(Minghui.org) A teacher in northwestern China suffered many forms of torture and humiliation in a detention center and a prison for three years, including beatings and being dumped into a pool of feces–all because of her belief in Falun Dafa.
The following is a personal account by Ms. Liu Yuqin, a high school teacher in Gansu Province.
I started practicing Falun Dafa in April 1998 with the hope to treat my illnesses, including heart disease, Hepatitis B, brain neurasthenia, insomnia, migraines, and gastritis. A few months later, all the illnesses were gone.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I got the hospital's hepatitis exam report that showed negative for every test. After confirming that I was the only Liu Yuqin who came to the hospital that day, I cried out of joy and gratitude.
However, things changed after the Chinese Communist Party started persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners. Police frequently came to my school and home to harass me. They also confiscated my music tapes and books of Falun Dafa.
Police from Qingyang City came to my office on May 15, 2009. They tricked me into going with them to their office. That started my nightmare of three years of torture.
The police ransacked my home. They then bound me to a chair at the police station and interrogated me for the whole night.
They transferred me to Huan County Detention Center the next day. They cuffed my hands behind my back and squeezed me into a tiny car. I couldn't breathe and started crying out of pain. An officer beat and kicked me. “Let me see if you’ll die,” he said. Another officer was afraid that I might actually die, so he released my handcuffs and then cuffed my hands in front of my body. I was able to breathe again.
I was first put in Huan County Detention Center. I started a nine-day hunger strike in protest. Guards tortured and cursed me. I was transferred to Qingcheng County Detention Center in July 2009.
Guards ordered the inmates, including murderers and drug addicts, to torture me. I was frequently beaten and verbally abused. The inmates clawed my face and then put dust into the scars to make them permanent. Another time, they beat me repeatedly in the courtyard. Blood from my mouth and nose splattered against the wall. I reported this to the guard and showed her the blood stain. The inmates denied it and said that it was a fly's blood.
Guards ordered the inmates to beat me. The inmates grabbed my hair to knock my head against the wall. A guard also hinted to them to make me paralyzed after I fell asleep. They then carried me out of the bed and threw me on the cement. My back was injured badly. I still have back pain and cannot hold a heavy load or even bend down to wash my hair.
An inmate kicked my rice bowl out of my hand. It fell to the ground. I cleaned it up and threw the dirty rice into a pool of feces. A guard ordered the inmates to force me to eat the rice. The inmates took out the rice along with other substances from the feces. Several people held me down and put the mixture into my mouth.
I lost consciousness due to the severe torture and woke up several months later on April 25, 2010.
The authorities sentenced me to three years in prison for possessing Falun Dafa materials. I was taken to Gansu Women's Prison on May 18, 2010.
The guards forced us to write a “thought report” to denounce Falun Dafa. I was not allowed to use the bathroom or sleep for three days.
One time, I opened a window while cleaning it. The inmates blamed me for freezing the in-house flowers to death and, as punishment, forced me to clean the bathroom for a week.
Another time, an inmate dropped a brush into the pool of feces. They demanded that I crawl into the pool to fetch it. They pushed my head and body into the pool. My whole body was covered in feces. I still couldn't get it, so they put a shorter woman in.
The prison has a special section for Falun Dafa practitioners, where inmates were made to physically torture the practitioners. They didn't allow practitioners to look at other people, talk to others, or walk alone. If a practitioner didn't follow their orders, they took the practitioner to a corner for further abuse until the practitioner complied.
I lost a lot of weight due to the torture. My illnesses, which had disappeared after I started practicing Falun Dafa, returned. I had a heart attack. My pulse dropped to 42 beats per minute. Afraid that I might die, the prison released me on February 20, 2012.
When my sons saw me, they almost didn’t recognize me. I was skin and bones, having dropped from 150 pounds to 120. My hair was all white.
My fourteen-year-old son used to have good grades. After I was arrested, his grades went down. He made friends with at-risk people and just wandered around on the street. He became addicted to smoking and liked to fight.
My elder son became depressed after my arrest and numerous incidents of harassment by police who came to our home. I accompanied him for treatment. The police officers not only had no sympathy but also laughed at my family's situation and lack of money.