Name: Lin Chunxiang (林春香)
Gender: Female
Age: 63
Date of Most Recent Arrest: April 8, 2008
Most Recent Place of Detention: Changsha Women's Prison (湖南长沙女子监狱)
Detention City: Changsha
Detention Province: Hunan
Persecution Suffered: Sleep deprivation, forced labor, brainwashing, illegal sentencing, beatings, imprisonment, torture, physical restraint, detention, denial of restroom use
(Minghui.org) Ms. Lin Chunxiang is a resident of Huitong County, Hunan Province. She was brutally tortured while she was incarcerated in Changsha Women's Prison in Changsha City, Hunan Province. When she was released on April 8, 2012, she could not take care of herself or cope with daily chores. Her husband could not bear the mental distress and divorced her. Her marriage destroyed, she left her hometown.
Ms. Lin started practicing Falun Gong on June 1, 1997, and benefited both physically and mentally. On October 28, 1999, she went to Beijing to speak out for Falun Gong, was arrested by the Huitong County police, and detained for 15 days.
When she set out for Beijing again on January 1, 2001, the local police intercepted her and took her to the Hongjiang County Detention Center. She was sentenced to two and a half years of forced labor. Her term was extended by another year by the Zhuzhou City Baimalong Forced Labor Camp. She went on a hunger strike to protest and eventually served two years and eight months. The guards in the camp beat her with long metal rods, and she was covered in bruises and lumps.
When Ms. Lin went to the countryside to tell people about Falun Gong on April 8, 2008, she was reported to the authorities and arrested by the local police. She was sentenced to four years in prison and incarcerated in Changsha Women's Prison on August 6, 2008. On October 8, she was put in the “transformation” team, which was specially designed to torture and force Falun Gong practitioners to give up their belief. She was taken to the isolated brainwashing center on October 20. She was forced to stand for 23 days in a row and was deprived of sleep for the last four days of the forced standing. She was not allowed to eat or sleep, which caused her abdomen to swell so badly that she could not squat down to use the toilet. During the forced standing, she had to stand on a small ceramic tile while the guards poured water over her head. As a direct result of the relentless torture, Ms. Lin started to suffer hallucinations and kept losing her balance. She could not even open her eyes and had to pull up her own eyelids to see. Her whole body was swollen and purple from the beatings and from falling down, and she had a big lump on the top of her head. Her feet, which the guards had stomped on, oozed blood and fluid. Despite the inhuman torture in the prison, Ms. Lin remained steadfast in her belief and the authorities ran out of torture methods.
Ms. Lin was transferred out of the “transformation” team to the third floor of another building in the prison when she was on the verge of death. At the time of her transfer, the guards threatened her and told her, “Don't tell anyone what happened in here.”
After that, she was not allowed to see anybody except for a dozen inmates who were assigned to watch her activities on a daily basis. She was not allowed to leave her cell or see the sun and was forced to complete a daily slave labor quota. She was watched constantly. She kept reciting words from the Falun Gong books and vowed to get out alive. She spent over three years like that.
On April 8, 2012, Ms. Lin was released from prison. However, she cannot take care of herself, cannot walk on her own, has to gather her strength to speak, and suffers from incontinence. She is crippled and severely injured mentally.
