Ms. Xiao Peiying from Gaobeidian City Survives Repeated Persecution

Name: Xiao Peiying
Gender: Female
Age: Unknown
Address: Unknown
Occupation: Unknown

Date of Most Recent Arrest: June 26th, 2008
Most recent place of detention: Shijiazhuang Women's Forced Labour Camp
City: Shijiazhuang
Province: Hebei
Persecution Suffered: Detention, home ransacked, beatings, torture, forced labour, interrogation, extortion.

Ms. Xiao Peiying from Gaobeidian City, Hebei Province, has been persecuted repeatedly because she will not give up her right to practise Falun Gong.

On the evening of June 26th, 2008, four or five policemen from the local public security bureau, including Chen Yongli, broke into Ms. Xiao's home. They broke two doors and searched the house. They confiscated their mobiles and Falun Gong items. Several people in the village were chatting on the street when the police approached them and asked where the Falun Gong practitioners were. They said they didn't know. To ensure these people were not Falun Gong practitioners the police took them to the station and forced them to swear at Falun Go before they were allowed to go home. Police arrested 14 non-practitioners from Zhaozhuang Village alone.

Police forced them to sign declarations that they were not Falun Gong practitioners and they took their fingerprints for the police records. When they were torturing Ms. Xiao, they smashed her face, grabbed her hair, and broke her arms by hitting them against tables. They pressed her hands into the ink for her fingerprints. Then they locked her in the detention centre and made her put gloves on the guards. But because she couldn't move her arms, the guards told her to use her one hand to pull up the gloves for them. She was held in the detention centre for nine days and then was sent to the Shijiazhuang Women's Forced Labour Camp. On the way she had ten kilo shackles on her.

In the forced labour camp, a medical examination showed that Ms. Xiao had high blood pressure and was close to having heart failure. Under these circumstances the forced labour camp refused to accept her as she would be no good for hard labour. But the police officers, including Zhang Sijun and Chen Yongli from the Gaobeidian Police Department, said to the camp officials, "We will give you several hundred yuan and then you have to accept her." The bribe worked and Ms. Xiao remained.

In the camp, they took Ms. Xiao's blood pressure and it was very high. A doctor Ma gave her a heart x-ray and an electrocardiograph. She was told that her heart was deformed and she was in immediate danger of losing her life. But they still forced her to do hard labour, such as drilling holes in chopsticks, carrying chopsticks from the first floor to the fourth floor, and making fertiliser bags and carrying them upstairs and downstairs. She was also forced to pick cotton seeds and thread lanterns. If she couldn't finish the work on time, they made her work until midnight. She also had to do the cleaning up. If she didn't do well or breached any rule, the whole team would be punished.

Practitioners were not given paper or pens to prevent them from writing down any Falun Gong teachings. Other inmates had access to paper. Practitioners were only allowed to write letters at a set time. When they finished their letters, they were not allowed to seal them. Team leaders checked the contents of the letters and didn't allow them to be sent out if their abuses were exposed. Practitioners were not allowed to keep any receipts when they bought things because they were afraid the practitioners would write Falun Gong articles on them.

One day the guards suddenly called in all the practitioners to the hall. Team leaders and inmates thoroughly checked their clothes. Then the practitioners were sent back to their cells and stripped. Most of the Falun Gong articles were found on their bodies. Practitioners who had articles were fined 30 yuan¹ and those who didn't have articles were fined 10 yuan. Then all the lectures were taken away.

If practitioners didn't co-operate with the guards, the guards had other inmates torture them. They cut practitioners' hair poorly. They severely tortured practitioners who would not give up their belief or if they refused to wear inmate uniforms or do slave labour. They locked them in solitary confinement, physically abused them, handcuffed and shackled them, beat them, and slowly starved them as they were only given one bun for each meal. Some practitioners went on hunger strikes to protest. Every time the practitioners were force-fed, those in charge closed the door and didn't let others see how how violent a procedure it was. They didn't allow any guards to go to the toilet until all the Falun Gong practitioners were sent back. Three or four guards handled one practitioner by dragging, beating, and kicking her.

Persecution Suffered Previously

Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, Ms. Xiao has been arrested several times.

One afternoon in December 1999, Liu Zhongshun, Party secretary of the Political and Legal Committee in Liangjiaying Township Gaobeidian City, and Peng Jing, secretary of the township police station, went to Ms. Xiao's home. They didn't show any identification before searching the house. They took Falun Gong books and tapes. They arrested her and took her to a detention centre for 15 days.

Because officials from the township government often went to harass Ms. Xiao and made her life miserable, she said to them that she would go to Beijing to appeal on July 3rd, 2000. They said that was illegal, but that if she appealed from a lower level of government to the upper level, it was not illegal. So she went to the township government and asked to be allowed to practice unmolested, but she was arrested and detained for seven days. Then she was transferred to a detention centre for four months. Later on she was sentenced to three years of forced labour. She was detained in Balizhuang Forced Labour Camp. On the politically sensitive days, they harassed her family and caused trouble for them.

In the evening on October 6th, 2002, the director of the township police station and four or five others broke into Ms. Xiao's home. They searched the house, didn't find anything, but took her to the police station anyway. The following afternoon they took her to the public security bureau. Two hours later they took her back to the police station again. They didn't release her until they had extorted 2000 yuan from her family. At the time they asked for 10,000 yuan. Her husband didn't have any money and borrowed the 2000. They let him write an IOU for the remaining 8000,but they did not give him a receipt for the 2000 yuan he had just given them.

At around lunchtime time in May 2003, Ma Liang from the township police station and one policeman broke into her home. They made a phone call to the 610 Office in the public security bureau. Half an hour later, five or six people, including Zhao Jun, Chen Yongli and Liu Wenping from the 610 Office, came and took her to the public security bureau. They interrogated her in turns, beat her and swore at her. Chen Yongli and Jiang Chao smashed her face, threw her arms, and pounded her chest and back in turns. When they got tired, they handcuffed her to a chair. The next day she was taken to a detention centre. A month later she was sent to a brainwashing centre where Zhao Kejun (head of 610 Office) let Chen Yongli interrogate her. He hit her in the face with a book. She was so severely tortured that she developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack. She was not able to lift her legs and seemed paralysed. Zhao Kejun rang her family and told them to bring 3000 yuan and they could take her home. They still went to harass her on politically sensitive days even after she was home.

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://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2010/5/1/222688.html