Associate Professor Held at a Brainwashing Center for Nearly Two Months

(Minghui.org) An associate professor at Wuhan University of Technology in Hubei Province has been detained for nearly two months in a brainwashing center for her faith in Falun Gong.

In recent months, the authorities have begun to harass Ms. Zhang Wei, 47, and ordered her to renounce Falun Gong. Her school leadership also pressured her, but she refused to comply.

At 8 a.m. on April 3, 2021, a group of police officers broke into Ms. Zhang’s home. While she escaped the arrest then, she was seized by the police the next morning, after they located her by tracking her cellphone. Ms. Zhang was taken to the Qingling Brainwashing Center and has been held there since.

This is the sixth time that Ms. Zhang has been arrested for her faith since the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999.

She was first arrested on the street on July 22, 1999, while visiting a friend in Beijing. After a brief detention, she was sent back to Wuhan.

She was arrested again in November 1999, for doing Falun Gong exercises on her school campus. The school’s [Chinese Communist] Party Secretary Cao Shuqing detained her for nearly 40 days. He assigned 16 people to take turns monitoring her and several of them slandered Falun Gong and tried to persuade her to renounce it.

Ms. Zhang returned to Beijing on October 1, 2000 to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong, but was arrested for the third time. She was held at the Xicheng Detention Center.

Shortly after she was sent back to Wuhan, she was arrested for the fourth time on November 7, 2000 after being reported by a community worker for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong in a residential area.

Ms. Zhang was held at the Wuhan No. 1 Detention Center for ten months and nineteen days. The guards repeatedly handcuffed her to a metal fence, the first time for five days and the second time for three days. On another occasion, she was shackled to the fence for eight days with her hands cuffed.

There were two times when she was handcuffed for two weeks and fifty days.

When the guards interrogated her, they slapped her in the face and tightened her handcuffs. In the winter, they poured soda over her head, which then went into her clothes.

When some detainees expressed sympathy for the practitioners, the guards deprived them of sleep for over a month, as well as forcing them to stand for long hours, slapping them in the face, and imposing big fines on them. As a result of the torture, no one dared to speak up for Falun Gong practitioners anymore.

Other torture Ms. Zhang suffered at the detention center include sleep deprivation, long hours of standing, savage beatings, being punched in the nose, and denied food and water. The guards often kept her in an enclosed room without air conditioning or exposed her to mosquito bites in the summer, and opened the window in the winter to let the cold wind blow on her.

The guards also forced Ms. Zhang to do unpaid labor, including peeling onions and making books. Sometimes they forced her and other Falun Gong practitioners to stand in the snow, naked, with the excuse of doing a “safety inspection.”

After Ms. Zhang was released, the police and school secretary kept harassing her. They attempted to send Ms. Zhang to the notorious Tangxunhu Brainwashing Center but relented under her strong protest. During the nearly one-year-long detention between 2000 and 2001, Ms. Zhang didn’t receive any salary and she also got the lowest score for her year-end performance review.

While Ms. Zhang wasn’t targeted by the police for the next ten years, she was arrested again on November 5, 2012, and held at the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center for two months.

Related reports:

Dr. Zhang Wei Still Detained in Banqiao Brainwashing Center in Hubei Province

Associate Professor Ms. Zhang Wei from Wuhan University of Technology Arrested for the Fifth Time