Chengdu City Practitioner Ms. Zhang Shiqing Persecuted for Years

Ms. Zhang Shiqing was subjected to forced labour twice for refusing to give up her belief. She suffered from numerous tortures at the Nanmusi Women's Forced Labour Camp.

1. Sent to Forced Labour for Appealing in Beijing

While appealing in Beijing on October 10th, 1999, State Council Central Appeals Office agents arrested and detained Ms. Zhang at the Chengdu City Liaison office in Beijing for two days. Then police officers of Wuhou District Police Station in Chengdu City took her back. She was then detained and tortured at the Jiurucun Detention Centre for seventeen days. She was 49 years old then.

On November 16th, 1999 she went to Beijing again to appeal. Police officers arrested her and took her by police vehicle to the liaison office in Beijing. They removed her clothes, body-searched her and photographed her, confiscating all the money and other personal belongings she had. Chengdu officials eventually took her back. Following her two-day detention at a drug rehabilitation centre, she was transferred to the Lianhuacun Detention Centre and persecuted there for several days. Then she was transferred to Ningxia Street Prison for three more days' abuse and mistreatment before she was finally sent to the Nanmusi Women's Forced Labour Camp for one year and ten months of forced labour.

She had to endure a month-long mistreatment in the 5th Division, where she was forced to recite the prison rules and subjected to sleep-deprivation unless she complied. A month later she was transferred to the 4th Division and forced to labour. People who didn't co-operate were locked in a wash room, with all the windows closed. Those who worked in the daytime were forbidden to sleep before mid-night, prevented from toilet use, and were supplied with meagre food rations. Ms. Zhang Shiqing eventually started a hunger strike.

Besides Ms. Zhang Shiqing, Ms. Zheng Youmei, Ms. Tao Juhua and several other practitioners were locked in the wash room and had to endure abuse there for more than twenty days. Camp officials one day ordered each of them to write a report about how the practitioners were treated. Ms. Zhang reported all the truth. Guards instructed drug addict Li Xiaolin to drag her to a secluded room and beat her, to force her to rewrite the report. She didn't listen to her but insisted on telling the truth.

2. Brutally Beaten and Hung Up in the Air

Camp officials gathered all the practitioners in the 7th Division in July 2000, to abuse them further. Practitioners were compelled to do outdoor physical exercises during the high heat of summer. They were forced to jog, squat, and were exposed to the sun, and forced to walk in a line. They were forbidden to take a shower for a long time. Ms. Zhang didn't listen to the guards' orders and refused to walk in the line. Five male guards took her to a room and brutally beat and kicked her.

Guards took practitioner Ms. Zhang to solitary confinement for doing the meditation. They handcuffed her behind the back with the smallest handcuff and hung her up. One guard said, "The handcuffs are too small and don't fit; let me take another one." But a vicious guard surnamed Qin handcuffed her anyway and hung her up on a metal door, with her toes touching the ground. She sweated profusely from the incredible pain, with the sweat drenching her clothes, running down her face and wetting the ground. It took the guards quite a while to unlock her at mealtime. Her arms shook, and she could not move them. Her hands became numb; it took more than six months for them to recover.

Practitioners were forced to squat and call numbers, but none of them complied; they simply sat on the ground, with legs crossed. Guards and drug addicts beat them with "Wolf Fang" sticks.

Ms. Zhang was taken into a small room where drug addict Li Lanqing beat her with a steel tool at the behest of guards. They left and locked her up in the room. They discovered at lunch that she had fallen unconscious. She came to eventually. Li Lanqing returned in the evening to check on her and found the lower part of her body beaten black. The discolouration finally faded six months later.

To "reform" [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] the practitioners, guards incited collaborators¹ to recite parts of Falun Gong articles to practitioners who firmly professed a firm belief in Falun Gong. Unfortunately, many of them were deceived and wrote guarantee statements to renounce practising Falun Gong. Ms. Zhang did so, but realised her mistake right away and wrote another statement, to declare her mistake and disclose the deception that made her do it. She gave her statement to 7th Division leader Zhang Xiaofang and explained how the guards' deceived her. Officials took Ms. Zhang Shiqing upstairs the next day, locked her up and extended her sentence by ten more months.

Guard Li once shocked Ms. Zhang with a high-voltage electric baton, burning her clothes and creating an acrid odour. A temporary guard also beat and shocked her with electric batons.

Her first labour camp stay lasted one year and ten months.

3. Sent to a Brainwashing Centre

Baihua Residential Committee head Zhou Zhiping called Ms. Zhang in December 2001 and inveigled her to appear at the office. Zhou Zhiping had several officers arrive in a police vehicle at her residence to arrest Ms. Zhang and transport her to the Jinhua Town Brainwashing Centre in the Wuhou District, Chengdu City.

At the brainwashing centre, every practitioner had an "accompanying educator" who monitored them 24 hours a day, to prevent them from studying the Falun Gong teachings or doing the exercises. If they did not comply, the "accompanying educators" would beat them. Each practitioner was held in a single room and forbidden to communicate with others. Daily slander sessions that were held in the lobby were compulsory.

When Ms. Zhang arrived at the lobby she said loudly, "Falun Gong is good!" The guards immediately took her away and locked her in a small room. She began a hunger strike.

Liu Xiaokang and Wang Jiming directed the guards to push Ms. Zhang's head toward her feet. Her back was bent and exposed. Then they kicked and beat her very hard dozens of times. They only stopped when her "accompanying educator," grandma Jiang, shouted at them.

Ms. Zhang began another persecution protest hunger strike in April 2002. On the 28th day Liu Xiaokang ordered a doctor to insert a feeding tube into her nose and left it there for 24 hours. After they removed the tube Ms. Zhang still refused to eat. Officials took her to a larger hospital. The doctors blamed the officers for inserting a tube into her nose when she was so weak, saying she might easily have been killed this way. Thus, she was released the evening of May 31st, 2002.

4. Sentenced to Forced Labour Again

When Ms. Zhang was distributing informational materials about Falun Gong in August 2002, she was arrested, taken to a police station and then held at the Pixian County Anjing Detention Centre for seven or eight days, followed by a two-year sentence at the Nanmusi Women's Forced Labour Camp in Sichuan Province.

She was sent to the 5th Division first. As soon as she arrived, guards directed other prisoners to forcibly remove her clothes and subject her to a body search. Later on they attempted to force her to walk in a line. Ms. Zhang refused, so prisoners dragged her on the ground. Now wearing clothes again, all of her clothes were ripped. The skin on the soles of her feet were torn. Dust and sand stuck into her flesh. She was sent to the hospital where the doctors refused to treat her because she didn't have money with her. Then she started a hunger strike. The evildoers pried her teeth apart and force-fed her.

One month later she was sent to the 8th Division where from the first day on she was locked in a solitary confinement cell for 48 hours. Two prisoners monitored her. They didn't let her sleep at first, even after 12 a.m. But Ms. Zhang still slept on the ground; no matter how hard those prisoners beat her or poured cold water at her, she didn't move. Since that day they let her sleep at 12:00 a.m.

Practitioners were forbidden to use the toilet. They had to report and wait for approval before they did anything. Ms. Zhang used the toilet anyway and didn't report to anyone. She told the inmates, "It's natural to discharge after eating. No one can deprive a person of the right to use the toilet. Even insects need to eliminate waste, let alone people."

Inmate cell head Li Qi forcibly tied her legs for three days as punishment for doing the exercises. Evildoers also took Ms. Zhang to a room full of collaborators to "reform" her. She was firm in her belief. In the end, officials said they had given up on her.

From 1999 Ms. Zhang Shiqing was abused under the persecution for five years. Following her release from the Nanmusi Forced Labour Camp, she was detained at the Jinhua Town Brainwashing Centre in the Wuhou District and persecuted there for seven more months.

Note

1. "Collaborators": former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/9/30/230338.html