(Clearwisdom.net) Ms. Yu Libo, from Qidong City in Heilongjiang Province, was arrested on June 26, 2001, and illegally sentenced to eight years in prison. She was transferred to the Heilongjiang Province Women's Prison six years ago, where she has been physically abused and mentally tormented.
On August 21, 2007, Ms. Yu's father-in-law and her son went to the prison for their limited monthly visit (a "level two" restriction for those who refused to give up their belief in Falun Gong). They saw that Ms. Yu was emaciated and was constantly holding her abdomen. Her eight-year-old son could not even recognize his mother. Her father-in-law was very deeply hurt by what he saw and felt as if a knife was piercing his heart.
Three days later, Ms. Yu's parents and her father-in-law went to the prison again, attempting to petition for outside medical treatment for her. The prison officials refused the visitation, saying, "How do you know her life is in danger?" When the family insisted to have her checked by people in an outside medical facility, the prison guards told them that Ms. Yu had cooperated with the treatment provided, and her condition had improved. They said that her life was no longer in danger. This is clearly a lie; how could a person who was so sick three days earlier have recovered so quickly?
The officials at the Women's Prison attempt to forcibly "reform" Falun Gong practitioners. To pursue their goals, they developed a series of torture techniques, especially applied to those who remain steadfast in their practice of Falun Gong. It is no surprise that many Falun Gong practitioners experienced health problems, considering the abuse and the deplorable sanitation situation in those prisons. As the result, Yu Libo suffered from severe intestinal problems as diagnosed by physicians at an outside hospital.
Ms. Yu was arrested in June 2001 as she distributed Falun Gong informational flyers in a residential area. A person who had followed her reported her to the police. The police kicked and punched her and another practitioner at the scene and pulled her hair out. Their mistreatment angered the crowd who witnessed the arrest, and they commented on how the police officers could so brutally beat two defenseless women.
During the illegal detention, guards made Ms. Yu sit on the tiger bench for two days and one night, with metal rods fixing her legs in one position. The guards took turns beating her when they questioned her. She was tortured so badly that her face and body were badly disfigured. Her legs were swollen to twice their normal size and she was barely able to walk.
Officials at the Women's Prison are still detaining and persecuting about three hundred Falun Gong practitioners.
The prison has thirteen wards; of them, three wards (Ward 11, and 13 and the ward on 5th floor of the new building) are called "transformation" wards. Guards Wang Yali and Wang Xaioli are in charge of Ward 11 and Ward 13, respectively, and they are both very brutal. At the end of 2006, the prison officials received a note from the upper prison management bureau ordering them to accomplish 100% "transformation" in 2007.
Prison officials began another round of "transformation" of Falun Gong practitioners on November 28, 2006. Prison guards used the criminal inmates to enforce the brutal "reform" tactics. Four to eight criminals would attack one individual practitioner using various torture methods such as sleep deprivation, forbidding them to take a break, subjecting them to verbal abuse and slandering Falun Gong, all trying to destroy the practitioners' will. They also forced practitioners to sit on tiny stools for long periods of time as another form of physical abuse aimed at "transforming" practitioners.
