The Persecution and Torture Suffered by Ms. Zhao Tianxiu from Weifang City, Shandong Province

On the evening of August 15th, 2006, practitioner Ms. Zhao Tianxiu from Weifang City, Shandong Province, was arrested at home and taken to the Weifang Detention Centre. She was then sentenced to one and a half years of forced labour. During that time, she endured inhuman tortures. She was finally released in January 2008. Following are details.

Sometime after 9:00 p.m. on August 15th, 2006, more than a dozen policemen from a local station and the 610 Office¹ suddenly invaded Ms. Zhao's residence. They climbed over the wall and then broke into her house. They handcuffed her behind her back, and searched her house inside out, but found nothing [they were looking for].

Then one of them took out a blank piece of paper and forced Zhao Tianxiu's husband to sign it. Brandishing a pair of handcuffs they threatened him with arrest if he refused to sign. At the same time they forced him to verbally abuse the founder of Falun Gong. Under that pressure, he gave in. Then, they pushed Zhao Tianxiu into a police van and took her to the Weifang Detention Center.

Zhao Tianxiu was given half-raw steamed buns to eat. The guards would not give her hot water to drink. In the summer, 15 to 16 people had to sleep on one concrete bed. The detainees were given one pot of water to drink each day, and pickled vegetables for breakfast and dinner. The only dish for lunch was the overgrown wax gourds that were not peeled and were only boiled in water, together with the wax gourd's seeds. No cooking oil was added. Eating this kind of food for 28 days, Zhao Tianxiu's weight dropped, and her eye-sight became blurry.

One day a guard told her to pack up. When she asked where they were sending her, the guard replied, "Home." However, as soon as she had left the detention center, an officer from the local police station and a man over 40 years old handcuffed her and pushed her inside a police vehicle. She asked why they had to handcuff her if they were taking her home. The two men said that they were taking her home, but they took her instead into a mountainous area.

Zhao Tianxiu was taken to Wangcun Forced Labour Camp in Zibo City. While observing the paperwork being processed, Zhao Tianxiu saw that the blank piece of paper her husband had signed was completely filled in, with a police stamp at the bottom. When she asked to read the paper, the guards would not let her. She said that the police had fabricated everything and that the fingerprints from her husband were obtained under police pressure.

Zhao Tianxiu was imprisoned at the labour camp for a year and a half. As soon as she entered the labour camp, she was made to wear the prison uniform and was locked up in a small, dark cell. Two collaborators² "sandwiched" her in the cell. They asked her why she practised Falun Gong. She replied, "Falun Gong can heal illnesses and teach people to be good." The collaborators declared that, since the government had banned the practice, Ms. Zhao was against the government. They incited thugs in the camp to beat her. The beating left her with two broken teeth. They asked her again if she would continue practising. Although her mouth was filled with blood, they refused to let her spit it out. The blood started to spill out of her mouth, and eventually it covered much of the floor.

Zhao Tianxiu fainted many times from the inhuman tortures she was subjected to. After the doctor discovered her heart rate to be faster than usual and her blood pressure high, the guards stopped beating her, but they would watch her day and night, to prevent her from sleeping. After several nights without sleep, Zhao Tianxiu staggered as she walked. Besides that, she could no longer sit still. However, if she even tilted her body the monitoring guard her would slap her face. When she ate, she did not even know where her mouth was. Hence the guard Wu Xiuli knocked the steam bun she was eating on the floor and said, "You don't need to eat. It would be better if you would not have to eat forever, so that we would save the government money!"

In addition, Ms. Zhao was forced to do hard labour. Because of the hard labour, many of the detainees suffered from slipped discs, shoulder pain, and finger joint pain. The guards treated the detainees like robots, and used different methods of torture on them. They did not care if the detainees died from torture.

Zhao Tianxiu should have been released on January 12th, 2008, but was transferred from Wangcun Forced Labour Camp to Weifang Detention Centre, where she was detained for an extra 18 days before she was released.

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.

2. "Collaborators": [former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.]

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/2/25/173072.html