Elderly Practitioner Xi Liling Is Persecuted and Tortured for Her Belief

Practitioner Ms. Xi Liling, 69 years old, lived at 314 Nanchang Road, Chengguan District, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province. Before her retirement, she was a doctor at the school clinic of Lanzhou Business Institute.

It was suspected by doctors that Xi Liling had suffered from blood cancer before she began to practise Falun Gong. Her blood indicators were much lower than clinical standards. She felt weak and tired all of the time and had no appetite. In order to cure the disease, Xi Liling had been travelling, searching for doctors who could help her. But she found none. In September 1998, she perchance learned about Falun Gong.

After more than 10 days of practising Falun Gong, Xi Liling regained her health and became a new person. Witnessing her change, many people around Xi Liling joined in practising Falun Gong with her.

The persecution of Falun Gong started on July 20th, 1999. The Lanzhou City Police arrested several practitioners in Lanzhou City the evening of July 19, 1999. The next day, upon learning the news, the practitioners in and around Lanzhou City went to the provincial Appeals Office to distribute leaflets exposing the persecution and tell people the facts about Falun Gong and requested that the police release the arrested practitioners unconditionally. Xi Liling was one of those appealing to the government. The staff at the Appeals Office asked Xi Liling and six other practitioners to go to the government office to have a meeting. However, the practitioners were arrested once they arrived. The seven practitioners were secretly transported from the back gate of the government compound to the Mingzhu Hotel in Chengguan District of Lanzhou City, and were subsequently locked in separate rooms on different floors to prevent them from communicating with each other. Watched 24 hours a day, the practitioners were not allowed to get in touch with anyone. Special agents were standing and watching outside the hotel day and night, and also prohibited anyone from asking for information about them, not to mention visiting them. Xi Liling was detained there for 20 days.

In August 1999, Xi Liling travelled to Beijing to try to explain the facts of Falun Gong to the Appeals Office of the central government. However, once she arrived in Beijing, Xi Liling was tricked by a special agent who pretended to be a practitioner and took her name and detailed personal information. In late September 1999, she was under surveillance by Beijing Security agents from Beijing to Lanzhou. The Security Department of Lanzhou Business Institute searched Xi Liling's home and took away some photos of Xi Liling and fellow practitioners. Ms. Xi was arrested and detained at the Taoshuping Detention Centre in Lanzhou City where she was subjected to brainwashing to force her to give up her beliefs. Fifteen days later, Xi Liling was taken home by personnel from her school.

In November 1999, Xi Liling was arrested by the city police and detained at the Xiguoyuan Detention Centre, where many practitioners were detained. The police forced the practitioners to peel 1.5 to 2 kilograms of watermelon seeds from 7 in the morning until noon. They had to squat on their heels the whole time, and were not allowed to sit, stand, or kneel. After lunch, they were forced to continue peeling seeds until they finished their workloads. Otherwise, they were not allowed to sleep. The skin on their fingers was broken and bleeding due to the long hours of arduous work.

In 2000, Xi Liling was imprisoned in Ping'antai Forced Labour Camp for one year. Practitioners imprisoned there were forced to recite the camp rules every evening. Those who refused were punished by being forced to stand until late at night. The wardens arranged some inmates who were drug abusers to watch practitioners to prevent the practitioners from talking to each other. Practitioners were even followed when going to the bathroom. Because she refused to write a statement of renouncing her beliefs, Xi Liling's imprisonment was extended by two more months. Xi Liling's school sent someone to take her home from the labour camp and have arranged people to watch her ever since her release.

Xi Liling went to stay with her elderly mother in Xi'an, in order to take care of her. On September 6th, 2002, Ms. Xi's home in Xi'an was searched by policemen from the Hu County Police Station. They confiscated her personal belongings, including 5 printers, 1 computer, bankbooks, a mobile phone, and other items. Xi Liling was detained at the Lajiatan Detention Centre of Hu County where more than 100 practitioners were detained. The doors of the cells in the detention centre were steel bars, through which snow blew in onto the practitioners' beds in winter. The police tortured Xi Liling every day to force her to tell where the leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong she had produced had gone.

Once, Xi Liling was tortured from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. A torture method called the "Live Tiger Bench" was used on her, where the police handcuffed her hands behind her back, bound her forearms with a thick rope and hung her from a high rack, with her toes barely touching the floor. They then tied a long rope to the chains on her her legs, and four or five policemen dragged the long rope to pull her body up until she was almost parallel to the floor.

Xi Liling passed out several times due to the pain caused by the torture. When she regained consciousness, Xi Liling found herself lying in dust on the floor, her hands and feet cuffed. She said to the torturers, "Now, I believe all the reports on the Clearwisdom website are all true. You can torture a 60-year-old this way, no wonder..." A slap in the face cut her off from finishing her words.

After the torture, Xi Liling couldn't feel her arms and she could hardly walk. The policemen told her, "If you don't tell us where the materials went, we'll torture you with the Tiger Bench again tomorrow." She responded, "I just don't know, my answer is I don't know, no matter what." She walked slowly to the water tap in the middle of the prison courtyard to clean herself. All of the inmates in the ten cells of the detention centre witnessed this and shouted, "Stop the torture!"

Xi Liling's shoulders are badly injured from the torture, and she cannot use them. Her knees hurt so badly that she cannot walk very far, and it's hard for her to be on her knees.

To protest the brutal torture at the Hu County Detention Centre, practitioners started a hunger strike. The police lied about the reason of the strike and said that it was because the practitioners didn't like the food in the detention centre, so they transferred the practitioners to the Worker Rehabilitation Centre of Xi'an City located in Chang'an County in Xi'an City. The practitioners were detained there until close to the Chinese New Year. They were then divided into several groups and sent to various detention centres around Xi'an. Xi Liling was sent to the Hu County Detention Centre.

On January 24th, 2003, Xi Liling was sentenced by the Huxian Police to seven years of imprisonment and was sent to Xi'an Women's Prison, in Shaanxi Province. Practitioners in the prison were forced to sit on a tiny, low stool every day as a torture. Xi Liling wasn't able to sit, due to her knee pain, so she sat on the floor. Wardens also forced practitioners to practice military walking and running, no matter whether the practitioners could run or not. Practitioners' communication with others was prohibited. If a practitioner did something without telling the wardens, he or she would be forced to stand still for a long time or hung up on a door frame as punishment.

Dafa practitioners were forced to work 12 hours a day, and some overtime in the evenings. Sometimes they had to work until dawn. Upon finishing their official workload, they also had to continue to work in their cells until they finished additional work. Otherwise, they were not allowed to sleep or were forced to attend intensive brainwashing sessions. The wardens applied all kinds of methods to try to make practitioners give up their belief.

In late 2004, the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party ¹ was published. After reading it, Xi Liling wrote a statement stating that she quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. The wardens found the statement when it was being passed among practitioners. The practitioner on whom the statement had been found was locked in a small cell, tortured, and hung up on a door frame for three days. The wardens did not make too big a scene of this, in the fear of more people getting to know about the statement of quitting the CCP.

On August 25th, 2008, Xi Liling was taken home by some community workers from Duanjiatan community, in Lanzhou City. Wearing shabby clothes, a grry-haired Xi Liling looked weak and old. The school from which she had retired refused to issue her her entitled pension. Xi Liling argued with the school several times, and the school then agreed to give her 1,200 yuan² per month as a living allowance, rather than the regular pension which she was supposed to receive that should have been about 2,600 yuan per month, plus health benefits.

Note

1. Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party: Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party is a series of essays published in late 2004 that reveal the true nature of the Communist Party. The Nine Commentaries have led millions of people to renounce their membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). "A book that has shocked all Chinese around the world. A book that is disintegrating the Communist Party." http://ninecommentaries.com

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

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/2/5/194882.html