Ms. Fan Guoxia Recounts the Persecution She Experienced in Harbin Women's Prison

Name:Fan Guoxia
Gender: Female
Age: 40s
Address:Acheng District, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province
Occupation: not known

Date of Most Recent Arrest:December 6th, 2002
Most recent place of detention: Harbin Women's Prison
City: Harbin
Province: Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered: Detention, imprisonment, solitary confinement, beatings, physical restraint, torture, arms handcuffed behind the back, hung up, forced labour.

Fan Guoxia, a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested on February 6th, 2002 and sentenced to seven years in prison on April 30th, 2003. She has been imprisoned since May 15th, 2003. The following is Ms. Fan's account of the persecution that she has suffered in prison:

On May 15th, 2003, the deputy leader Wang of Shangzhi Detention Centre transferred me to Heilongjiang Provincial Prison. The guards put me in solitary confinement using the excuse of SARS prevention. On the morning of May 17th, guard Tao Dandan asked me to her office in order to have a “discussion” with me. Once in the office, she demanded that I say “Checking in.” I refused, as I have committed no crime and do not need to report to the authorities as if I were a criminal. With gloved hands, Tao slapped my face until her hands hurt. She tried to force me into a squatting position but I refused that as well. She couldn't do anything other than to order an inmate to take me back to my cell. Every two days Tao ordered somebody to torture me.

On June 1st, 2003, I was taken from the solitary isolation cell to the “Concentrated Training Team.” Since I refused to report or step into the office, Tao Dandan dragged me into the office and held my hand behind my back. Keeping her hand in a plastic bag, she started to slap my face. After her hand hurt, she rolled up a magazine and slapped my face over a hundred times. She fell onto a sofa exhausted and ordered Cao Zhenhua, an inmate, to find some scissors. Tao cut my hair with the scissors and said, “I can keep you in that cell or get you out.” She later told the guards in charge of the isolation cells that I refuse to cooperate. After that, they put me into a small cell where I was shackled and my arms were handcuffed behind my back for twenty-four hours. For about two weeks the only food I was given was a thin rice soup twice a day.

On the morning of July 22nd, 2003, all Falun Gong practitioners in the Concentrated Training Team were forced to march in military fashion. At noon, about 20 guards started to beat practitioners. The practitioners were beaten one by one until they did what the guards demanded. Five of us practitioners did not yield at all, no matter how much we were beaten. We were then thrown into small cells. When I was detained in the small cell, guard Wang Xiaoli beat me and asked me if I was going to follow her orders. I told guard Xiaoli Wang that I am innocent of any crime, so she slapped my face many times.

At 8 a.m. on August 7th or 8th, 2003, practitioner Mrs. Nie Xumei was taken away by Wang Xiaoli. Because she hadn't come back by noon, Liu Shuxia and I waited for her to take a meal together. Mrs. Nie appeared at midnight. Before we could exchange even a word or two, over 10 guards came in, saying that they were going to “take our blood pressure.” They pulled my hair and then hung me from an iron door. A male guard forced my mouth open with a metal tool while another pulled my head up by my hair to force feed me. When they finished and pulled out the force-feeding tube, my blood flowed to the ground.

On March 2nd, 2004, thirty-six practitioners detained in the First Division were taken from the workshop and crammed into an office on the sixth floor, which was less that 100 sq. ft. in size. We were forced to sit here about 13 hours each day. Inmates Li Cuiling and Zhao Guang took turns to watch us. We recited Falun Gong articles together. Li Cuiling asked guard Sun Jian to come to the room. He slapped Xie Yaqin (50 years old) and Wang Liping (62 years old) on the face twice each. I asked Sun Jian why he hit them with no reason, that we had done nothing wrong. Sun said, “If you did not do anything wrong, why are you wearing prison uniforms. Do you dare to take off the uniform?” So we took off our uniforms. Team leaders Xia Fengying and Cui Hongmei chose about forty strong inmates and handcuffed us to the bed frames. They pulled one hand down from the shoulder and the other up from the lower back, painfully handcuffing our arms behind our backs. We were cuffed like this for the whole afternoon. The pain was extreme. Many of us fainted.

At 6 p.m. they started to torture us. Inmates Xu Shuqing, Zhang Xiuyu, Zhao Lili, Sheng Qiaomei, Li Yan, Shao Hongling and Wang Yuanyuan handcuffed my arms behind my back and hung me from the upper rail of a bunk bed. My feet barely touched the ground. I started to twitch and sweat from the agonising pain within a few minutes. It felt as if my shoulder was coming out of its socket. Some practitioners fainted several times. This went on for over an hour. Later on, we were handcuffed to ladders for the whole night.

On March 18th, 2004, Sun Jian and Zhou Ying tortured me with the excuse that I did not wear a name tag. I was handcuffed and hung up. My feet could not touch the ground. I kept twitching and sweat a lot. My shoulder hurt terribly. I was taken down 20 minutes later.

On May 15th, 2004, the inmates forced us to squat down and report our names. Warden Liu Zhiqiang ordered the inmates to hold us down on the ground and kick us.

On the night of April 15th, 2005, I refused to squat and report my name. Guard Deng Yun ordered inmates Shang Guiying and Zhao Lili to trip me and make me fall down. They pulled me up and knocked me down again, over and over, for more than two hours until I could not get up again. My body was covered with black bruises. It hurt even to breathe.

At 8 p.m. on October 28th, 2005, I was sending meditation on the bed. Wang Shuzhi pushed my hands apart with her feet. Lin Guizhen stood beside the bed and rubbed my private parts with his foot while speaking obscenities.

One day in May 2006, two inmates held me down to the ground. Guan Shuhua pressed my left hand down with her knee. My hand became swollen and I could hardly bend my fingers after that.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2011/1/5/34538.html