Account of Persecution Suffered by Female Practitioner from Shandong Province

Since the persecution of Falun Gong started on July 20th, 1999, many female Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in prisons. They have not given up their faith despite the brutal persecution. Today, I would like to introduce one of these practitioners. For the sake of her family's safety, she has asked me to refer to her as Lu Hua instead of her real name.

Ms. Lu Hua returned home in July 2009 after an eight-year prison term. When I saw her, I noticed that the imprisonment had not visibly affected her much. She told me calmly, "In these eight years, I relied on my firm belief in Falun Gong." There was a noticeable inch-long scar on her forehead; she said that it was from being beaten by nine inmates over the course of over ten hours.

Ms. Lu started practising Falun Gong in 1998. After that, the ailments that she had suffered from for many years disappeared. She had no more conflicts with her mother-in-law due to her having cultivated kindness from the practice. Her mother-in-law told many people in the village, "My daughter-in-law has become so good after practising Falun Gong. She never argues with me anymore."

While Ms. Lu was clarifying the truth in her village in July 2001, she was arrested by officers from the township police station collaborating with the village party secretary. Later, she was detained at the city detention centre, where a guard put her in handcuffs and shackles for over 20 days.

She was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment at the Shandong Province Women's Prison in October 2001. In prison, Ms. Lu refused to give up her beliefs. She was brutally beaten by nine inmates for over ten hours, resulting in the inch-long gash on her forehead. She bled profusely from it and her vest was soaked. She received six stitches from the hospital and then was sent to solitary confinement for 15 days. Due to the large amount of blood loss, she felt dizzy and suffered headaches. For food, she only received one corn bun the size of an egg and a piece of a salted vegetable daily. After the 15 days, she was often beaten and verbally abused. One night, the political head Zhao instigated the inmate on duty to wake up inmates in the cell. Four of them beat Ms. Lu using hard plastic rods. They kicked and beat her for over an hour, causing her body to be covered in bruises. The next day, she was not able to walk.

In prison, there is a method often used to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The guards administer unknown drugs into practitioners' food to make them mentally disoriented so that they can be forced to give up their beliefs. Ms. Lu saw that practitioner Zhou Chun (alias) from Heilongjiang Province had been subdued and was always in a groggy state. She felt that something was not right, and after a long period of observation, found out that the monitors and prison doctors were placing unknown drugs into Zhou Chun's food. Ms. Lu asked a prison doctor what it was and the doctor answered unconvincingly, "It might be flour." Ms. Lu said, "This is not a flour factory, where did the flour come from?" She took the bowl and showed it to the inmates in the cafeteria to expose what was happening to Zhou Chun. Later, she was brutally beaten as punishment for doing this.

Ms. Lu said, "In prison, the torture methods such as solitary confinement and instigating inmates to beat practitioners cause many practitioners to become disabled. They also crush practitioners' fingers using plywood. They force elderly practitioners to sit on little benches and deprive them of sleep. They strip female practitioners who are having their period and drag them out in the courtyard to be seen by the public. It is very brutal."

An elderly practitioner once said that when she went to visit her sister (another practitioner) in prison, the prison guard asked whether she practised Falun Gong. She pointed to the prison cells and said, "You can lock up and detain their bodies, but do you think you can confine their hearts?"

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/4/20/221857.html