(Clearwisdom.net, June 20, 2003) In October of 2000, Dafa practitioner Ms. Xia Ting was sentenced to one and one-half years of forced labor for practicing Falun Gong. She was detained at the Baimalong Female Forced Labor Camp in Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province.
At the end of her original term, the camp authorities arbitrarily added a year to her sentence. During her two and one-half year detention, the police persecuted her very harshly. Because she refused to give up Falun Dafa cultivation, the camp authorities punished her with forced standing, handcuff torture, electric baton shocks, and other tortures. During her 42-day hunger strike, from September to October 2001, perpetrators at the labor camp clinic injected her with large doses of the drug Thorazine* against her will. This caused Xia Ting severe memory loss and loss of equilibrium.
Now, nineteen months later, Xia Ting has still not fully regained her balance. She needs assistance climbing a 30-degree incline. It is truly appalling that in the 21st century, labor camps in China still use such cruel torture on people!
* The psychotropic drug Thorazine (also known as Aminazin, Chlorpromazine, Largactil, Thorazine or Wintermin) is a strong tranquilizer that used in the treatment of psychiatric patients. Thorazine in particular can have powerful side effects, such as tardive dyskinesia (a serious, irreversible neurological disorder), tardive dementia (a global deterioration of her mind and mental faculties caused by the drugs), general dulling of awareness, emotional numbing, and cognitive dysfunction. Symptoms of tardive dyskinesia involve uncontrollable movement of various body parts, including the body trunk, legs, arms, fingers, mouth, lips, or tongue.
According to Amnesty International's medical advice, these drugs are not in themselves sinister. There are specific disorders for which they are prescribed, but they should be administered by qualified doctors, and their use monitored. In the light of cases of torture and ill-treatment of Falun Gong practitioners, and in the absence of evidence that they suffer from any psychiatric disorder, it is evident that the administration of such drugs are a punitive measure. In other words, Falun Gong practitioners have been inappropriately administered psychotropic drugs in order to punish them for their spiritual belief in Falun Gong.
