The Persecution of Ms. Meng Fanli from Jiamusi City

Ms. Meng Fanli started to practise Falun Gong in 1996. At the time she was pessimistic and unhappy with her life. But soon there was true meaning in her life, and she benefited greatly from Falun Gong's teachings.

But on July 20th, 1999, the ruling Communist regime began slandering Falun Gong and arresting its practitioners. Police tricked Ms. Meng into going to the Xiangyang Police Department, where she was arrested. She was then held in the Jiamusi Detention Centre because the police were afraid she would go to Beijing to protest the persecution. She was given mouldy cornbread and thin soup with hardly any vegetables. Half a year passed before the Xiangyang Police Department extorted 2000 yuan¹ from her and then released her.

In November 2000, Ms. Meng and other two practitioners went to Beijing to appeal on behalf of Falun Gong. Near Jinshui Bridge in Tiananmen Square, they were arrested by police who were hiding in the crowd. They were taken to the Xicheng District Detention Centre in Beijing, where they were stripped and searched by a female police officer. The police took away all their cash and personal belongings.

At that time, Falun Gong practitioners were flooding into Beijing from all parts of China to appeal, and many refused to tell police their names. All of Beijing's large detention centres were filled with practitioners, and many other practitioners were intercepted along the way and detained outside of Beijing. Meng Fanli and nine other practitioners were detained in the Shahe City Detention Centre in Hebei Province. The detention centre did not have heat or sufficient beds, so the detained practitioners had to lean on each other and sit on the cold cement floor for the whole night. The second day, the detention centre police threw several damp, dirty quilts to them. The practitioners slept in their clothes under those foul-smelling quilts.

Police from a local public department interrogated Meng Fanli. She refused to tell them her name or address. The police handcuffed her to a radiator in a position where she was unable to stand straight or sit. She had to remain bent over for a whole day and night. The Shahe City Police Department officers did not beat the practitioners directly, as they were afraid of leaving visible signs of mistreatment and being reprimanded for it. Instead, they used a torture method termed "stew the eagle." If the practitioners did not tell their names, they were forced to stand still. As soon as the practitioner closed his or her eyes, the police began talking or yelling at them. The police were divided into a few groups to torture the practitioners around the clock. After a few days, the practitioners were very exhausted. They ached all over and felt like they were going to explode.

Meng Fanli persisted in telling the police about Falun Gong and clearing up their misunderstandings. She told them that they should treat practitioners well. An officer that looked like a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadre lost patience and made a move to kick her in the chest with his heavy boots, but he stopped himself just before making contact, perhaps held back by his own conscience. A few days later, a police department director came and used a nice-guy approach, asking Ms. Meng to sit down and bringing her some water. In the end he deceived her into revealing her name and address.

Police from her hometown then came to collect her and took her to the Jiamusi City Detention Centre. She learned later that all transportation and detention expenses were deducted from her salary.

She was sentenced to one year of forced labour. In the labour camp, guard Liu Yadong put Ms. Meng under immense pressure to be "transformed²" and write the so-called three statements³. All the practitioners who refused to give up their belief were locked in a dark room that was cold and damp. The were given only a very thin quilt and had to use a bucket in the room as a toilet. Two criminal inmates were arranged to watch Ms. Meng. She was imprisoned in the forced labour camp for eight months before being released.

In October 2004, Meng Fanli was reported to the authorities while distributing leaflets exposing the persecution and telling the facts about Falun Gong to the public and was taken to a detention centre by the Xiangyang Police Station. She held a hunger strike to protest the persecution. On the third day of her hunger strike, the deputy chief of the police station, Li Xin, brought her to a small dark room. Two strong men forced her onto a cement bed that was about one foot off the ground. It had four iron rings to which her hands and feet were cuffed. It was known as the "dead man's bed⁴". A prison doctor surnamed Zhang brought in force-feeding implements, and seven to eight men came and held her down. She struggled very hard. The guards spent a whole morning unsuccessfully trying to force feed her. In the afternoon, they brought in some metal implements to pry her mouth open. They used so much force that they loosened and chipped her teeth. Her face and mouth were badly injured as well. Then they forced a thick rubber tube into her stomach, and the prison doctor, Zhang, poured in the food and yanked on the tube repeatedly. Meng Fanli started to vomit and spat out a lot of blood. The blood and food soaked her clothes.

The food was corn soup that contained an unknown drug. When it entered her stomach, her whole body felt like it was burning, and her mouth and tongue were dry. She had trouble moving her arms and legs. She felt like she would collapse right away. She suffered through the night in immense pain.

The second day the guards and prison doctor wanted to force-feed her again, but when they measured her blood pressure and heart rate, they were so high that they were afraid she would die. They used an intravenous infusion instead, for five days, after which time Ms. Meng was in poor health.

The ruling regime then sentenced her to three years of forced labour. In the forced labour camp, guard Hong Wei locked her in a warehouse that was dark and cold. They only provided a thin quilt. The police did not allow her to leave the warehouse and separated her from other practitioners. They put her through "transformation" and pressured her to write the three statements. She was forced to do slave labour, knitting vehicle cushion pads. She was told her sentence would be extended if she didn't finish the work on time.

Ms. Meng and other practitioners wrote a Solemn Declaration, declaring that their "three statements" were null and void. Officers Hong Wei and Li Xiujin called male guards to beat those practitioners. Ms. Wang Qi was beaten so badly that she was paralysed. She was eventually released from the camp. Practitioners in ailing health were dragged to the workshop to work and were given no cushions to sit on. They were thrown on the ground and cursed at and insulted by the guards.

Ms. Meng Fanli was released in September 2007.

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")

3. "Three Statements": Practitioners are coerced under brainwashing and torture to write "Repentance Statement," "Guarantee Statement" or 'Dissociation Statement" as proof that they have given up their belief. In the statement, the practitioner is forced to admit remorse for practising Falun Gong, promise to give up Falun Gong, and never again associate with other practitioners or go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.

4. "Death Bed" torture: A practitioner is tied to a bed with his hands handcuffed above his head to the bed rails, and his legs tied with thin nylon ropes. The rope is then tightly wrapped around the practitioner's body and the bed, from his legs to his chest. The rope is wrapped so tightly that the practitioner has difficulty breathing and eventually loses consciousness.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/4/11/198770.html