The seventh arrested was on May 12th, 2008. A local practitioner and I went to Zhangmu County to distribute brochures. We were reported and arrested by Chief Ou Dijun, assistant chief Li Junrong, and Xiao Fanglin of the Zhangmu Police Station and detained in the local detention centre for a year and a half. On July 20th, the same police officers went to my home in two vehicles, searched it, and confiscated all of my Falun Gong books, along with my savings of 2900 yuan.

Note

1. "Reform or Transform" Implementation of brainwashing and torture in order to force a practitioner to renounce Falun Gong. (Variations: "reform", "transform", "reformed", "reforming", "transformed", "transforming", and "transformation")

2. "The 610 office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

3. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/9/6/207791.htm