60-Year-Old Ms. Shi Yingchun Persecuted to Death at Liaoning Province Women's Prison

Name: Shi Yingchun
Gender: Female
Age: 60
Address: Bohai Street, Beining neighbourhood, Lianshan District, Huludao City, Liaoning Province
Occupation: Vegetable Vendor
Date of Death: March 18th, 2010

Date of Most Recent Arrest: August 30th, 2008
Most recent place of detention: Liaoning Province Women's Prison
City: Huludao City
Province: Liaoning
Persecution Suffered: Electric Shocks, Sleep Deprivation, Forced Labour, Forced Drug Administration, Beatings, Handcuffs/Shackles, Imprisonment, Force-Feedings, Extortion

Key Persecutors: Li Yajie, Zhou Jie, Ji Li

On March 18th, 2010, Ms. Shi Yingchun was persecuted to death at the Liaoning Province Women's Prison. Just for practising Falun Gong, she had been repeatedly arrested and detained. She had been sentenced to forced labour twice and detained in a labour camp for a total of five years. On August 30th, 2008, she was arrested again and sentenced to seven years in prison. She was detained at the Liaoning Province Women's Prison until her death.

Ms. Shi Yingchun, 60, lived on Bohai Street, Beining neighbourhood, Lianshan District, Huludao City, Liaoning Province. She was a vegetable vendor. Ms. Shi had suffered from gum cancer, cholecystitis, neurasthenia, and other diseases. She sought out medical treatment to ease her suffering but nothing worked. She started practising Falun Gong in 1995, and in one month all of her diseases were gone. By following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, she resolved the conflicts between her and her relatives. She felt that both her mental and physical health were greatly improved. Her family of three all practised Falun Gong and they lived a happy and peaceful life.

In the years following the start of the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999, all three in her family were sent to forced labour camps. Her husband and son were detained at the Huludao City Forced Labour Camp. A happy family has been broken apart.

1. Persecution at the Huludao City Detention Centre

On October 5th, 1999, because Ms. Shi refused to give up her belief in Falun Gong, the police from the Lianshan District Police Department arrested her and she was held at the Huludao City Detention Centre. Director Li Yajie, Zhou Jie, and another policeman brutally tortured her three times because she practised the exercises and refused to give up her practice.

Once, Li Yajie took Ms. Shi into the hall and told someone to take off her pants, forcing her to lie on her stomach on the floor. Li Yajie whipped her bottom with a rubber hose. When she got tired, she would ask someone else to take a turn. When they slapped Ms. Shi in the face, they slapped so hard that she couldn't see anything but flashes in her eyes. Sometimes they would slap her with their shoes. Once they even used a stick full of spikes to beat her, and the spikes cut into the skin with every hit.

Once when the detainees were out into the courtyard for a break, Zhou Jie called Ms. Shi to stand in front of her and Zhou slapped her. After Zhou's hands started hurting, she took off Ms. Shi's shoe to continue to slap her with it. Soon, Ms. Shi's left eye became too swollen to see anything. However, the guards didn't stop hitting her.

To prevent Ms. Shi from practising the Falun Gong exercises, Li Yajie ordered the guards to handcuff her hands behind her back and put shackles on her. One end of a dirty towel was stuffed into her mouth with the other end tied to the shackles. Then she was forced to walk. Ms. Shi couldn't keep her back straight and every step was torture. Then she was forced to kneel down for several hours. She was in such great pain that her sweat soaked the floor around her. She was deprived of sleep at night, and only allowed to sit or stand.

2. Persecution at the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp

In the Second Women's Section of the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp, Ms. Shi went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Guard Ji Li called her to the office where Ji Li and another guard shocked her with electronic batons. One shocked her feet while the other shocked her upper body and face. She was also forced to stand still for more than 10 hours straight. The camp guards instigated inmates to torture practitioners by various means, including forcing them to squat for a long period of time, bending the head down for a long period of time, etc.

One night, the guards ordered the inmates to drag Ms. Shi to the washroom and forced her to sit on a small stool. The inmates dipped a mop in a bucket of dirty water and wiped it on Ms. Shi's face back and forth. The inmates would move the mop to Ms. Shi's nose and pause there until she couldn't help but breathe in dirt and filthy water. She was drenched in the dirty water and her face and hair became sticky.

Once Ms. Shi refused to walk when the guards forced her to do so as a torture method. Ji Li and two other guards shocked her with three electric batons at the same time on her soles, palms, face and mouth. She felt that her heart seemed to pop out of her chest. At one moment, incredibly, all the batons stopped working all of a sudden. Ji Li called a few inmates to carry her and bring her up and push her down the stairs. Several groups of inmates took turns after they got tired.

After a month of torture, Ms. Shi was transferred to the First Section, where practitioners suffered even more brutal treatment. Each practitioner was watched closely by two inmates all the time, even while eating, walking, working, going to the washroom, or sleeping. The guards encouraged inmates to abuse practitioners and report on them to the guards. It was common for practitioners to be forced to stand still or squat for long periods of time. Guards frequently beat practitioners for no reason. Once two inmates banged Ms. Shi's hands against a wall, causing bruises all over her hands. Afterwards, they tied her hands to some bed frames. However, the next morning, the inmates reported to the guards that they didn't have a good sleep because of Ms. Shi having been tied up. Upon hearing this, guards Dong Bin and Zhang called Ms. Shi to the office, took off her clothes and cuffed her hands behind her back. Then, while forcing her to kneel, the two guards shocked her with two electric batons.

Another time, because Ms. Shi did the Falun Gong exercises, Zhang called her to the office and took off her clothes and cuffed her hands behind her back. With one electric baton in hand, and another being re-charged, Zhang shocked her on the face, the stomach, and other parts of the body. She lost a lot of hair as a result. After a while, Zhang called an inmate to join in to shock her at the same time. The inmate focused on shocking Ms. Shi's soles. In no time, wounds appeared on her soles and they started to bleed. Nevertheless, they didn't stop. After the torture, Ms. Shi's face was swollen, and her back and legs hurt so much that she couldn't walk properly for a long time. At that time, not only was Shi Yingchun tortured, another Dafa practitioner from Dalian City who was steadfast in her belief was taken to the office next door to listen to Ms. Shi's screams of pain, in an attempt to scare her.

Ms. Shi was tortured at the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp for two years. On October 24th, 2001, the police from the Bohai Police Station went to the labour camp to pick her up. Ms. Shi was made to pay 600 yuan¹ in force-feeding fees by the labour camp. At the Bohai Police Station, policeman Zhuo Yongpeng tried to force Ms. Shi to write a guarantee of "not practising in public, not appealing, and not posting posters."

Six days after she was released, Ms. Shi was arrested again when she was practising the exercises in a park near the Bohai Police Station. She was sent to the Lianshan District Police Department and then to the Huludao City Detention Centre on the same day. After one month of detention at the detention centre, she was sentenced to three years of forced labour and was again sent to the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp. Compared to the physical torture, the mental torment was more cruel. Under the pressure and lies of guard Qiu Ping, Ms. Shi Yingchun was "transformed" [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] and wrote a guarantee to "not practise any more." Afterward, she felt sad and depressed and often cried for no reason. Then she was sent to a mental hospital and prescribed some medication for a mental disorder. When she returned to the labour camp, she was forced to take the medication and so-called "punctuation" treatment. She felt miserable after taking the medication and the treatment once, so they had to stop.

3. Sentence of Seven Years in Prison

On August 2nd, 2008, when Ms. Shi was distributing Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution, officers from the Bohai Police Station arrested her and detained her at the Suizhong Detention Centre. Her home was ransacked and almost all of her belongings were confiscated. She was sentenced to seven years in prison without her family being notified. On October 2nd, 2008, she was sent to the Liaoning Province Women's Prison.

At around 3:00 p.m. on October 21st, 2008, the police from the Huaji Street Police Station in Lianshan District, Huludao City, including Li Guangyu and other police officers from the Huludao City Lianshan District Domestic Security Division, broke into the home of Ms. Shi's son, Mr. Wang Zhou, and arrested him. They ransacked his home and confiscated his belongings. Mr. Wang was sent to the Shoushan Detention Centre in Xingcheng City, Liaoning Province and then to the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp.

On March 18th, 2010, Ms. Shi was persecuted to death at the Liaoning Province Women's Prison. It was reported that her family members had gone to the prison to take care of the funeral.

Liaoning Province Women's Prison:
Address: Baixintai Village, Pingluo Town, Yuhong District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, 110145.
Director, Yang Li: 86-24-89296666 (Office), 86-24-86914173 (Home), 86-13390118299 (Mobile)

Earlier report: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2008/3/6/95103.html

Note

1. "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/2010/3/23/220263.html