Practitioner Shao Ying, a Survivor of the 2001 Wanjia Tragedy, is Again Brutally Persecuted

Dafa practitioner Ms. Shao Ying, who survived the Wanjia Labour Camp tragedy in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province on June 20th, 2001, has been persecuted again. On the second day of the Chinese New Year in 2003, the police arrested Ms. Shao, and she was sentenced to a 10-year term. She has been imprisoned in the Harbin Women's Prison—the Fifth Prison District— where she has been under continuous persecution. Many of Ms. Shao's teeth were knocked out, her legs and back have been seriously injured, and she has suffered back pain and spinal nerve pain.

Ms. Shao Ying, 36 years old, was a government employee working for the Bureau of Husbandry. In early December 1999, she went to Beijing to appeal against the unjust treatment of Falun Gong, and was arrested by the Beijing Qianmen Police Station. She was later brought back by the Mishan City police and was detained in the Shandong Detention Centre. At the end of 1999, Shao Ying was transferred to the Harbin Wanjia labour camp for further inhumane persecution. On June 20th, 2001, the sad news of the "Wanjia Tragedy" came out. (In this tragedy, fifteen female Falun Gong practitioners were driven to try to commit suicide under the outrageously evil persecution, and three of them died. Note: Even though the persecution was inhumane and the Wanjia labour camp was responsible for the tragedy, for Falun Gong practitioners, suicide is strictly against the principles of cultivation.) Shao Ying was one of the survivors. After the tragedy was exposed, the survivors were still imprisoned, so Shao Ying and others went on a hunger strike to protest the inhuman persecution. After two months of international news reports and pressure, Wanjia Labour Camp released Shao Ying and other Dafa practitioners.

However, when these Dafa practitioners—who had just escaped death—explained to related departments and society in general about how they had been persecuted in Wanjia Labour Camp and pleaded for justice to be done, the abusers still went unpunished. Furthermore, twelve of the surviving Dafa practitioners were rounded up again within a month after their release and were subjected to persecution once more. Hearing the news, Shao Ying had no choice but to leave her senile mother, small son and her family, and become homeless. She disappeared in the beginning of 2003. We later heard that Ms. Shao was imprisoned, but specific details were unknown. We now know some further details about her disappearance:

In the afternoon on the second day of the Chinese New Year in 2003, while on her way to a fellow practitioner’s home, Shao Ying was suddenly seized by a policeman, who had been lying in wait for her. After verifying that she was a Falun Gong practitioner, the policeman handcuffed Shao Ying and pushed her into a police car. A black bag was pulled down on her head, preventing her from being able to see, and she was driven to No.1 Hongxia Street, Daoli District, Harbin City. This area has since become a site for interrogating Falun Gong practitioners.

Police officers Zhu Kai, Fan Jiayuan, Zhang Jun and others, from a special unit of the Harbin City 610 Office¹, barraged Shao Ying with a vicious interrogation. First, she was shoved into a room on the second floor and locked to a metal chair. During the interrogation process, they hit her head and temple with their fists, and also slapped her mouth. Then they shocked her hands and body with electric batons so that she could not even move her hands because they were too swollen. Later on, they took her jacket off and tied her up to the metal chair, so tightly that her heartbeat rapidly increased and she could hardly breathe. Later on, they rolled up her upper clothes, exposing her breasts and back, and shocked her with electric batons. It is not known how long they carried out this torture, but they continued until her front and back was covered with blood.

Shao Ying was physically and mentally tortured in this way until late into the night. Then the policemen again covered her head with a black bag, preventing her from seeing anything, and again she was shoved down to the main lounge on the first floor. At that time Ms. Shao was tortured until she was almost unconscious. Nonetheless, waiting for her were 7-8 strong young policemen, who also tied her up to a metal chair, swearing at her and verbally abusing her. They too used electric batons first, and then they grabbed her hair and poured mustard oil into her nose until she passed out from coughing. Then they poured cold water over her to wake her up. They repeated this torture over and over again. Shao Ying was in a cycle of waking up and passing out, and her whole body was wet, cold, and shivering. She vaguely heard what the police officers were saying, that it was almost 2:00 a.m. and they wanted to go to sleep. Finally, they stopped abusing her. Wearing thoroughly wet clothes for a day and a night until the next night, Shao Ying was then transferred to the Harbin Second Detention Centre. Only then did she have a chance to put on dry clothes. Thinking about Shao Ying in the black dungeon all those days, under this horrifying torture, one can only shiver. (Another fellow practitioner, Liu Limei, went through the same kind of torture, but the mustard oil got into her lungs and caused them to become infected. She eventually died from the persecution in June 2003.)

To resist the persecution, Shao Ying went on a hunger strike for seven months (208 days). The police applied all kinds of measures to persecute her:

In the beginning, the police did not give Shao Ying any changes of clothes or bedding, and made her sleep on a cold bed board. They did not allow her to have a quilt, so she could only cover her body with her own jacket. One person in the detention centre saw that Shao Ying was too cold to sleep and lent her a quilt to cover herself. A policeman, Zhao Fengxia, took the quilt away from her and scolded the kindhearted person harshly. Shao Ying slept on the cold bed board for quite a few days until a family member brought her things from home. Although she had her belongings, it turned out that sleeping over the next three months was very difficult. All of the detainees were required to sleep sideways next to one another without any gaps at all; one’s whole body had to be straight, head to head, with only a space equal to the size of a fist allowed per person. No one could bend and one quilt had to cover 5 people, allowing them only to turn one to two times a night. Shao Ying was put in the middle; unable to move at all, she found it hard to breathe, sweating all over from head to toe, with such pain that she was unable to sleep. She was becoming very weak as a result. Yet, she continued to suffer other kinds of persecution.

Shao Ying was constantly force-fed, and was beaten and verbally abused by other detainees under the instruction of Zhao Fengzia. She was ordered to bend over, even though she was very weak, until she passed out. She was also ordered to sleep face down, facing the pit latrine on the cold concrete floor in the bathroom.

Due to physical weakness, Shao Ying could not tolerate being force-fed and would always vomit, causing the guards to become very angry. One time, a guard named Zhang Ke used a container to hold what was thrown out, and then force-fed her the contents. One time they wanted to force-feed Shao Ying with urine. They dropped that action, however, because they were afraid that it might endanger her life.

At one time, when Shao Ying was seriously dehydrated and unconscious, showing no blood pressure, she was given an infusion of 3-4 bottles of water in her veins. This should normally take place over 5-6 hours of time. They purposely did not allow Ms. Shao to go to the toilet, which caused tremendous pain. Several times, she became incontinent, wetting her trousers thoroughly. She was not even allowed to change her pants until bedtime.

Since she has been on a hunger strike for a long time, Shao Ying’s health condition has been very poor; she has heart problems with a rapid heart beat, so she is frequently unconscious. The staff always force-feed her with some medicine, using a few detainees to hold her down on a bed board, pinching her nose, and using a spoon to open her mouth to force-feed her the medicine.

Note

1. "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.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/7/10/132652.html