Ms. Wu Lijun's Personal Account of being Injected with Psychotropic Drugs in Heilongjiang Women's Prison

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Wu Lijun was sentenced to nine years in prison in early January 2002. She was tied up and taken to Heilongjiang Women's Prison, where, because she had scabies, she was isolated in a small cell.

In the small cells, the prison guards injected practitioners with psychotropic drugs, causing them great physical discomfort. To keep others in the prison from hearing the practitioners' screams, the guards turned on the loud speaker. Male guards were typically present during the injections.

Ms. Wu Lijun worked at the Bearing Factory in the Dongli District of Harbin City. When she travelled to Beijing in January 2000 to appeal for Falun Gong, she was arrested and sentenced to a year of forced labour and detained at the Wanjia Forced Labour Camp. In early January 2002, she was sentenced to nine years in prison. At Heilongjiang Women's Prison she and other practitioners were tortured, including being injected with psychotropic drugs as described above. The following is her personal account of the ordeal.

Harmony Through Practice Taken away; Tortured and Detained for Appealing

“My name is Wu Lijun. I was born in 1953. I started practising cultivation in Falun Gong on April 25th, 1997. Prior to that, I often took home things from work and shared them with my family members and friends. After I started cultivating, I understood the relationship between loss and gain and returned what I had taken. And I never did anything like that again. At the time, I often heard from state media that there were 100 million people practising Falun Gong, and its praises were heard around the country: “Falun Gong is good! Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good!”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. I went to Beijing in January 2000 to appeal but was arrested and detained at the Beijing 13th Detention Centre. Because I continued to do the exercises, the guards handcuffed me. They cuffed my hands so tightly that the metal cut into my flesh, and my hands swelled up like loaves of bread. At night, I slept on cold wooden boards with others.

I was transferred to Harbin City Detention Centre 20 days later. A female ward head named Han kicked me and punched me. She had the heaviest shackles put on my feet, and she smashed my forehead with an iron key plate. I started to bleed, and my face swelled up.

Beaten in Wanjia Forced Labour Camp and My Husband Forced to Divorce Me

I was sentenced to a year of forced labour in January 2000 and detained at Wanjia Forced Labour Camp. Division head Wu had the inmates tie practitioners to the heating pipes for hours with only their toes touching the floor. Several of the practitioners passed out.

Guard Zhang Bo had the inmates drag a practitioner to the toilet to beat her. To keep her from being heard, they covered her head with clothes and hit her in the face, breasts, and private parts. She was left with bruises all over her body. The clothes that covered her head with were stained with blood. Another practitioner named Jin Gang was also beaten so violently that she wasn't recognizable afterwards.

My son was about to graduate from high school at the time. The authorities told my family that he could not enter college or join the army because there was a Falun Gong practitioner in the family who would not “transform” [forcibly renounce Falun Gong]. For our son's sake, my husband divorced me in June.

Injected with Psychotropic Drugs in Heilongjiang Women's Prison

When I was handing out Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution on April 26th, 2001, I was followed, arrested, and taken to Dongli Police Department. After restraining me in an iron chair and cuffing my hands behind my back with one hand over my shoulder, six male police officers kicked me, punched me and slapped me. Officer Xiao covered my head with a plastic bag and I passed out. They took me to Harbin Detention Centre the next day.

The room in the detention centre was not big, but it was crowded with more than 70 people. With the toilet in the same room, the smell was overpowering. People sat next to each other during the day, and curled their legs up to sleep at night, sitting. There were lice all over the place.

After I was sentenced to nine years in prison in early January 2002, I was tied up and taken to Heilongjiang Women's Prison. Because I was full of scabies, they kept me in a small cell separate from everyone else. There were several small, dark rooms in the small cell, and most of us there were practitioners. The loud speaker in the small cell was often turned on to cover the sounds of something evil that was going on. They injected me with drugs and I felt terrible, then they turned on the loud speaker to keep my screams from being heard by those outside.

Practitioners Chen Weijun and Wang Fang have been on a hunger strike many times to protest the persecution. Inmate Shang Xiaomei inserted a non-sterile rubber tube into their empty stomachs by force, which was covered with blood when removed. They claimed they put milk and rice soup into their stomachs, but in fact they put in a concentrated salt solution. The two practitioners were very thirsty after the forced feeding. They were not “released on medical parole” until they were in serious condition and at the brink of death. They both passed away shortly thereafter.

We refused to wear the prison uniform, wear name tags, or count off. They made us stand outside in the cold. Then, they cuffed our hands behind our backs with one arm from over our shoulder and forced us to stand in the wash room, which was damp and cold. They cuffed some practitioners to the bunk beds with only their toes touching the floor. At night, they cuffed us to the lower bunk bed and made us sit on the cold cement floor the entire night. Some practitioners became paralyzed as a result of the torture.

The New Seventh Ward is where evildoing guards tried to intensively “transform” practitioners. They brainwashed practitioners every day with materials that slandered the founder of Falun Gong. At night, they deprived practitioners of sleep and had the inmates take turns reading those materials to them. They forced practitioners to do slave labour during the day and made them work overtime at night if they couldn't finish their quotas. In addition, they made several inmates watch practitioners, including during toilet time.