Female Prison Tries to Force Practitioners to Sign "Guarantee Letters" by Hanging Them Up and Breaking Their Fingers

Chu Lin, 48 years old and an employee at an agricultural bank, was arrested on December 25, 2000, while she was validating the Fa in Beijing. From inside the police vehicle, she saw policemen stomping on another practitioner's head while the practitioner was still shouting, "Falun Dafa is good." When other practitioners tried to stop the police, the police hit them in the head with clubs.

The police transferred Chu Lin to the Haidian District Detention Centre. Because she refused to give her name and address, the police assigned her to be number 93. She was interrogated in room 101, where a male and female officer took turns shocking her with an electric baton, first on her hands and arms, and then on her head. Later the guards set the electric baton on her head and shocked her in a circle around the head. Even under this kind of torment, she still refused to give her name or address. The police shut her in a cell and ordered the other prisoners to torture her. They forced her to remain in a half-squatting position for a long time, punched her legs, and stopped her from sleeping. She lost consciousness, and her mouth was filled with blood. The next day, they used a hose to spray freezing water all over her. In the dead of winter, they stripped off her clothing and beat her. Some people who witnessed the torture she was enduring were moved to tears.

A week later Chu Lin, along with other practitioners who refused to give their names and addresses, was sent to Lingyuan City Detention Centre in Liaoning Province. Every day, police from the Lingyuan City Police Station tortured these practitioners. They interrogated the practitioners non-stop, handcuffed their arms in painful positions, forcibly poured drugs and alcohol into their mouths, wiped dirty mops and towels on their faces, smeared tea on their faces, and assaulted them physically and verbally. At the time the temperature outside was about -30o C (-22o F), and the police did not let her wear a winter coat or pants. They placed her near the biggest drafts, where it was coldest. While cursing, the police hurled snow at the practitioners and then complained about the cold, even though the policemen were wearing heavy woolen outfits. They tortured Chu Li by forcing her to sit on the "Tiger Bench."[1] The police said to the practitioners, "Our treatment of Falun Gong is justified by internal documents, so being beaten to death will be counted as suicide. After somebody dies, we'll throw their body at the base of the mountain to feed wild animals, and nobody will ever know." Chu Lin, after being illegally detained in the detention centre for a year, was sentenced to 3 years in prison. In January of 2002, she was sent to the Wuhan City Female Prison.

In Group Five of the 3rd Division at Wuhan Female Prison, six prisoners, Deng Yue, Wang Huanying, Liu Fenge, Xiong Kuiying, Huang Fuqing, and Wu Zhihui take shifts to supervise Chu Li 24 hours a day. There are even restrictions on using the restroom. Every day they try to brainwash her. They force her to look at materials that defame and slander Dafa, including television recordings of "Focal Point", a CCTV program infamous for lying about Falun Gong. Afterwards, they force her to write reports. If she doesn't cooperate with them, then she is not allowed to sleep and is forced to stand with her head at an angle against the wall. She is also not be allowed to wash or go to the toilet. At first she could use the toilet in the morning, but then they forced her to go in the afternoon instead. Her feet were heavily swollen with extremely painful sores; it was even difficult for her to squat. They struck her head, stomped on her swollen feet, and verbally abused her. Chu Lin responded by reciting "Hongyin." They kept striking her, causing her mouth to bleed and her teeth to be knocked loose. In the end she lost consciousness. The torture continued, and Chu Lin lost track of time. She was finally allowed to sleep 1-2 hours. The policemen tried to force Chu Lin to write the "Three Documents" (Repentance Statement, Guarantee Statement, and Disassociation Statement), but she firmly refused. The police beat her at will and said, "Your body, after all, isn't made out of steel. Of course, we won't let you die, but we'll make you feel like you'd be better off dying. Each day you refuse to reform, we will continue to torture you even more."

In early May, the police put Chu Lin and six other prisoners in the smallest prison cell and ordered the prisoners to do whatever they wished to torture her. The prisoners pinned her down and forced her right hand to sign the "guarantee letter." Chu Lin clutched her fist as tightly as she could, and even several prisoners couldn't pull it open. So the prisoners forced her hand open finger by finger. Even though Chu Lin screamed in pain, the prisoner still refused to let go of her hand. Chu's right pinkie was broken, and it swelled up to the size of a small carrot. It was excruciatingly painful day and night, and to this day it will not completely extend. The prisoners, without succeeding, then used a thin nylon rope to tie her hands together behind her back and hung her up on the frame of a bunk bed, forcing the entire weight of Chu Lin's body to fall on her wrists and shoulders. Because her arms were suspended, the shoulders were in extreme pain. It's not certain how many hours she was tortured like this before they released her. They then asked if she wanted to sign her name, telling her that if she refused, they would hang her up again. She was tortured like this many times. They didn't release her from the bed frame until it was night, but her arms were still tied to each other behind her back. After awhile Chu Lin lost consciousness and fell on the ground. The prisoners dragged her off the ground and tied her backwards to the lower bed frame. Then they tied her hair to the upper bed frame, trying to keep her awake. But in fact she had already lost consciousness. Things that happened afterwards and how the "guarantee letter" was written, she doesn't remember.

In order to get the so-called "Three Documents," they tried to deceive her into writing the "Understanding Letter," but she refused. Several guards, including Deng Zhenyue, drafted an "Understanding Letter." Then they deprived her of sleep, and then hung her up to beat and torture her. These long periods of sleep deprivation made Chu Lin lose consciousness. The prisoners then held her hand to copy the "Understanding Letter." As Chu Lin started to regain consciousness and saw that the "Understanding Letter" was in her own handwriting, she was in deep misery, but the prisoners laughed at her. Even with this the prisoners still weren't satisfied and thought they hadn't met the guards' requirements, so they changed the title of "Understanding Letter" to "Repentance Letter" and "Disassociation Letter" and pressed her to sign them. She did not cooperate, so they repeatedly tortured her. When she still refused to copy or sign, Deng Zhengyue and Wang Huanying changed to another, more brutal method to hang her up. They tied her left hand and left foot with nylon rope and suspended her upside-down from the top bed frame. Her entire body was suspended in the air. Whenever her body got close to the bed, the prisoners kicked her away. The entire weight of her body was focused on her left hand and foot. They secured the ropes so tightly that they sunk into her flesh. It is impossible to imagine the pain, and Chu Lin's hand and foot are still sore today. They used this method to torture her repeatedly.

Each time before they hung her up, several people pinned her to the ground and forcibly fed her some drug. They called it a "security drug." They believed that this drug would reduce the chances of her dying during the torture. The prisoners then cursed and beat her at will. One time a prisoner beat her in a small cell with the doors closed. She escaped out of the cell and ran to the prison police office, finding Police Superintendent Peng Hongxia. Peng loudly questioned Chu Lin, "Who dared to beat you?" The prisoners who beat her refused to admit what they did. Peng continued, "This is a constraining facility, those who don't follow the rules are punished." Actually, it was Peng Hongxia who had ordered the prisoners to persecute Chu Lin.

Not only did they beat Chu, they also wrote words slandering Dafa on her face, clothes, shoes, and food bowl. They jabbed at and pinched her face while they were writing on it, until her face was swollen and bleeding. They also cursed at her, and, during the hottest days of the year, they made her stand in the hottest place with the most mosquitoes. She was not allowed to sleep or even close her eyes. A person named Xiong Guiying took athlete's foot medicine and stuffed it into her nose, smeared it on her eyes and face, and did not allow her to wash or change her clothes. Chu Lin wrote Solemn Declarations even when she was in jail, declaring that all she wrote in the jail under torture was null and void. She also wrote articles to reveal the evil deeds in the jail. The head of the No. 3 brigade called her in to talk with her. He tried to coerce her to say that the other prisoners were responsible for all of the torture and that the guards knew nothing.

[1] Tiger Bench: In this torture method, practitioners are forced to sit on a small iron bench that is approximately 20 cm (6 inches) tall with their knees tied together. With their hands tied behind their backs or sometimes placed on their knees, they are forced to sit straight up and look straight ahead. They are not allowed to turn their heads, close their eyes, talk to anyone or move at all. Several inmates are assigned to watch over the practitioners and force them to remain motionless while sitting on the bench. Usually some hard objects are inserted underneath the practitioners' lower legs or ankles to make it harder for them to tolerate this abuse.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/3/9/46104.html