Ms. Wei Mingzhen Unable to Care for Herself After Being Tortured in Liaoning Women's Prison

Name: Wei Mingzhen
Gender: Female
Age: 55
Address: Nanpiao District, Huludao City
Occupation: Unknown
Date of Most Recent Arrest: May 20th, 2007
Most Recent Place of Detention: Liaoning Province Women's Prison
City: Huludao
Province: Liaoning
Persecution Suffered: Electric shock, sleep deprivation, forced labour, brainwashing, beatings, imprisonment, sexual assault, home ransacked, interrogation, detention, denial of toilet use

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Wei Mingzhen was arrested on May 20th, 2007. She was beaten severely and detained for over five months. She was sentenced to three years in prison and was taken to the Liaoning Province Women's Prison on November 8th, 2007. Ms. Wei is currently unable to care for herself after being tortured in prison.

The following is her personal account of the persecution she suffered.

My name is Wei Mingzhen. On the morning of May 22nd, 2007, Ms. Xiao Shusheng and I were reported while distributing leaflets exposing the persecution and telling people the facts about Falun Gong at the Shaguotun Market. We were arrested by officers from the Lanjia Police Station. Director Cui Yue and several officers fabricated a false confession and forced me into signing it. I told them, “I didn't violate any law. I will sign nothing.” The officers then pushed me against the table, pulled on my hands, and forced me to sign the paper. They searched me and confiscated the 200 yuan¹ I had. Cui kicked and beat me, and he slapped my face with the bottom of a shoe. As a result, my eyes bled on two instances. Cui took breaks when he became tired from beating me.

Director Cui Yue later forced me to lead the officers to my home, which they ransacked. The officers pried open the front door and rummaged through chests and cupboards trying to find so-called evidence. They made a huge mess of my home and only found two amulets, one pamphlet, and one photo of Teacher Li, the founder of Falun Gong. The officers went downstairs but did not reconcile with the defeat, and they later returned to my home and ransacked it again. They accomplished nothing and furiously took me back to the police station.

Later that night, I was taken to the Xingcheng City Detention Centre. In the detention centre, I refused to wear the prisoner's uniform. I performed the Falun Gong exercises, so guard Tong handcuffed my hands behind my back.

In the early morning of November 8th, 2007, I was transferred to the Liaoning Province Women's Prison. The guards and inmates there tortured Falun Gong practitioners with all kinds of methods.

Confined to a Small Cell

I was assigned to the Third Ward. A guard asked me, “Do you still practise Falun Gong?” I said yes. The guard replied, “If you still practise, we are not going to issue warm clothing to you!” I was wearing autumn clothing at the time. They put me in a small room that was only several square metres. It had a cement floor, and I was not allowed to wear shoes. Three inmates were monitoring me: one sentenced to life, one on death row, and another one arrested for robbery. They tried to force me into writing guarantee statements giving up my belief in Falun Gong. They first threatened me, and then they beat me. They grabbed my hair and beat my eyes, creating big bruises and bumps under my eyes. They also beat my head until I fell to the ground. They pushed my legs apart and kicked my private area, saying that they were going to disable me. They kicked my knees hard and beat me in the ribs. I was black and blue all over and had many wounds. They threatened that more beatings would follow if I told anyone what they had done.

Because I had so many bruises, they applied a so-called “steam treatment” on me, intending to reduce the appearance of my bruises. For three days, the three inmates did not allow me to sleep, and I was forced to squat down on the cement floor. They did not offer me any food, nor did they let me use the restroom. I was kept squatting down until I could no longer stand it. I laid on top of a paper cupboard, and it was so painful. The pain in my lower back lasted until December 1. My back still hurts when I walk, and my knees are weak and sore. My voice is hoarse, and I am sometimes even a bit confused. My vision is very blurry.

Subjected to Brutal Brainwashing

The inmates kicked and shocked me with electric batons when they discovered that I was reciting Falun Gong poems. They forced me to watch videos and read books slandering Falun Gong and its founder. They then played very loud music which was difficult to handle. They ordered me to swear at Falun Gong and Teacher, then kicked me, beat me, and shocked me when I refused to do so.

They wrote the three statements to renounce practising Falun Gong and asked me to sign it. I refused. When I tried to clarify the truth to them, they ordered me to sit on a small stool. It hurt badly after a while. The guards did not care about us practitioners, and only cared about the “transformation” [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] rate and the amount of salary bonus they would receive for “transforming” one practitioner. They beat me until I lost consciousness, then used my hand to make marks on the statements. When I woke up, they showed it to me.

Guard Yang Xin ordered two inmates, Liu Weishi and Zhang Hui, to monitor me. The inmates took turns watching me, not allowing me to sleep. They beat me severely when I shut my eyes; I fainted three times due to the beatings. I told guard Yang that I was beaten by inmates, but she did not care even when I showed her my bruises. My feet were swollen due to the long-term squatting, and I could not fit them into my shoes.

Getting beaten and kicked occurred almost every day. After some time, my lower back hurt so badly that I had to lie down. I asked to be seen by a doctor, and after a week-long request, a section chief, Ma Xiuyan, reluctantly agreed and took me to a nearby hospital to have a B-Mode ultrasound examination. I was diagnosed with a comminuted fracture (fracture in which the bone is splintered or crushed) in my lower back, and the doctor said that it would require medical treatment and hospitalisation. Ma returned me to the ward. Guard Yang Xin refused to let up on the persecution.

Concealing the Truth and Deceiving the Family

On November 22nd, my son came to visit me at the Liaoning Province Women's Prison. I was carried out to the visitor's room on someone's back, and I had bruises all over my body. My son was very angry and asked me about it. I told him that I was beaten. My son thought it was serious and wrote a letter to the prison authorities, saying that he would sue the prison to get an explanation. I went back to the cell and was beaten some more. They threatened that they would never allow my family to visit again, and that my term might even be extended. Later on, the prison authorities gave me a hot compresses made of towels for my injuries. Meanwhile, they cut off my son's visitation time.

On the afternoon of November 30th, my son received a phone call from the Prison Affairs Section Chief, Zhang Xiaobing. Zhang said, “After an investigation, we have discovered that your mom's leg injury resulted from a quarrel she had with other inmates, and the bruise under her right eye stemmed from a fall she sustained while hanging out her clothes. We had her injuries checked, and we have concluded that the injuries are very minor.” He asked my son to come to the prison the next day.

At 9:00 a.m. the next day, my son and another relative arrived at the prison. In the visitation room, chief Zhang Xiaobing said, “Your letter has been reviewed by prison authorities, who paid special attention to your mother's case.” Zhang repeated the lie about the bruises. He then stated, “The inmate who kicked your mom has been removed from her cell and put under administrative suspension. The inmate beat your mom while Prison Director Ma was on a business trip, and the acting director did not have much experience in handling inmates. Our prison is a civilised prison and such beatings won't happen here.” When asked why I had to be carried out during the November 22nd visit, Zhang lied, “Your mom was so weak and slow, and the visitation room was a bit far from her cell, that we just wanted to help her in order to give her more time to see her family.” He also stated that all of my injuries were external.

Forced Labour

The guards used all kinds of torture methods in an attempt “transform” me, but I refused to give in. They then carried me on a stretcher to the clothing factory to do labour. The clothing factory uses the labour of the inmates and Falun Gong practitioners to make clothes and maximise the profit.

The workload was very strenuous in the clothing factory. Each order was about 80,000 – 100,000 articles of clothing. Zhang Jun, the factory director, was ruthless toward the prisoners. The work started at 6:30 a.m. and ended at 9:00 p.m. We were given five minutes to have lunch and five minutes to use the toilet. Fifty-two of us were required to make 450 shirts and 700 – 800 pairs of pants in one day. We were not allowed to talk or look behind us, and we were monitored by several personnel. If one did not finish the assignment for the day, one would have to work overtime until it was finished. Sometimes, we were made to sit on small stools, and it was hard to stand up after only half an hour.

One time a pair of scissors went missing, and the factory director ordered all of us to take off our clothes; we were forced to be naked for several days as a punishment.

Today I am at my home, but I am unable to fully care for myself. What I suffered in the Liaoning Province Women's Prison is just the tip of the iceberg. The persecution of Falun Gong practitioners still continues to this day, as well as the forced labour of the prisoners.

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/2011/12/29/251176.html