Ms. Hou Lihua Dies after Being Tortured in Heilongjiang Province

Ms. Hou Lihua, 40, was single and lived in Dongan District, Mudanjiang City, in China's Heilongjiang Province. She was employed by the Shunda Calcium Carbide Limited Company in Mudanjiang City. After the persecution began in 1999, she was arrested and detained multiple times, and sent to forced labour camps. She was brutally beaten many times, and one time her ribs were fractured after being beaten.

1. Ms. Hou Brutally Force-fed in the Mudanjiang Labour Camp

Since the beginning of June 2000, the Women's Ward of Mudanjiang City Labour Camp began detaining Falun Gong practitioners, and specially bought 20 Iron Chairs¹, duct-tape, and leg ties to use for torture. The guards often tortured practitioners during the night, searching their beds and belongings, and even forced practitioners to strip off their clothes many times to do body searches. They would lock the cell gate, and then brutally beat practitioners. Guards (both female) Liu Xiufen and Zhang Xiaoguang slapped practitioners, punched the heads of practitioners against the metal beds, the walls, or the metal gate. They poured cold water on them, using a wet mop to "sweep" practitioners, and they even sat on them while beating them. They forced practitioners to watch slanderous TV programmes, and used electric batons to shock them.

One time the guards locked Ms. Zhang Fenrong and Ms. Hou Lihua in separate cells, and put them on the Iron Chairs, tied their hands and feet, duct-taped their mouths, and then called the guards over to beat them. Another practitioner Ms. Zhu Yan could not keep silent, and tried to stop the brutality. The guards locked her in solitary confinement, tortured her with acupuncture needles, and caused her left arm to be numb for a long period of time.

The guards took Ms. Hou Lihua's Falun Gong book, and she went on a hunger strike to protest. Several guards then held her down, clipped her tongue with a pair of pliers, and brutally force-fed her. This resulted in her tongue being numb for a long period of time. Guard Liu Xiufen stripped off Ms. Hou Lihua and Shen Jing'e's pants, and pushed them against the window across from the men's cells. Liu Xiufen played with Ms. Song's (over 60 years old) nipples, while using dirty language.

Guards once tortured practitioners the whole night. In protest, all twenty detained Falun Gong practitioners went on a group hunger strike, and it was reported to the camp administration and higher levels the facts of how they were being tortured, and they demanded an end to the brutality of the guards, and to have the perpetrators held responsible. Although the guards force-fed them cell by cell, the women's ward was shut down soon after. A few practitioners were transferred to other facilities, but most were released.

2. Tied on the Tiger Bench², Force-fed Mustard Oil, and Forced to Wear "Space Helmet"

Ms. Hou Lihua was arrested at the beginning of November 2001, for distributing leaflets exposing the persecution and telling people the facts about Falun Gong. Officers Qiao Ping, Chen Liang and Chen Xianrui, and others from Aimin District Police Department tortured Ms. Hou, a thin lady of five feet tall. They tied her on the Tiger Chair, and pulled her legs straight and added six bricks one by one under her feet until they could not add any more. Then they piled a 50 pound shackle on her stomach. One officer sat on her chest going up and down. In order to hide their crimes, they put towels under her arms (on top of the Iron Chair), then two officers pulled her two arms outwards very hard until Ms. Hou passed out. Officers then poured cold water onto her to wake her up, then continued the torture. More inhumanly, they poured mustard oil in her nose, along with a lit cigarette, and put a plastic bag over her head to suffocate her, and called it "wearing a space helmet."

They tortured her around the clock for five whole days, not allowing her to sleep. If Ms. Hou closed her eyes, they would pull her eye lids apart, and curse her. They quietly reminded each other to try to not leave obvious injuries on her body. But when they took her to the detention centre on the sixth day, even the guards could not believe how badly she was tortured, and some even had tears in their eyes. Her lower back's flesh was festered, and she could not raise her arms. All detained practitioners in the 14th cell collaborated on a report as witnesses that she entered the cell in a dying condition. The officers that tortured her tried to fabricate that she was tortured by guards in the detention centre. As result, all the guards in the detention centre signed their names, and submitted the report to the Mudanjiang City Police Department Director Li Fu, who came to examine Ms. Hou's condition, but he did not do anything about it. Ms. Hou was still sentenced to three years of forced labour, and taken to the Harbin City Drug Rehabilitation Centre. Her family could not find justice for her anywhere.

3. Tortured in Harbin City Drug Rehabilitation Centre

In the middle of November 2002, in order to force practitioners to give up their faith, Harbin City Drug Rehabilitation Centre adopted the inhuman means used in the Masanjia Labour camp in Liaoning Province and the Wanjia Labour Camp, and conducted a round of violent brainwashing. Guards opened the basement windows, stripped practitioners of their clothes, shackled their ankles to metal bars, handcuffed them to ground rings, put pans of cold water under their bodies, taped their eyes and mouths shut, and shocked them with several electric batons together. Practitioners were tortured violently. The guards pulled their hair out in bunches. The whole building smelled like burnt flesh from the basement, and guards sprayed air fresher or Lysol in the building to cover their crimes.

Guard Wei Qiang compressed the bodies of practitioners by stepping on them with leather shoes, inch by inch, from their hands up towards their shoulders. Guards Yin Na, He Qiuhong, Dong Shaoxin would beat and curse them, together when shocking them with electric batons. They wouldn't let up when practitioners were in extreme pain, but would be even more cruel. If the skin of any part of a practitioner's body was exposed, they would shock those spots, or even stick the baton down their neck, on their breasts, or on their private parts.

The bodies of practitioners were tortured and covered with bruises, their heads were swollen, they could not see clearly, they lost their hearing, and their hair was messily cut. The guards also encouraged prisoners to monitor and mistreat practitioners, and did not allow practitioners to talk, and were even being monitored when using the toilet, eating, doing labour, or sleeping. They forced practitioners to watch slanderous Falun Gong videos. Whoever resisted such mistreatments, would be tortured with the "Big Hanging Up"³, Tiger Bench, and handcuffed them to ground rings for several days without sleep. Ms. Lou Yunhong from Daqing City and Ms. Li Ruyi, in her 60s, from Mudanjiang City, were handcuffed six whole days onto the middle gate, and Ms. Hou Lihua was tied on the Tiger Bench in solitary confinement on the second floor.

4. Ms. Hou Lihua Dies after Long Term Torture

At around 3:00 p.m. on November 17th, 2008, Mudanjiang City Domestic Security Division arrested Ms. Hou from her workplace, tortured her until she was emaciated, and was again in a dying state. She was released at the end of 2008, but due to so many years of inhuman torture received, she died on February 14th, 2009.

Note

1. The iron chair is made of iron pipes. Victims are restrained on the iron chairs with both arms and legs tied for a long period of time. See illustration on http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/1/9/17577.html.

2. "Tiger Bench": Prisoners are forced to sit on a small iron bench that is approximately 20 cm (6 inches) tall with their knees tied together. With their hands tied behind their backs or sometimes placed on their knees, they are forced to sit straight up and look straight ahead without movement for long periods of time.

3. There are two forms in this torture: (1) With both hands handcuffed behind their back and only the toes are touching the ground, and one is hung by a rope that is tied to the metal window frames; (2) One hand of a practitioner is handcuffed to one bunk bed and the other hand to another bed, and the two beds are pulled in the opposite directions. One feels extreme pain as the body is pulled. See illustration:

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/11/17/54624.html

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/2/17/195614.html