Nurse from Inner Mongolia Recounts Five-year Sentence for Practicing Falun Gong

(Minghui.org) After the communist regime ordered the persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline, in 1999, Ms. Meng Hulun, a surgical nurse in Holingol City, Inner Mongolia, was fired from her workplace. She was arrested seven times, served nine years in labor camps and five years in a prison. The police constantly harassed her family and monitored their daily lives. 

Below are details of her latest five-year prison sentence.

Arrest and Sentencing

I was arrested at around 2 p.m. on August 9, 2014 by officers on the lookout outside of my apartment. They ransacked my home and confiscated my Falun Gong books, a photo of Master Li (founder of Falun Gong), two computers and some office supplies. 

They took me to the basement of the local police department and interrogated me about who exposed the information of a mass arrest a month ago. I refused to answer any questions. 

After I was taken to the local detention center, the guards constantly searched my body and my cell. Some of the Falun Gong lectures I received from other practitioners were confiscated. My cell was between male cells and it caused me much inconvenience. The guards didn’t allow me to buy any daily necessities, not even toilet paper. 

The Holingol City Court sentenced me to five years on May 5, 2015. I appealed the verdict, but the intermediate court ruled to uphold my original sentence without a hearing three months later. The judge said to me, “Even if you are innocent, the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (an extra-judiciary agency tasked with overseeing the persecution) wouldn’t let you go home.”

Abused in Prison 

On September 18, 2015, after more than a year of detention, I was transferred to the Hohhot City No. 1 Women’s Prison.

Two days after I was taken to the prison, I was sent to the strict management team. The prison had hired some psychology experts and people who practiced Falun Gong before but had given up to brainwash me. I was held there for three months and monitored by two inmates around the clock. 

After a year of brainwashing and mental torture, the guards began to force me to do unpaid labor on August 9, 2016. Over 300 inmates worked in the workshop, making uniforms that would be exported to Japan. The noise and heat from the machines suffocated me.

Every day, we entered the workshop at 7 a.m.. No one was allowed to talk, or they would be punished. Even when I was working, the inmates still closely monitored me.

In the winter of 2018, the guards forced me to stand in the wind for seven days, with the excuse that I didn’t follow the prison rules. They constantly berated and cursed me. They didn't allow me to buy daily necessities in my final months in prison. 

I was finally released on August 8, 2019.