(Minghui.org) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been persecuting Falun Gong, a meditation practice that follows the teaching of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, since 1999.
Because of telling people why the persecution was wrong, a Falun Gong practitioner in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia was targeted by the authorities and forced into displacement for three years. Ms. Zhou Bohong was sentenced to 3 years in Hohhot Women’s Prison in January 2017, shortly after her arrest in 2016.
Tortures Inside the Prison
In the prison, Ms. Zhou and other practitioners who refused to renounce their faith were forced to sit still on very short stools from 6 a.m. to the late evening, while being brainwashed by a guard. They were only allowed short breaks for meals. The same torture lasted every day during her three-year term.
The long-time sitting on such short stools caused tremendous strain on the practitioners’ bodies, including swollen legs and ruptured flesh on the buttocks.
During the three years, Ms. Zhou was only allowed to see her husband once. When her husband arrived at the prison that day, a guard asked if he was a Falun Gong practitioner and many other questions like it were an interrogation. He was only allowed to talk to her for 20 minutes with the guard monitoring the conversation on the side.
Past Physical and Economic Persecution
Before the persecution started, Ms. Zhou worked for an electrical installation company and her husband ran his own business. They did well financially and raised a son and a daughter together.
The police in Tongliao City started to monitor Ms. Zhou after she was spotted giving out Falun Gong literature in January 2013. She had to flee home in 2014 to avoid a future arrest. The police put her on a wanted list on the internet.
In the next few years, Ms. Zhou had to move from place to place to avoid being caught. She had to pay the full year of rent each time she started a new lease. When she had to move on to the next place, even if she had only stayed in the previous place for a few days or months, she couldn’t get her money back. This cost her dearly. In addition, her husband was forced to shut down his business, which directly cost him almost a million yuan of loss.
On June 3, 2016, two plainclothes officers grabbed Ms. Zhou as she left her residence and pushed her into a vehicle. The two officers later went back and ransacked her place with several other officers. They did not present an arrest or a search warrant in the entire process. They confiscated Ms. Zhou’s Falun Gong books and other personal properties. Without notifying her family, the police locked Ms. Zhou in Hexi Detention Center for 7 months.
Ms. Zhou was interrogated in the detention center and refused to cooperate. She was given three years on December 13, 2016, and sent to Hohhot Women’s Prison in 2017.
