Firsthand Account of Persecution Suffered by Ms. Liu Xiuli from Harbin City

My name is Liu Xiuli. I am 57 years old and retired from working in a bank in Harbin City. Before I started to practise Falun Gong, I had many health problems such as myocardial ischemia, myocarditis, sciatica, shoulder inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, and ovarian cysts. In 1997, I was also diagnosed with pleural effusion. Fortunately, I started practising Falun Gong in April 1998, and not long afterward, all of my diseases went away.

Because I went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practise after the communist regime started to persecute Falun Gong, I was constantly harassed, monitored, arrested, and fined. I have also been held in the detention centre three times and sentenced to forced labour twice.

Arrested, Fined and Sentenced to Forced Labour

In October 1999, I went to Beijing to appeal. In Tiananmen Square, I was arrested and taken to the Changping Detention Centre, where yuan was extorted from me. The next day, I was transferred to Harbin City and detained at the No. 1 Detention Centre for more than seven months. On June 7th, 2000, I was released. During that time, I was forced to do manual labour. Officers Wang Chaohui and Li Hongbo also went to my house and extorted 5,000 yuan¹ from my husband. On the day I was released, the police forced my child to pay another 3,000 yuan.

In December 2000, I went to Beijing again to appeal. In Tiananmen Square, I was arrested again and taken to the Daxing Detention Centre. I had 200 yuan extorted from me while I was there. Later on, I was detained at Harbin City's Liaison Office in Beijing for nine days. After I was transferred to Harbin, I was held in the No. 2 Detention Centre until I was sentenced to one year of forced labour.

In Wanjia Forced Labour Camp, I was made to stand or squat for long periods of time. They also taped my mouth shut and handcuffed me to the heating pipes so that I couldn't squat all the way down or fully stand up. During that period of persecution, my husband couldn't bear the pressure and divorced me. The cell that I was detained in was very humid, and I began to develop boils all over me. They itched so bad that I couldn't fall asleep at night. I wasn't released until December 19th, 2001.

In May 2003, several people claiming to be police officers broke into my house. They ransacked my home and took away my Falun Gong books, and two exercises tapes. They took me to the police station and extorted 500 yuan from my brother-in-law.

Brutally Treated in Wanjia Forced Labour Camp

On August 10th, 2006, I was arrested by two plainclothes police officers while I was out walking. They forced me into the car, and one of them kept his foot shoved into my back during the entire drive to the Haxi Police Station. I was detained in the Haxi Police Station over night. The next morning, I was taken to the Harbin No. 2 Detention Centre. I was detained there for three months. Because I was so brutally treated, my blood pressure rose as high as 180 mm Hg and my heart rate was 120 beats per minute. Despite my poor health, they still sentenced me to one and a half years of forced labour and I was taken to the Wanjia Forced Labour Camp.

The day after I arrived in Wanjia, the guards took me to a small room with the door secured with an iron gate. Guard Yu Li ordered me to write the three statements to renounce practising Falun Gong, but I refused to. She slapped me in the face twice.

Two female guards, Zhou and Quan, tied my hands behind my back with a long rope and forced me to stand on a stool. Then a male police officer named Wu Hongxun climbed up high and tied the rope to the iron gate. Zhou and Quan took the stool away, and I was hanging in the air. They tied my legs with ropes and the female officers held the ends of the ropes. Female guard Yu Fangli grabbed an electric baton and started to shock my neck and face and behind my ears. She also placed the baton in my mouth to shock me. My entire body shook violently and I was in tremendous pain. Meanwhile, the other two female police officers pulled on the ropes so that my legs were stretched out more than three feet to the sides. It hurt terribly. My mouth was covered with purple blisters from the electric baton, and it became so swollen that I couldn't open my mouth at all. The room was filled with the smell of my burning flesh. After this brutality, they forced me to do things to dishonour Falun Gong.

Later, the guards in the forced labour camp began to play propaganda that slandered Falun Gong every day. After a month of vicious persecution, they sent me to the 12th division to do manual labour. There were about 40 or 50 people in that division, and more than half of them were Falun Gong practitioners.

In May 2007, all of the female practitioners were transferred to Qianjin Forced Labour Camp. In both Wanjia and Qianjin Forced Labour Camps, because of intensive forced labour, I began to have some physical problems. I fell down and lost consciousness twice.

Because of injuries to my body from the long-term persecution, I could no longer do hard labour. Then the head of the forced labour camp, Huo Shuping, forced me to sit on a small stool from morning until midnight. When the doctor examined me later, my blood pressure was extremely high.

Before I was released, the officers again attempted to force me to write the three statements. They even threatened my child and said that if I didn't write it, they wouldn't let me go home. On February 26th, 2008, when I was released from the labour camp, my child came to pick me up. The head of the neighbourhood administration office, Liu Shengbin; director Ji from the community office; and others from my workplace kept asking me to write the three statements. I firmly refused to write anything, and then I returned 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/2010/12/10/233465.html