Ms. Shi Sumei Persecuted for Seven Years

Name: Shi Sumei
Gender: Female
Age: 46
Address: Unknown
Occupation: Nurse
Date of Most Recent Arrest: May 13th, 2002, sentenced to 6 years in prison
Most recent place of detention: Fujian Province Women's Prison
City: Zhangzhou City
Province: Fujian
Persecution Suffered from: Sleep Deprivation, Forced Labour, Interrogation, Detention

Ms. Shi Sumei was a nurse at the company clinic associated with Zhangzhou Grocery Company in Fujian Province. She began practising Falun Gong in July 1998. The practice cured all her illnesses and made her a healthy person. After the onset of the persecution she was repeatedly detained, brainwashed, monitored, and sentenced to imprisonment.

Ms. Shi and Ms. Chen Yuxian went to Beijing in December 1999 to appeal for the right to practise Falun Gong. Beijing police arrested and detained them at the Tiananmen Police Station. Later on Zhangzhou City police escorted her home and detained her for a month.

She returned home at 5:00 p.m. the fifth day following the 2000 Chinese New Year. At about 7:00 p.m., Tongbei Police Station officers Zhuan Jianmin and Wang Deqing went to her home and announced that she was under house arrest, meaning she was forbidden to leave home.

Thus, Ms. Shi lost her freedom. She could not go to work, go shopping, pick up her child from school, or visit her parents. At night, local police and civilian security personnel camped out next to her house and monitored her closely. Nearly 200 people got involved and took turns.

She went to the local police station on February 29th, 2000, to answer questions at the officials' request. They detained her for a month.

Following her release from Pinghe Detention Centre, Ms. Shi planned to visit her school friend and fellow practitioner Ms. Chen Yuxian. Shortly after arriving at Ms. Chen's home, it became obvious that more than 10 police officers had followed her. The police took her to the police station. When she asked why she had been arrested, no one offered any explanation. Despite her feeble condition after an 11-day hunger strike at the police station, she was sent to the detention centre again. Six days later her health was quickly failing. Finally, the police told her husband to take her home.

Ms. Shi was on her way to a hospital to visit her sister on September 8th, 2001, when a dozen people in her apartment building stopped her downstairs. She was told that she must go to a "study session" (brainwashing centre). She was again detained, this time for two months.

The following year, on May 13th, 2002, policemen Lu Kunshan, Liu Wei, Wang Qingde, and seven other police officers went to her home. After an interrogation at the police station, the officials sent her to a detention centre. She was sentenced to six years of imprisonment in November 2002.

Shi Sumei spent ten months at the Zhangzhou City Detention, where she slept on the concrete floor and ate poor quality food. The food smelled so bad that it made her want to vomit. She had to shower with cold water all year round, was allowed only two cups of drinking water per day, and had to work till midnight. Sometimes she had to be on duty after midnight. She sat on the concrete floor to work. Even in the summer when the floor was boiling hot she had to sit there to do her heavy work assignment. Her thighs were burned from sitting on the hot floor and covered in purple bruises. The authorities sent her to the Fujian Women's Prison on March 19th, 2003.

Female guard Lin Cuihong and deputy head Huang Yuxuan in the prison's Seventh Team forced Ms. Shi to stand facing the wall. She was allowed only four hours of sleep each day and was told to recite the prison rules when facing the wall. The guards forced her to read books that slandered Falun Gong, and criminal inmates monitored her. Whenever she wanted to sit down and rest, a criminal inmate would report to a guard, who would come to verbally abuse her.

Hard work and abuse made Shi Sumei's feet swell terribly, but the guards still sent her to a workshop. Guard Huang Yuxuan assigned a drug offender named Lu Qianlu (from Chongqing City) to watch her. Ms. Shi was forced to work during the day, and study brainwashing materials while facing the wall at night. She was also ordered to write a "confession report" and to give up her belief. When she refused, she was not allowed to purchase anything in the prison's shop and was barred from meeting with her family. Prison officials ordered all practitioners to give up their belief and rewarded criminal inmates who successfully "helped" the guards to "reform" [brainwash] practitioners. When a practitioner refused to compromise, the entire team's honorary award was cancelled. When the award points were taken away, inmates could not have their sentences reduced; thus, the inmates blamed Falun Gong practitioners for their misfortune and often physically assaulted them.

While standing and facing the wall Ms. Shi was tired and sleepy and often dozed off. Her knees hit the wall repeatedly, resulting in injuries to her knees and swollen legs. She worked 17 hours a day. The practitioners got only three days rest in one year and they worked through all other holidays and weekends.

Several months later she was told to work as a clothing inspector. When production got busy she had to work beyond midnight and get up by 4:00 a.m. Sometimes she even worked through the night. Once she was forced to work three days and nights without sleep. Guard Li Cuihong only allowed a half hour break for each person.

Ms. Shi became extremely weak. She could not climb the stairs, lost a lot of weight, her hair began turning grey, and her back was bowed. She looked very old. She was 42 in 2005, but a new police officer thought she was 60.

A year later, in 2006, her health had deteriorated so badly that officials sent her to Jianxin Hospital (designated to treat inmates) at the end of August. Her situation became critical in the hospital, and she almost died but survived four months of isolation at in-patient care. But she no longer had any energy to work and was therefore treated as "waste." She was released on medical parole at the end of January 2007.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/10/26/211097.html