The Torture I Suffered in Harbin Women's Prison

My name is Ms. Gao Guizhen. I'm a Falun Gong practitioner from Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang Province. In 2003, I was sentenced to a four-year prison term for being firm in my belief in Falun Gong. I was imprisoned on September 16th in Harbin Women's Prison. Practitioners were inhumanly tortured in the prison.

Below is my experience while imprisoned in Harbin Women's Prison.

The day of my arrival I was locked in an isolation cell. My arms were handcuffed behind my back and the handcuffs fixed to the ground. I suffered from this torture method around the clock, with the exception of meal times and when using the toilet. At the time, two more practitioners suffered the same fate in the small cell. One was a grandmother over 70 years old. The health condition of these two practitioners was very poor.

Three days later, I was transferred to the "Intensive Training Centre" and was forced to sit on a small stool from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. The stool was about 1.5 feet long, half a foot wide and half a foot tall. The guards ordered inmates to monitor us. We lost all our freedom. We were told where to put our hands and legs. My legs had to be held close together and could not be separated. One also could not talk, but was forced to watch video programs that slandered Falun Gong. In addition, no family visits were allowed. During this time the warden extorted 10,000 yuan¹ from my family.

Three months later, I was transferred to the No. 2 Team of the No. 1 Ward. The prison authorities tortured practitioners with the most cruel methods, methods not even used on condemned criminals. We were hung up with our hands cuffed behind our back and with both feet off the ground from the top of a bunk-bed. Once a practitioner lost consciousness from the excruciating pain, the guards poured unknown drugs down her throat. She was hung up again the minute she was revived. This was repeated until the practitioner passed out and became incontinent.

From March 2nd, 2004, practitioners were forced to sit up from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and be monitored by criminal inmates. These criminals beat practitioners and verbally abused and insulted them, while the guards turned a blind eye.

Practitioners could only go to the toilet at set times. On the morning of March 9th, 2004 the set time for using the toilet had already passed, and the inmates still forbade toilet visits. Guard Sun Jian entered the cell and beat 59-year-old Ms. Wang Liping and Ms. Li Cuiling who was over 50 years old. Other practitioners stopped Sun at once, telling him that we were not criminals and he could not beat people. Sun Jian responded, "If you are not the criminals, do you dare to take off your prison uniforms?" Thirty-six practitioners immediately took off their uniforms (I was among these practitioners).

At 2 p.m., Warden Cui Hongmei and Xia Fengying and guards Zhou Ying and Deng Yu ordered more than twenty criminal inmates to leave the workshop and drag the thirty-six practitioners to the water house and toilets. Xia Fengying was giving orders from the hall of the 6th floor. She ordered inmates Mou Meiyan, Chi Fengjie, Lin Guizhen, Long Hongxia and Xun Xiuyun to drag me from the sixth to the fifth floor. They pressed me to the ground and tied me up with ropes. A dozen or so criminals forced me to put on a prison uniform and then they tied my hands behind my back and hung me up. The torture lasted for about twenty hours. They also attempted to seal by mouth with tape but were stopped by fellow practitioner Ms. Gao Xiuzhen.

One day, guard Zhou Ying and inmates Liu Shuxia, Han Jianying, Tang Hongwei, Wang Botao, Wang Yuanyuan, Mu Meiyan, Shao Hongling, as well as all the on-duty criminal inmates tortured practitioners on the fifth floor. Fifteen practitioners were hung up with their hands cuffed behind their back. I questioned the perpetrators, "Who gave you the right to do this? You are committing crimes!" The criminals said that they took the order from warden Cui Hongmei. Some time later I suffered a heart attack. I felt dizzy, pain in my heart and my stomach was twitching. Then I lost consciousness. When I came to it was dark. At around 8 p.m., I recovered. I suffered the same type of torture again when I refused to wear the prison name tag.

The inmates participating in persecuting practitioners included Guan Hongying, Feng Xiaobo, Sheng Qiaomei, Wang Botao and others.

One day when we refused to answer to roll call we were brutally beaten. Ms. Yu Xiuying's mouth and nose were bleeding and some practitioners were covered with cuts and bruises. We protested to the head of the prison, Liu Zhiqiang. He said that these criminals were "assisting government work." In the evening our arms were cuffed behind our back and we were hung up on the bed frames. We were not allowed to go to sleep until 7 p.m. the following evening. Criminals Su Xiaoguang, Chi Fengjie, Hu Fengying and a dozen or so more pressed me to the ground, sat on me and force-fed me with unknown drugs. My teeth became loose because they used a tool to pry my mouth open and my ribs hurt for several days. After being drugged, I was hung up again. One of the criminals said, "We are not held responsible, even if we torture you to death. Liu Zhiqiang (the head of the prison) said that we are assisting government work." My body felt numb and I lost all feeling in my thumbs.

In the Spring of 2005, we went on a hunger strike to protest the beatings. Guards Lu Cuijun and Liu Yan ordered Hou Liping, Wang Xiaoyu and dozens of other criminals to carry me to the prison clinic for further torture.

On November 28th, 2006, the head of the prison, Liu Zhiqiang, head of the prison's Political Section, Zheng Jie, as well as guards Xiao Lin and others from the Administrative Office searched all the practitioners. The Warden of the No 1 Ward, Wu Yanjie, and her deputy Wang Xiaoli (a very vicious person) as well as guards Deng Yu, Zhou Ying and Wang Shan searched practitioners' personal belongings and confiscated recent articles by the founder of Falun Dafa, Mr. Li Hongzhi. Then, the practitioners were locked into their respective cells. They were monitored around the clock from then on. The guards ordered the criminals to torture, beat and verbally abuse the practitioners. They could also search practitioners' personal belongings at will. Some inmates who still had a conscience were reluctant to torture practitioners. The prison guards gave practitioners demerit points and sometimes even locked them up in the isolation cells. Those criminals, assigned as practitioners' personal monitors, would be released from doing hard labour at the workshops and they could also get points toward reducing their prison terms.

Before I was sentenced I was persecuted many times. Since July 20th, 1999, local policeman Zhao Hongqun often came to my home and ordered me to hand in my Falun Gong books. He also questioned me about my practising Falun Gong and told me to go to the police station to "confess." The perpetrators harassed me over the phone all the time.

On November 21st, 1999, a practitioner and I went to the local 610 Office² to explain the facts about Falun Gong and asked them to stop persecuting Falun Gong. As a result, I was detained by the 610 Office for a month. Officers Zhang Heping and Zhao Hongqun extorted over tens thousand yuan from my family before releasing me.

At around 9:30 p.m. on April 24th, 2002, officers from the Xinxing Police Sub-Department, Beishan Police Station and the Beishan Neighbourhood Committee broke into my home and tried to arrest me, but failed.

In the morning on March 6th, 2003 a dozen or so plain clothes officers forced their way into my home without showing any identification. They dragged me into a car and ransacked my home. However, they failed to find anything. They still took me to the Xinxing Police Sub-department and handcuffed me with my hands behind the back onto a tiger bench³. They divided into two groups of four people and tortured me by turns to extort a confession. When they failed to do so they simply took other people's confessions and forced me to fingerprint it. I suffered a heart attack and lost consciousness. When I came to it was already the following evening and I found that I was lying on the floor in the women's ward of Qitaihe No. 1 Detention Centre. I suffered from incontinence and could not move. The following day, I found that my legs were black and blue.

I had been detained for six months before I was sentenced to a four-year term. The trial was against the law.

What I have exposed here is only the tip of the iceberg. I hope that all practitioners take up the pen and expose the crimes committed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Practitioners, please expose the atrocities committed in China and help the world's people see the truth about the CCP.

Note

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

2. "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.

3. "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.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/7/17/204709.html