The Brutal and Torturous Ordeals That Ms. Miu Cui Has Endured

Ms. Miu Cui, a Falun Gong practitioner in her 50s, is from Pingjiang County in the Yueyang area of Hunan Province. She was tortured many times because of her firm belief in Falun Gong. At 9 p.m., on May 27th, 2007, prison guard Li Jun and several prisoners in the Hunan Women's Prison, used a rope to tie Ms. Miu's wrists behind her back and then hung her up in the air. They tried to force her to sign a statement to say she would renounce her belief in Falun Gong. In excruciating pain, she lost control of her bowels and started to bleed from her vagina. The guard then took her down her, dragged her to the toilet to clean herself up, and then hung her up again. She was tortured repeatedly until 4 a.m. the following day. A month later she started to bleed from her vagina again. When a doctor from the provincial hospital examined her, he discovered that she was in the last stages of uterine cancer and he told her she probably had a maximum of three months to live.

The following is Ms. Miu Cui's story.

Practitioners are tortured in detention centres

In December 1999, Ms. Miu and several other practitioners went to Beijing to protest the persecution of Falun Gong. They were arrested and detained for three days, without food or water, at the Youjie Detention Centre in Beijing. On the fourth day, Liu Riguang from the Yueyang City 610 Office¹ took the practitioners to the Pingjiang County Detention Centre, where they were tortured.

Those that participated in torturing practitioners in the Pingjiang County Detention Centre in 2000 included Hong (given name unknown) and Mao Bofan from the county Public Safety Bureau and Li Shangpeng, Hu Heping, Wang Meilan, Zhan Jianchi, Yu Gui, and Chen Meihua from the detention centre. They often tortured practitioners by handcuffing them and suspending them off the ground, using electric batons on them, locking them in solitary confinement, beating them, and pouring urine on them.

One day Ms. Miu was doing the sitting meditation, a Falun Gong exercise, when guard Wang Meilan saw her. Wang yelled, "You are dead if you continue." Ms. Miu didn't listen to the guard. Wang went into her cell and shocked her on the head and neck with an electric baton. A thick, smouldering smell came from her burning skin. Ms. Miu was then put in solitary confinement for 20 hours. When she was put back in her cell, she was already unconscious.

Because there were already many practitioners in this detention centre, Mao Bofan from the Pingjiang County Public Safety Bureau was responsible for separating them. Ms. Miu was transferred to the Yueyang County Detention Centre, where there were already six practitioners.

All the practitioners in the Yueyang County Detention Centre went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. The guards brutally beat and force-fed them. To force-feed the practitioners, they ordered other prisoners to drag them out of their cells one-by-one. They handcuffed them behind their backs and beat them until they fell down. Then the prisoners stood on the practitioners' legs and shoulders to hold them down. The prisoners then forcefully inserted a plastic tube up through each practitioner's nose and poured concentrated salt water down the tube. The practitioner's stomach would quickly swell up and become extremely painful. The practitioner's nose would often bleed copiously and there would be blood, salt water, and dust all over their hair, face, and chest.

All the practitioners were force-fed eight times. Their noses swelled and festered, their chests were in excruciating pain, and they could barely breathe. They could hardly walk and were bleeding from their mouths. Ms. Miu was later transferred back to the Pingjiang Detention Centre. That night she had diarrhoea and a fever and vomited. She was severely ill for several days. Her weight dropped from 110 lbs to 60 lbs and she lost most of her hair.

Sentenced and tortured in prison

On June 13th, 2000, Ms. Miu was put on trial for practising Falun Gong. On the day of the trial, she read her letter of defence to the judges, prosecutors, court staff, and spectators so that she could explain the facts about Falun Gong. The judge was speechless and ended the trial in less than 30 minutes.

In July 2000, Ms. Miu received her verdict from the judges. She was informed, "We know you are innocent, but we have to follow orders from above." She was sentenced to three years and sent to the Hunan Women's Prison on March 23rd, 2001.

Luo Jian, a guard at the prison, was a major participant in the persecution of practitioners there. She spoke harshly to the practitioners and brutally tortured them. On Ms. Miu's first day there, she was forced to do intensive work. Prison guard Luo ordered prisoners Chen Wenhong and Zhen Liutao to monitor Ms. Miu around the clock. Ms. Miu's job was to cut the threads off a large pile of bed sheets, fold them, and pack them all. She was not allowed to walk, talk, drink water, or go to the toilet.

Ms. Miu worked from 6:30 a.m. until 1 a.m. the following day. After three days, her face and legs were severely swollen, and she couldn't bend her fingers or walk. She believed she was innocent and did not deserve to be treated this way. The next day she went to guard Luo's office and told Luo she would not work anymore. Luo did not want to listen and decided to punish her by making her stand for prolonged periods of time for five days. Ms. Miu's body was severely swollen all over and she developed a bad fever. On the sixth day, she refused to go to work and stayed in her cell to write an appeal letter. Luo took her paper away and ordered her to continue standing for the next few days.

Brainwashing

On May 17th, all 11 practitioners were ordered to be brainwashed by prison guard Hao Chunling. Every practitioner was monitored and closely followed every day by two guards and four prisoners from 5 a.m. to 3 a.m. the following day. Practitioners had to run, do push-ups, squat for long periods of time, stand for long periods of time, climb walls, and sit on a 'T'-shaped chair for long periods of time. Practitioners were shouted at, deprived of sleep and use of the toilet, shocked with electric batons, and forced to transcribe from books assigned by the prison.

During her 57 days of imprisonment, Ms. Miu still maintained she had not committed any crime by practising Falun Gong. When the brainwashing attempts failed to make her renounce her belief in Falun Gong, she was returned to the intensive labour ward and tortured.

One day, a prisoner who knew the truth about the persecution brought Ms. Miu Teacher's latest lecture from 2002 in Washington, D.C. When prison guard Luo found out, Ms Miu was handcuffed and paraded in front of everyone in the prison to humiliate her. Luo them put her in a solitary confinement cell that was infested with bugs and mosquitoes. Ms. Miu went on a hunger strike to protest.

Three days into the hunger strike the warden came, so Ms. Miu quickly wrote an appeal letter to inform the warden of how she had been tortured. Three days later she was let out of solitary confinement and Luo was removed from her position within a week.

Tortured again

After Luo was removed, Ms Miu was still forced to work more than 18 hours a day. Ms Liu and Ms. Jin Xinchun, another practitioner, decided to expose what was going on in the prison to Li Yunfeng, the head of the provincial forced labour bureau, who would visit the prison in November 2001.

Li Yunfeng did visit the prison on November 17th, 2001, and 30 minutes after the two practitioners started working, they were ordered to go back to their cells. When they refused, prison supervisors Huang Can and Li Jun, along with other guards, dragged the two practitioners out of the workshop and handcuffed them to a handrail until the visitors had left.

In November the weather is cold, but still the guards forced both practitioners to lie on top of an iron bed and handcuffed them there from 6 a.m. to midnight and then handcuffed them under the iron bed from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. This torture continued for seven days and nights. As a result Ms. Miu's hands festered and her whole body was swollen.

After the incident on November 17th, prison guards intensified the persecution of practitioners. Prison guard Li Jun beat Ms. Miu until she fell to the ground, then stood on her back. Ms. Miu was forced into the torture position called "Carrying the double-edged sword on the back." In this position, her hands were handcuffed behind her back and she was hung up in the air by her wrists. Her body weight pulled on her shoulders, elbows, and wrist joints, causing excruciating pain. Within 10 minutes her clothes were soaked in sweat and she lost control of her bowels. She lost consciousness in 20 minutes. When she regained consciousness, she noticed that her wrists were bleeding severely. The prison guards ordered practitioners to write a statement to say that they would never try to appeal to officials visiting the prison, but all of the practitioners refused. The next day the guards paraded the practitioners in front of other prisoners to humiliate them. A guard then tried to choke Ms. Liu and yelled at her to lower her head. Ms. Miu soon fainted and was put in solitary confinement for 15 days.

The torture called "Three Gates"

"Three Gates" is also called "Gate of Hell." When practitioners were sent there, they were searched and had to kneel on the ground, raise their hands, and shout "Criminal (practitioner's name) is here to report." Many practitioners refused to do this, so they were beaten and shocked with electric batons.

At 1 a.m. on September 15th, 2002, prison guard Tang yelled at Ms. Miu, "Why don't you kneel down? I am making you kneel down today!" Tang took out a high voltage electric baton to shock her. As Ms. Miu was shocked, the sparks could be seen in the dark. She was in extreme pain as she rolled back and forth on the ground. Later, guard Li Jun ordered prisoners Li Yuanmei, Xu Jun, and Wu Yanfei to kick and beat Ms. Miu while she was on the floor. Immediately, blood started gushing out of her nose and mouth.

Hung by the wrists while handcuffed behind the back

In the evening on September 26th, 2002, Warden Zhao Lan ordered 4,000 prisoners to watch a video that slandered Falun Gong. A dozen practitioners shouted, trying to clarify the truth. Warden Zhao ordered the guards to take Ms. Miu, Ms. Yan Hong, Ms. Zhang Yaya, and Ms. Liu Daju out and beat them severely. As a result, Ms. Miu could not hear through her right ear for two weeks. The practitioners were then handcuffed and put in solitary confinement. They were also denied any examination or treatment for their injuries.

Ms. Miu was in solitary confinement for two weeks. When she returned to her cell, she was tortured with the "Carrying the double-edged sword on the back" method again. Several days later, she developed a fever that would not go away and she couldn't drink water. Prisoners Li Wumei and Xu Jun lied to the guards, saying that Ms. Miu was on a hunger strike. The guards then dragged Ms. Miu from her bed to the ground. They dragged her from the fifth floor to the first floor, then to the workshop. In less than 30 minutes, her clothes were all ripped and her back, bottom, and the heels of her feet were severely injured. She was then handcuffed to a window ledge in the workshop.

Ms. Liu attempted to put her ripped clothes in a bag to save as evidence of how the prison guards torture practitioners. Two weeks later her clothes were gone. Other prisoners had stolen her bag and destroyed the evidence. To cover their crimes and let the wounds on her body fade away, the guards stopped torturing Ms. Miu in 2003 and let her return home on March 25th, 2003.

Police against Ms. Miu

On June 20th, 2003, Ms. Miu, Ms. Zhang Lihong, and Ms. Zhang Lanhui went to Lijiaduan in Miluo City to distribute truth-clarification materials. Zhou Bo and other police officers from the Lijiaduan Police Station arrested the three practitioners. They and officers from the Miluo 610 Office then tied them to chairs and beat them with wooden rods and shoes to extort a confession from them. The practitioners started to bleed as a result of the beatings. The police then forced the practitioners to kneel down and denied them food or use of the toilet for 17 hours. The police then locked them up in the Xiangyin County Detention Centre.

In the detention centre the practitioners refused to eat for six days. Guard Hu Jianjun and officials from the Miluo City 610 Office later questioned them, but Ms. Miu refused to be interrogated. An officer then grabbed her by the neck and hit her head against a wall; she fainted immediately. Ms. Miu's health started to deteriorate. The three practitioners were taken to the Xiangyin People's Hospital for emergency treatment. An officer from the Miluo City 610 Office still intended to sentence the three practitioners, no matter what.

Several days later, the Miluo County Court set up a trial in the practitioners' room in the hospital. The practitioners were still on oxygen and couldn't move. As a judge entered the room she covered her nose and said, "It smells so bad here. It is like there are three corpses here." Several days later the verdict came: Ms. Miu was sentenced to six years, Ms. Zhang Lihong and Ms. Zhang Lanhui were sentenced to four years each.

On January 16th, 2004, guard Hu Jianjun from the Xiangyin Detention Centre and Xu Jianqiu, a forensic medical doctor, took the three practitioners, who were still carrying oxygen tanks, to the Hunan Women's Prison. The results of medical exams given at the 112 Police Hospital stated that Ms. Miu had multiple illnesses and the other practitioners had very high blood pressure and could have a stroke at any time. Therefore, the three practitioners were unfit to be sent to prison. Hu and Xu quickly used their connections to put the practitioners in prison.

Tortured again in the Hunan Women's Prison

The number of imprisoned practitioners increased from eleven in 2001 to over 200 in 2004. Their ages ranged from under 20 to over 70. Ms. Miu, Ms. Zhang Lihong, and Ms. Zhang Lanhui were all tortured by the "Three Gates". Those who took part in torturing the practitioners were Li Chunhui, Li Jun, Luo Jian, and Mao Huiping.

All practitioners were monitored and closely followed by two prisoners 24 hours a day. They had to perform over 15 hours of intensive labour each day. Their jobs were to peel broad beans, skewer pieces of lamb meat, weave mats using split bamboo, fold tissue paper, and do embroidery. To prevent them from having any contact with the outside, the guards put 12 to 14 people in a room less than 30 square yards and the practitioners had to live, eat, wash, and sleep there. In summer, the water that was used to soak the broad beans had a terrible smell, and the room was infested with bugs. In winter, everything was wet and damp because the room was full of water buckets with beans in them. Practitioners were not allowed family visits, parcels, shopping, or talking to anyone. The guards often searched their room and would take away paper, pens, and other personal belongings and burn them.

On May 5th, 2007, guard Luo ordered several practitioners to drag Ms. Miu to the brainwashing centre. The brainwashing centre was deeply hidden within the prison, and all the windows and doors were closed. No one was allowed in or out, except those who tortured the practitioners. Practitioners taken there suffered physical and mental torture for a long time. Some of them became incoherent and some died. Ms. Li Deyin died in May 2007, less than three months after she was put in the brainwashing centre.

Those who participated in the torture in the brainwashing centre included Zhao Lan, the warden; Xiao Ping and Zhou Chan, supervisors of a prison ward; Li Jun, Luo Jian, Mao Huiping, and Deng Jin, all guards; and Huo Rong, Liu Qin, and Li Yanling, all prisoners.

Life in danger as a result of torture

At 9 p.m. on May 27th, 2007, guard Li Jun and several prisoners from the Hunan Women's Prison tortured Ms. Miu with "Carrying the double-edged sword on the back." They wanted to force her to sign a statement renouncing her belief in Falun Gong. She was in such excruciating pain that she sweat heavily, lost control of her bowels, and started bleeding from her vagina. The guard loosened her, dragged her to the toilet to wash herself, and hung her up again. She was tortured repeatedly until 4 a.m. the next day. A month later she had blood flooding out of her vagina. A doctor from a provincial hospital examined her and found out that she was in the last stages of uterine cancer and had a maximum of three months to live.

In order to cover up their crimes and rid themselves of responsibility, guards from the Hunan Women's Prison quickly bailed her out for medical treatment and sent her home on January 19th, 2008.

Officers from various 610 Offices and the police often still go to Ms. Miu's home to harass her. During the Olympics, domestic security officers constantly monitored her. On December 2nd, 2008, three people from the Hunan Women's Prison and three officers from the Yueyang 610 Office found her and told her to have a health check-up. Their intention was to put her back in prison once her health had recovered. Her exam results remained the same as before, so the officers had to give up.

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/2008/12/15/191655.html