The Persecution of Ms. Yu Xiulan in the Harbin City Women's Prison in Heilongjiang Province

The Harbin City Women's Prison in Heilongjiang Province is also called the Heilongjiang Province Women's Prison. The wardens there frequently torture practitioners with beatings, physical punishment, electric batons, sleep deprivation, and solitary confinement (putting them in "small cells"). The solitary confinement cell has no window but many handcuffs, shackles and floor rings for torturing people. It is wet and cold in the winter and humid and hot in the summer. Dafa practitioner Ms. Yu Xiulan was put there three times for a total of over six months. Here are some details of her persecution in the prison.

Ms. Yu Xiulan was sent to the Harbin City Women's Prison on June 16th, 2003. Because she refused to give up her belief in Falun Dafa, the head of the Training Unit, Lv Jinghua; the head of the Patrolling Unit; and three or four male wardens beat her and then locked her in solitary confinement on July 21st, 2003. She was only given light corn flour soup twice a day. Her hands were cuffed behind her back all the time and it was very hard for her to lay on the bed that had no bedding at all. She was in pain all over. She was not allowed to change her clothes, nor was she allowed to wash herself.

Ms. Yu then started a hunger strike to protest this inhuman treatment. The wardens cruelly force-fed her, handcuffed her behind her back, and attached the handcuffs to a metal frame. They then asked inmates who had no medical experience to insert an unsterilised plastic tube through her nose into her throat. The tube went to her trachea and almost caused her to suffocate. Then they left the tube in her stomach for many days and force-fed her from six o'clock in the morning to midnight. During the savage force-feeding, they also blasted the radio at its loudest volume to try to further break down her will.

On August 25th, 2003, Head Warden of the prison's Second District Yang Hua and Deputy Head Warden Zhao ordered 45 days of physical punishment for Ms. Yu. She was handcuffed behind her back from six or seven o'clock in the morning to midnight and sometimes even two o'clock in the morning. The wardens forced her to squat everyday. After long squatting, her legs were very painful and she could not walk or even stand up. The 45 days of torture caused her feet to swell and develop two big, festering holes.

On December 1st, 2003, the wardens from the Second District dragged 25 practitioners who were firm in their belief in Dafa to the courtyard and let them stay in the cold. Criminal inmate Xie Cuiping dragged Ms. Yu outside, causing her pants to tear and her legs to bleed. Prison Director Wang Xing gave the order, and the Head Warden and Deputy Head Warden of the Patrolling Unit made both male and female inmates force the practitioners to run. They beat the practitioners if they stopped running. They also cut the practitioners' hair short and rolled up their sleeves to expose their ears and arms to the cold air. Some inmates forced practitioners to lay on the snow. They took off the practitioners' winter coats and left them only in their undershirts and underpants. The weather was 10 below zero Fahrenheit. Even the wardens who wore winter coats got cold if they stayed outside for a while. Just imagine the pain that the practitioners experienced out in the snow in their undershirts for eight or nine hours.

After being left out in the freezing cold, the practitioners were abused during lunch. Only one bowl of rice and one spoon was given to these 25 practitioners. They had to share among themselves. Then they were handcuffed to the floor rings and individually shocked with electric batons. Warden Sun also used the electric baton on Ms. Yu twice. When the practitioners were allowed to return to their rooms, the wardens continued persecuting them. The practitioners were only given dinner half the size of a normal meal and were not allowed to close their eyes to sleep at night.

On December 7th, 2003, Ms. Yu's hands turned black due to being exposed to freezing temperatures outside. On December 8th, the wardens put Ms. Yu Xiulan in solitary confinement and handcuffed her injured hand so that other people could not see how they tortured practitioners. Ms. Yu was released from solitary confinement on January 16th, 2004, but was then put back in on February 10th, 2004. This time she was locked there for four months and five days. She had only light corn flour soup twice a day and her hands were cuffed behind her back all the time.

Ms. Yu was put in solitary confinement on May 24th, 2005, for the third time. During one force-feeding, when a warden put the mouth-opener in her mouth and inmate Sun Xiuyun held her nose to force-feed her, she kept vomiting. This lasted for over an hour. The evildoers had no medical knowledge and never sterilised the feeding tube. One day the deputy director of the prison, Liu Zhiqiang, went to solitary confinement to see her. Ms. Yu Xiulan told him that she would sue the prison for violating the law preventing abuse of inmates. The next day Liu Zhiqiang arranged to have a warden feed her rice with a small spoon and had a female warden videotape it against Ms. Yu Xiulan's will.

The wardens at the Harbin City Women's Prison encouraged the criminal inmates to beat and verbally abuse practitioners, and also used many instruments of torture on the practitioners. They deceived both top officials and the public, claiming that they managed the prison by humanitarian standards. We appeal to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and international organisations to condemn the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecution of Dafa practitioners and its violation of human rights, and we urge them to request the immediate release of all imprisoned Dafa practitioners and to immediately put an end to the CCP's irrational and brutal persecution.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/10/9/139738.html