Ms. Zhang Zhenmin was sent to a brainwashing center directly from the prison, because authorities assumed she was not "completely transformed" during eight years imprisonment.
Ms. Zhang Zhenmin Sent to Brainwashing Center after Serving an Eight-year Sentence
Ms. Zhang Zhenmin is a 47-year-old Falun Gong practitioner. She was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment and should have been released on May 2, 2010. Instead, she was sent to Gongjiawan Brainwashing Center in Lanzhou City.
On May 2, 2010, Zhang Zhenmin's family went to Jiuzhou Women's Prison in Gansu Province, hoping to take her home. They never anticipated that the 610 Office agents and the Domestic Security Police from Lanzhou would also be coming for her. Four cars arrived at 4:50 a.m. at the prison and took Zhang away. Adding insult to injury, the prison director pushed and hit Zhang's elderly mother, her husband Niu Wanjiang and other family members. Over twenty guards at the scene drove away her family.
Ms. Zhang's family tried so hard to find out where she was early that morning. Eventually Gao Lina, deputy director of the CCP Political and Judiciary Committee of Chengguan District, told them she was sent to Gongjiawan Brainwashing Center, because she was not "completely transformed" in the prison. When the family arrived in the center and asked to see Zhang Zhenmin, the guard claimed, "We have got an order from the superior level that the family will not allowed to see her. You have to wait for the phone call first."
Zhang Zhenmin was a worker at Lanzhou Meat Factory. After she was sentenced by the city court to eight years in prison, she was transferred from Xiguoyuan Detention Center to the 2nd Detention Center of Hualin Moutain, and then to the Women's Prison of Gansu Province. She was subjected to beatings, electric shocks, hanging up by the handcuffs, and other forms of torture.
In July 2004, Ms. Zhang was beaten by police because she took down a board that defamed Falun Gong. The police hung her by her handcuffed wrists, and subjected her to electric shocks and other tortures in the bathroom for seven to eight days. One of her arms was severely injured in the process, and even now she finds it hard to lift her arm.
On September 16, 2005, Niu Wanjiang, Ms. Zhang's husband, was sent to Lanzhou Prison. After his term was up, he was secretly transferred to Gongjiawan Brainwashing Center and was detained there for four years by the 610 Office and the local CCP Political and Judiciary Committee. Over those four years, Niu Wanjiang spent most of his time in a cell and on hunger strike. For 81 days, between October 5 and December 27, 2007, he was hung up in a freezing cell located in the mountains. His hands and feet suffered frostbite, and there were open cuts on his feet.