Liaoning Woman Sentenced to Seven Years for Her Faith

(Minghui.org) A Dalian City, Liaoning Province resident was sentenced to seven years in June 2021 for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Liu Xiaohong, a 52-year-old nurse, was arrested at home on November 24, 2020, after being deceived by officers from Baishanlu Police Station into opening the door for a “security inspection.” The police ransacked her home and held her at their police station for over 30 hours, before transferring her to the Dalian City Detention Center. 

The Ganjingzi District Court sentenced Ms. Liu to seven years in early June 2021. She appealed with the Dalian City Intermediate Court, which has ruled to uphold her original verdict. 

In the past 22 years, Liaoning has been one of the top provinces with the most severe persecution of Falun Gong. In Dalian alone, over 100,000 practitioners have been harassed, arrested, or detained. At least 147 practitioners were confirmed to have died in the persecution, with the actual death toll believed to be much higher, given the strict information censorship in China. There were another 827 practitioners who have been given forced labor terms and 371 sentenced. Thousands were detained and tortured in various detention facilities, including mental hospitals, drug rehabilitation centers, detention centers, or brainwashing centers.

Ms. Liu was given one year of forced labor after she was reported for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong on April 30, 2008 and arrested on the same day. 

While serving time at the notorious Masanjia Forced Labor Camp, she was forced to work from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, including weekends. She was only allowed to use the restroom twice during the day. If she didn’t finish the daily quota, the guards would force her to work until 10 or 11 p.m or order her to stand for hours before going to bed. Yet she had to get up at the same time and start working at 7 a.m. again. She was always exhausted after a day of work.

Even when she and other practitioners finished the daily workload on time, the guards still forced them to sit on small stools [designed to cause pain] at night and watch propaganda videos smearing Falun Gong. Each Falun Gong practitioner was monitored by the inmates all the time, including when they were using the restroom, washing themselves, or doing laundry. They weren’t allowed to talk to each other either. 

During the day, the guards patrolled the workshop with electric batons in their hands. If they weren’t satisfied with the practitioners’ work, they would verbally abuse them or beat them with the batons. All practitioners had to keep their heads down while working. 

Sometimes the practitioners were ordered to make joss paper or other burnt goods used for veneration of the deceased. The toxic glue gave off an irritating and suffocating odor in the enclosed workshop, causing the practitioners to cough and tear up.

At one time, because Ms. Liu refused to recite the labor camp rules, she was taken to Donggang, a place specifically used to torture Falun Gong practitioners. The guards forced her to stand straight and then they tied two sticks to the backs of each of her legs, so that she couldn’t bend her legs. Then they forced her to bend over, placing her head into an opening on the side of a bunk bed. Her arms were separated and her hands cuffed to the two sides of the bed. Most of her weight fell onto her wrists, causing the handcuffs to cut into the flesh. Her back also bore enormous pressure and pain. By the time she was untied two hours later, she had lost feeling in her legs.