Ms. Qiu Liying Brutally Tortured in Forced Labour Camps and Psychiatric Hospitals in Tangshan City

Ms. Qiu Liying, a 45 year old Dafa practitioner from Shijiazhuang, was brutally tortured and beaten by police at the Tangshan Kaiping Labour Camp, because of her firm belief in Falun Dafa and the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance. During that time, she was once sent to the Tangshan City Ankang Hospital (a psychiatric hospital) and locked up with male drug abusers and psychiatric patients. The staff at the hospital tortured Ms. Qiu, applying the same coercive means they used on psychiatric patients. Later, Zhang Jianzhong and others from the Kaiping Labour Camp Administrative Office sent Ms. Qiu to the Tangshan City Fifth Psychiatric Hospital (previously the Tangshan Psychotic Hospital). There, the doctors and nurses tortured Ms. Qiu with high-voltage electric needles and injected her with drugs destructive to the nervous system.

Ms. Qiu Liying, is a former employee of the Shijiazhuang Oil Refinery. Everyone regarded Ms. Qiu as a good person. After she began practising Falun Dafa, Ms. Qiu became an even better person in her work and daily life. However, after July 20, 1999, Jiang's regime spread vicious propaganda defaming Falun Gong. In response, Ms. Qiu went to Beijing in October of 1999 to appeal and explained the truth of Falun Gong to the authorities. She was arrested by the police and taken back to Shijiazhuang. Soon after, she was sentenced to three years of forced labour reform. On December 9, 1999, Ms. Qiu was secretly transferred to the Tangshan Kaiping Forced Labour Camp. Upon her arrival, Ms. Qiu was beaten by a group of people using rods until she lost consciousness.

In order to force her into giving up her belief in Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, the police in the labour camp handcuffed Ms. Qiu to a tree in the yard during bitterly cold days. She had only a thin shirt on. Other prisoners beat and kicked her constantly and verbally abused her with dirty words. The captain of the labor camp once appointed drug addicts to beat her. On that occasion she was so badly beaten that she could not get up and also developed a respiratory condition. In the month that followed she dared not cough because it caused so much pain.

One time, the police appointed prisoners to take her to an empty room and they forced her to strip down to her underpants. Then they beat her buttocks with a belt so hard that the belt broke. Later the prisoners tied her up and hung her up by the rope with her toes barely touching the ground. The prisoners kicked, verbally abused her with foul language and spat in her face. While these prisoners were brutally beating her, the captain came in and saw that Ms. Qiu's face was turning purple. The captain sensed something was wrong and loosened her.

In early January of 2001, Ms. Qiu was in the Tangshan Kaiping Forced Labour Camp. Many times during the physical examinations, her blood pressure reading was zero. She faced these tribulations all the while maintaining her strong will and confidence. To protest the illegal imprisonment and torture, Ms. Qiu started a hunger strike that lasted 32 days. When she became extremely weak, the Kaiping Labour Camp officials sent her to the Tangshan City Ankang Hospital to continue the persecution. The hospital was built by the Tangshan City Police Department and specialized in treating psychiatric patients and drug addicts. The weather was very cold at that time and Ms. Qiu felt abnormally cold, for the hunger strike had consumed so much of her energy. She was shivering when she arrived at the hospital. However the hospital staff still quickly removed her jacket and only gave her a thin sweater and a patient's shirt to wear. They put her in a room with a group of male drug addicts and psychiatric patients. Ms. Qiu protested immediately and asked a male nurse to talk to the hospital administrators. The nurse told her that that was the way it worked in the hospital. The hospital had already made up rules to persecute practitioners. The first thing was to stop her hunger strike. The labour camp sent the prisoners to monitor her and to try to trick and harass her into eating. They treated her like a psychiatric patient and used coercive means to threaten and harass her into eating and giving up the practise of Falun Gong.

The police in the Kaiping Labour Camp treated Falun Gong practitioners in a very inhuman way. Falun Gong practitioners were never respected as people, let alone were their human rights respected. On her way to the Tangshan City Ankang Hospital in a truck, Ms. Qiu was not allowed to sit on the empty seats. She was handcuffed and pushed into the back of the truck where the cargo was loaded. Even the prisoners sent by the labour camp to monitor her were allowed to have seats with the police. Also, Ms. Qiu had to pay for the transportation, as well as all the phone calls and physical exams done by the hospital.

During the winter marching drills, the police would slap the practitioners, hit them with tree branches or push snow down their necks. For those on hunger strikes or refusing to march, the police would drag them outside and punish them by forcing them to stand on the icy ground for extended periods of time. If it was on a hot summer day, then the practitioners would be forced to stand under the burning sun. Ms. Qiu had been through all these tortures. However, none of it had changed her firm belief in Falun Dafa. Ms. Qiu had expressed her strong outrage at the persecution; she protested and she planned to appeal. But the laws were nonexistent under Jiang's political power and she could only resort to painful hunger strikes in order to make her opinion known.

On June 30, 2000, Zhang Jianzhong and An Huan'er from the Kaiping Labour Camp Administrative Office, and the Director of the labour camp hospital, took Ms. Qiu to the Ankang Hospital. Someone called Zhang when he was on his way there and asked him why he was going to the Ankang Hospital. Zhang replied that he was going there to "examine the corpse." When they arrived, the hospital refused to accept Ms. Qiu as a patient. Zhang called more senior officials and decided to send Ms. Qiu to the Tangshan City Fifth Psychiatric Hospital (formerly the Tangshan Psychotic Hospital). Before Ms. Qiu was sent into her hospital room, Zhang told her that she did not have to go in there if she stopped the hunger strike. Ms. Qiu refused to compromise. At the time, she had been on the hunger strike for two months and she was very weak. It was very hard to draw blood from her. The hospital staff withdrew barely a few milliliters from both her arms. Her blood pressure was between 20 and 40 mmHg, which was the blood pressure of someone in shock, according to a nurse there. Even under these circumstances, the hospital staff still forced Ms. Qiu to take drugs that damage the central nervous system. They also threatened her with electric needles saying, "If you stop the hunger strike, we will not use the needles." They often pushed the needle into her Baihui acupuncture point on top of her head or the Yintang point on her forehead. Every time they would threaten her, "Are you going to eat or not?" When she refused, they would increase the voltage. They raised the voltage three times and Ms. Qiu was on the verge of a mental collapse. Yet she still refused to compromise even under this unbearable pain. This type of punishment could easily damage one's brain and could destroy one's brain and body. They used this "electric needle treatment" on Ms. Qiu many times to persecute her. Before they could stop her hunger strike, they gave her unknown drugs through a tube that went from her throat directly to her stomach. They did not take out the tube once it was inserted. Ms. Qiu could not breathe and after three days she almost suffocated. She pulled out the tube herself and vomited up all the drugs. One time she did not vomit up the drugs, and suffered dire consequences. She could not stand up on her own, her tongue went numb and she could not speak clearly. She was dizzy, her eyes were swollen and she lost consciousness. Even after such trauma, Ms. Qiu still told the doctors in the hospital the truth of the persecution of Falun Gong and how she benefitted from practising Falun Gong.

By the end of July 2002, the Kaiping Forced Labour Camp also sent Duan Jinjin, He Jing and Zhao Jie to the Tangshan City Fifth Psychiatric Hospital to persecute them. They used the same drugs on Ms. Duan and He Jing. Ms. Duan had a serious reaction to the drugs and suffered a severe headache from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. The pain gradually went away. The hospital stopped using the drugs on Ms. Duan because of her reaction. However, upon hearing this, Zhang Jianzhong from the Kaiping Labour Camp said, "She is fine; keep the drugs going."

On September 19, 2000, Ms. Qiu and Ms. Duan were returned to the forced labour camp.

Ms. Qiu was later transferred to the Baoding Forced Labour Camp. She still refused to give up her belief, so the police sent her to the Hebei Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp. The Gaoyang Labour Camp learned about her situation and refused to take her saying that she had a "heart condition." Ms. Qiu remained imprisoned at the Baoding Labour Camp. Clearwisdom.net reported that in January 2003, Ms. Qiu was transferred from the Baoding Labour Camp to the Hebei Provincial Brainwashing Session to continue the persecution. She was illegally imprisoned there, but a year later she left that evil place.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/4/5/71689.html