Arrested Three Times and Imprisoned for Five Years in Masanjia Labour Camp: 58-Year-Old Shi Yingchun from Liaoning Province

Ms. Shi Yingchun, 58, lived in Huludao City, Liaoning Province. She was a vegetable vendor. In the years of persecution of Falun Gong, Shi Yingchun has been arrested three times and has been imprisoned and tortured for five years in total.

Shi Yingchun had suffered from gum cancer, cholecystitis, neurasthenia, and other diseases. She was not benefiting from medical treatments to ease her sufferings. She started practising Falun Gong in 1995, and all the diseases were gone in just one month. By following the teaching of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, she resolved the conflicts between her and her relatives. She felt that both her mental and physical health were greatly improved.

1. First Arrest and Torture at the Huludao Detention Centre

Jiang Zemin's [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] regime began the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. On July 23rd, 1999, Shi Yingchun was arrested when she was doing the Falun Gong exercises in a park. Her home was searched and her belongings, including copies of Falun Gong books and other items were seized. Shi Yingchun was detained for seven days. The police asked, "Why do you still practise after it's forbidden?" Shi Yingchun answered, "Falun Gong teaches people to be good people, there's nothing wrong with it." The police replied, "You think it's good, but you should only practise at home." She said, "It's a good thing, why not let others know? Isn't there the law protecting freedom of belief?" Knowing that they were doing a bad thing, the police wouldn't release Shi Yingchun. When she was trying to do the exercises in the detention centre, she was kicked by a large policeman and fell on the floor. Her hands were cuffed behind her back for 28 hours until the handcuffs cut into her skin,causing her hands to swell. Her legs and feet also turned purple.

2. Second Arrest at Torture at Huludao Detention Centre

Because she didn't want to give up her belief, she was arrested again by Lianshan District Police Station on October 5th, 1999, and held at Huludao City Detention Centre, where she was abused brutally three times by the director Li Yajie, Zhou Jie, and another big policeman. She was tortured because she practiced the exercises and refused to give up her practice.

Once, Li Yajie took Shi Yingchun into the hall and told someone to take off her trousers, forcing her to lay on her stomach on the floor. Li Yajie hit Shi Yingchun on the bottom with a rubber hose. When she got tired, she would ask someone else to take her turn. When they slapped Shi Yingchun on the face, they slapped so hard that Shi Yingchun couldn't see anything but flashes in her eyes. Sometimes they would slap her with their shoes. Once they even used a stick full of nails, and the nails would cut into the skin with every hit.

Once when the detainees were let out into the courtyard to have a walk for a few minutes, Zhou Jie called Shi Yingchun to come close to her and hit her on the face. After a while of hitting, Zhou Jie felt her hands hurt, so she took off Shi Yingchun's shoes to hit her face. In no time, Shi Yingchun's left eye became swollen and she couldn't see anything. However, the guards didn't stop hitting her.

In order to stop Shi Yingchun from practicing the exercises, Li Yajie ordered someone to put cuffs on her hands and ankles. She forced Shi Yingchun to put one end of a dirty towel in her mouth with the other end tied to the ankle shackles. With the hands cuffed at the back, Shi Yingchun couldn't straighten her back while she was forced to walk. It was very difficult and every step was torture. After that, she was forced to kneel for several hours consecutively. She was in such great pain that she sweat a lot, soaking even the floor around her. She was deprived of sleep at night, and only allowed to sit or stand. At the end, even Li Yajie, the director who abused inmates the most brutally, sighed when she saw Shi Yingchun's injuries and swollen hands and said, "You have been treated worse than a homicide criminal!"

3. Two Years of Forced Labour in the Notorious Masanjia Forced Labour Camp

After she had been tortured in the detention centre for more than 20 days, Shi Yingchun was sentenced to two years of forced labour, and sent to the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp in Shenyang City. In the No. 2 Women's Section of Masanjia Forced Labour Camp, Shi Yingchun went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Warden Ji Li called her to the office where Ji Li and another warden shocked Shi Yingchun with electronic batons. One shocked her feet while the other shocked her upper body and face. You could hear the sound of electricity as it burned the skin and muscles, causing Shi Yingchun's body to shake severely. Practitioners were also forced to stand still for more than 10 hours. Wardens encouraged inmates to torture practitioners as well, and they applied various methods including forcing to crouch for a long period of time, bending the head down for a long period of time, etc. One night, the wardens instructed the inmates to drag Shi Yingchun to the washroom and forced her to sit on a small stool. The inmates used a mop to wipe Shi Yingchun's face back and forth after dipping the mop in a bucket of dirty water. While the mop moved to Shi Yingchun's nose, the inmates would pause there until she couldn't help but breathe in dirt and filthy water. She was drenched in the dirty water and her face and hair became sticky.

Once Shi Yingchun refused to be forced to walk in the way the wardens required, so warden Ji Li and two others shocked her with three electronic batons at the same time. One shocked her soles, one shocked her palms, and the other shocked her face and mouth. They yelled: "We won't stop until you give up!" In no time, Shi Yingchun felt that her heart seemed to bump out of her chest. Strangely, all the batons stopped working all of a sudden. The wardens thought the batons ran out of power, so they had to recharge them. They forced Shi Yingchun to "walk" again but she refused so they forced her to crawl, and again she refused. Ji Li called a few inmates to help. One at each side held her by the arms while a third pushed her from the back.They forced Shi Yingchun to walk up and down the stairs. When this group of inmates got tired, another group would replace them. Shi Yingchun sweat a lot from this torture.

After a month of such torture, Shi Yingchun was sent to No. 1 Section, reserved for even more brutal treatment for practitioners. Each practitioner was watched closely by two inmates who could not leave the practitioner for a minute, even while eating, walking, working, going to the washroom, or sleeping. The wardens encouraged inmates to abuse practitioners and report to the guards. It was common for practitioners to be forced to stand still or crouch for long periods of time. Guards frequently beat practitioners for no reason. Once two inmates banged Shi Yingchun's hands against the wall, causing bruises on her hands. Afterwards, they tied her hands to a bed. However, the next morning, the inmates told the wardens that Shi Yingchun slept in the washroom so that they didn't have a good sleep. Upon hearing this, warden Dong Bin and Zhang called Shi Yingchun to the office, took off her clothes and cuffed her hands behind the back. Then while forcing her to kneel, the two wardens shocked her with two electronic batons.

Another time, because she was practicing the exercises, Zhang called her to the office and took off her clothes and cuffed her hands behind her back. With one electronic baton at hand, and another being re-charged, Zhang shocked her on the face, the waist, and other parts of the body. She lost lots of hair as a result. After awhile, Zhang called an inmate to join in to shock her at the same time. The inmate focused on shocking Shi Yingchun's soles. In no time, a hole appeared on her soles and they started to bleed. Nevertheless, they didn't stop. Shi Yingchun's face was swollen, and her back and legs hurt so much that she couldn't walk properly for a long time. At that time, not only was Shi Yingchun tortured, another Dafa practitioner from Dalian City who was steadfast in her belief was taken to the office next door to listen to Shi Yingchun's screams of pain, in order to scare her.

Shi Yingchun was tortured in Masanjia Forced Labour Camp for two years until October 24th, 2001. When the police from Bohai Police Station received Shi Yingchun at Masanjia Forced Labour Camp, Shi Yingchun was extorted of 600 yuan¹ for force feeding fees by the Labor Camp. In the Bohai Police Station, policeman Zhuo Yongpeng forced Shi Yingchun to write a guarantee of "not practising in public, not appealing, and not posting posters".

4. Third Arrest for Practising the Exercises - Returned to Masanjia Forced Labour Camp

Six days after she was released, Shi Yingchun was arrested again when she was practising the exercises in a park near the Bohai Police Station. She was sent to Lianshan District Police Station and later that day to Huludao City Detention Centre. She was detained for one month before she was returned to Masanjia Forced Labour Camp. The sentence was three years of forced labour.

Once Shi Yingchun was beat by warden Zhao Jinghua because she refused to fold the quilt according to the guards' requirement to deceive the outsides. She was also tortured for practising the exercises.

Compared to the physical torture, the mental torment was more cruel. Under the pressure and lies of warden Qiu Ping, Shi Yingchun was "transformed²" and wrote a guarantee of "not practising any more". After that, she felt sad and depressed and often cried for no reason. Then she was sent to a mental hospital forcefully and prescribed some medication for mental disorders. She was forced to take the medication and so-called "punctuation" treatment in the forced labour camp. She felt awful after taking the medication and the treatment once, so they had to stop.

Authorities in Masanjia Forced Labour Camp have tortured countless practitioners, leaving them bruised, beaten, even crippled, and for too many, dead. Please help to stop this cruel persecution.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

2. "Reform or Transform" Implementation of brainwashing and torture in order to force a practitioner to renounce Falun Gong. (Variations: "reform", "transform", "reformed", "reforming", "transformed", "transforming", and "transformation")

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/2/20/172784.html