(Minghui.org) Ms. Song Lixia, a practitioner from Yunnan Province, has been illegally arrested three times for her belief in Falun Gong during the past 15 years of persecution in China. She's been imprisoned for 11 years.
She was released from Yunnan No. 2 Women's Prison when her latest five-year sentence ended on January 22, 2014.
Years of being tortured inside the prisons took a devastating toll on Ms. Song. Only 48 years old, she has prematurely aged and now suffers from memory loss and slow reactions.
After being detained in solitary confinement in 2004, Ms. Song still hasn't recovered from the injuries to her abdomen, and even today and she is still in pain.
Ms. Song was arrested for the first time in October 2001 and was illegally sentenced to two years in Dabanqiao Women's Forced Labor Camp.
She was forced to do gardening for about 15 hours each day and make handcrafts at night. The practitioners who refused to renounce their belief were placed in in solitary confinement.
When the camp's leadership or outside visitors came, the guards put all the practitioners into one room and taped their mouths shut. If they resisted, they were tortured. The guards only took out inmates they trusted to talk to the tourists.
The practitioners were deprived of their basic human rights in the camp, and the guards and inmates beat them at will. When three inmates started to beat practitioner Ni, in her 60s, Ms. Song and other practitioners tried to stop them. In retaliation, their sentences were extended by two months.
Ms. Song was arrested for the second time in August 2004. She was sentenced to four years in Yunnan No. 2 Women's Prison.
The guard ordered her to recite the prison rules and read articles that slandered Falun Gong. Instead she did the Falun Gong exercises as a peaceful protest.
Zeng, head of Division 5, beat her with an electric baton. Sun Lingshuang, another division head, stood to one side and cheered Zeng on. Zeng beat Ms. Song for over an hour, specifically targeting her head, neck, and abdomen. The wall was covered with her blood, and Ms. Song eventually passed out.
Ms. Song was held in solitary confinement for six months. During that time, she was only out for one week. She was emaciated by the time she was let out.
Even though her abdomen was severely injured and she was in great pain, the guards still forced her to sit on a small stool for prolonged periods of time to torture her.
Ms. Song was arrested for the third time on January 25, 2009, and sentenced to five years in Yunnan No. 2 Women's Prison.
While she was there, the police frequently took her for “physicals,” and her blood was drawn for tests.
The guards refused to allow her to buy daily necessities and ordered inmates to make her life difficult, simply because she refused to plead “guilty” or do slave labor. For six months she was locked in a small, humid room next to a foul-smelling restroom.