(Minghui.org) A 42-year-old former English teacher was driven insane after being tortured at a labor camp for practicing Falun Gong. Ms. Deng Xiaomin has never recovered after she was released in 2003.
Ms. Deng, of Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, was given three years of forced labor after she went to Beijing in 2000 to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Deng spent two out of the three-year term in solitary confinement at Jiangxi Province Women’s Forced Labor Camp. Guards used various torture methods in attempts to force her to renounce her faith, including forced-feedings, electric shocks, and beatings. She was once handcuffed to a bed and forced to stand every night throughout the night for more than two months.
The constant torture eventually led to Ms. Deng suffering a mental collapse. After she was released in March 2003, she remained confused––she couldn’t speak sensibly and was unable to eat by herself. At times, she hit people and threw things. Her mother, Ms. Hu Fengying, incurred a huge debt trying to treat her daughter's mental disorder, but her condition didn't improve.
Ms. Hu also tried to apply for government assistance, but her cry for help was ignored. As a Falun Gong practitioner herself, she was also arrested and detained several times.
Years of mental and physical pressure eventually consumed Ms. Hu’s health. She passed away on May 6, 2014, one month after she was arrested and detained for 15 days. She was 65. One year later, her husband passed away in October 2015.
It’s reported that Ms. Deng's half-sister brought her to another city after her parents' passing. About two years ago, an elderly lady in Hunan Province found Ms. Deng wandering around in a delirious state and managed to notify the authorities in Jiangxi Province. But there has been no follow-up report about her.
Ms. Deng's ordeal evokes memories of Ms. Liu Zhimei, who was expelled from one of China's top universities, Tsinghua University, at the age of 21 because she refused to renounce Falun Gong. Ms. Liu was jailed for six years, during which time she was repeatedly drugged.
Three days before Ms. Liu's release in 2008, she was given an unknown injection which her family suspected to be the direct cause of her subsequent long-lasting psychotic symptoms.
After her release, whenever she was asked about her age, Ms. Liu either remained silent or answered “21.” For her, time seemed to have stopped at age 21, as if she wanted to wipe out all the miserable memories from her imprisonment.
On the morning of February 13, 2015, a villager and a child made a grisly discovery in a village in Laiyang City, Shandong Province. While taking a morning walk, they found a body floating in a well. It was Ms. Liu. It is not known how she fell in.
Related report:
Mother Dies, Daughter Who Suffered a Mental Collapse Due to Torture Now on Her Own
Driven Insane during Imprisonment, Young Woman Recently Found Dead in Well
