Seventy-Four-Year-Old Former Head Nurse from Heilongjiang Province Imprisoned for Nine Years and Dies as a Result of Prolonged Abuse and Torture

Name: Wang Xiuyue
Gender: Female
Age: 74
Address: Nangang District, Harbin City
Occupation: Retired head nurse at Heilongjiang Provincial Hospital
Date of Death: July 20th, 2012
Date of Most Recent Arrest: 2003
Most Recent Place of Detention: Heilongjiang Women's Prison
City: Harbin
Province: Heilongjiang
Persecution Suffered: Forced labour, brainwashing, beatings, imprisonment, solitary confinement, torture, detention

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Wang Xiuyue, 74, was imprisoned in the Heilongjiang Women's Prison for 9 years. Ms. Wang lost the ability to take care herself after seven years of imprisonment. Thus she was qualified to be released for medical reasons, but the officers from her neighbourhood police station hindered the process. She was eventually released on medical parole in 2011 but passed away on July 20th, 2012.

Ms. Wang began practising Falun Gong in 1996. Since the persecution started in 1999, she had been persecuted numerous times. In 2000, for appealing for the right to practise Falun Gong, Ms. Wang, who was in her 60s, was detained for more than a year at Harbin City No.2 Detention Centre (also called Yaziquan). In 2001, she was sentenced to two years of forced labour which she served at Wanjia Forced Labour Camp.

When she was last arrested in 2003, officers at the Gexin Police Station wrapped her head in a cotton comforter and coat. She almost suffocated, and her blood pressure rose to 260 mmHg. She was heavily sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.

On March 13th, 2004 while she was held in the Heilongjiang Women's Prison, Ms. Wang Xiuyue was tortured with the “big hang up” for more than 3 hours with only her tiptoes touching the ground. She needed to go to the toilet during the torture. The prison guards refused to let her go, and when she wet her trousers she was not allowed to change her clothes. When she was finally released from the "big hang up," the prison guards forced her to sit on the cement floor with her hands handcuffed behind her back.

Nine years of imprisonment, physical abuse and torture caused Ms. Wang to be constantly hunched over, she could not walk, and she lost the ability to take care of herself. An official medical evaluation stated she was suffering from "severe illness and at high-risk," but officers of the Gexin Police Station in Harbin refused to sign her papers to have the prison release her.

Ms. Wang developed symptoms of a cerebral hemorrhage while in prison. She became bedridden and could only lay in one position.