(Minghui.org)
Name: Liang LixinChinese Name: 梁立新Gender: FemaleAge: UnknownCity: Tuquan Province: Inner MongoliaOccupation: government employeeDate of Death: March 2023Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 2023Most Recent Place of Detention: Changchun City Detention Center
A resident of Tuquan County, Hinggan League, Inner Mongolia, died six days after she was arrested in March 2023 while visiting her daughter in Changchun City, Jilin Province.
The Guilin Road Police Station in Changchun City targeted Ms. Liang Lixin because they suspected her of having putting up Falun Gong flyers on Guilin Road. Falun Gong is a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since July 1999.
Ms. Liang refused to cooperate with the police’s order to write statements renouncing her faith in Falun Gong or sign the interrogation records. The police took her to the Jiutai Detention Center and later transferred her to the Changchun City Detention Center, where she died. The police were in the process of building a case against her when she passed away.
The exact dates of Ms. Liang’s arrest and death are unclear. The cause of her death and details of her detention also remain to be investigated.
Ms. Liang’s passing was preceded by decades of persecution for her faith. She served 2.5 years of forced labor and two prison terms totaling 10.5 years prior to her latest arrest.
Taking up Falun Gong
Ms. Liang, an employee of the Industrial and Commercial Bureau of Tuquan County, Inner Mongolia, suffered from stomach cramps, arthritis, cholecystitis and other diseases for years. She spent a fortune seeking a cure, but to no avail. All her symptoms, however, disappeared without medical treatment in less than one month after she took up Falun Gong on August 15, 1997. She also came to understand that there is a reason behind everything and she no longer complained about the many misfortunes she experienced in life.
However, Ms. Liang’s healthy and happy life was shattered when the persecution of Falun Gong began in July 1999. Between 2000 and 2016, she spent a cumulative 13 years in detention for upholding her faith.
Given 2.5 Years of Forced Labor Following Arrest in December 2000
Ms. Liang and three other local Falun Gong practitioners decided to go to Beijing to appeal for justice for Falun Gong in December 2000. They traveled separately to Dashiqiao City, Liaoning Province, to avoid being tracked by the police, as the authorities set up check points along all major transportation systems across the country to stop Falun Gong practitioners from going to Beijing to appeal.
Just as they met at the Dashiqiao Railway Station and were about to purchase train tickets to Beijing, plainclothes officers demanded to see their IDs. As they did not have their IDs with them, they were arrested on the spot.
The four practitioners were kept at the Dashiqiao Police Station overnight. Due to the CCP policy of implicating family, friends, and work units, they refused to reveal their names and were taken to a local nursing home the next day. The living condition there was extremely poor. They were only given sorghum porridge to eat. There was a mentally ill patient who sang all night long, and people who urinated in the corridor.
The nursing home director threatened to keep the practitioners there indefinitely if they still refused to reveal their names. They then told the director who they were. The Tuquan County Police Station soon dispatched officers to pick them up. The first police car dispatched hit a tree, and chief Zhang and captain Cui personally drove two other cars to the nursing home. A policewoman searched the four practitioners and confiscated all the cash they had on them.
Captain Cui lied, saying that the practitioners would be dropped off at their respective homes, only to drive them straight to the Tuquan County Detention Center.
After 61 days at the detention center, Ms. Liang was given two and a half years of forced labor and transferred to the Tumuji Women’s Labor Camp in Jalaid Banner, Hinggan League, Inner Mongolia, in February 2001.
Ms. Liang was first held in Team One, where steadfast Falun Gong practitioners like her were forced to do hard labor without pay during the day and stand for long hours at night. A young woman in her 20s was beaten so hard that her leg was broken. Ms. Liang saw her limping around every day. Ms. Liang also witnessed another practitioner, who was on hunger strike, being pinned down and brutally force-fed.
Ms. Liang was later moved to Team Two, where she was forced to read, watch, and listen to anti-Falun Gong materials for a few weeks. She was later forced to do hard labor from around 3 a.m. to around 8 p.m. every day, with one and a half hours of daily lunch break. She soon became exhausted from the forced labor. She was so tired one day that she couldn’t get out of bed, much less move herself to the cafeteria to eat. She lost about 40 pounds in six months.
Sentenced to 7 Years Following Arrest in 2004
Ms. Liang went to a local sign company one day in 2004 to make a sign reading “Global Public Trial of Jiang Zemin.” (Jiang was the former Chinese dictator who ordered the persecution of Falun Gong.) The sign company owner reported her to the police and officers from the Ulanhot City Police Department in Hinggan League soon came to arrest her. They took her to the Hinggan League Detention Center.
The detention center guards ordered Ms. Liang to put on the inmates’ yellow vest and sit on a bench. As she had broken no law, she refused to comply and lay in bed in protest. She also went on a hunger strike. On the seventh day, a guard ordered her to get out of bed. Ms. Liang did not move. The guard then ordered her cellmates to yank her out of bed, but they were unsuccesful.
On the fifteenth day, the Tuquan County Police Station transferred Ms. Liang to the Tuquan County Detention Center. Three months later, a bump suddenly grew under her neck, and she became even more emaciated. In just fifteen days, she lost the strength to get out bed. The detention center director, Ni Weiguang, sent her to a hospital but the doctors did not say what her condition was. The next day, Ni took Ms. Liang to the Inner Mongolia Women’s Prison to serve seven years. The details of her indictment, trial, and sentencing are as yet unknown.
Ms. Liang’s whole body hurt and she couldn’t turn her body. Despite this, the prison guards had her sleep on the top bunk of a bunk bed. They also instructed her ten cellmates to talk until midnight so as to prevent her from having a good night’s rest.
After Ms. Liang recovered a bit, she was forced to work for ten hours every day, while only being given a moldy steamed bun, rotten potatoes and cabbage to eat.
The mass on her neck grew bigger. Other inmates were stunned when they saw the size of it. But Ms. Liang was still forced to work. The bump eventually turned into three abscesses. Only then did the guards take her to the prison clinic to have the pus squeezed out. They next forced her to take medicines on an empty stomach, when that medication should have been taken with food. She had a stomachache as a result and refused to take any more pills.
Every November, the prison carried out a new round of persecution aimed to force the steadfast practitioners to renounce their faith. The practitioners, including Ms. Liang, were each placed in a solitary confinement cell and monitored by two inmates. The practitioners were bombarded with anti-Falun Gong propaganda and subjected to various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, long-term standing, and electric shocks.
Sentenced to 3.5 Years Following Arrest in April 2013
Officer Han and several others from the Tuquan County Police Station arrested Ms. Liang in April 2013 upon receiving a tip that she distributed Falun Gong informational materials.
The police took Ms. Liang to the Tuquan County Detention Center. One day, director Zhou summoned her to his office and notified her that she would be put in solitary confinement that night because she did the Falun Gong exercises. The next day she received a notice saying that her appeal against the 3.5-year prison term had been rejected (it’s unclear when she was indicted, tried, or sentenced).
Ms. Liang was immediately transferred to the Inner Mongolia Women’s Prison after receiving the notice. She was placed in the Strict Management Team, designated to hold steadfast Falun Gong practitioners. She was not allowed to talk to others or leave her cell. Two inmates watched her around the clock. They forced her to sit on a small stool for two hours twice a day (once in the morning, and once in the afternoon).
Captain Kang Jianwei inspected each cell every day and often gathered all practitioners to watch anti-Falun Gong documentaries.
Head inmate Wang Xiaomei ordered Ms. Liang to repeat the anti-Falun Gong content she was forced to watch. When Ms. Liang refused, Wang forced her to stand for long hours and did not allow her to sleep.
The guards also instructed the inmates to hang practitioners’ “prisoner badges” on their beds. The practitioners refused to acknowledge they were prisoners and refused to have the badges hung on their beds. The inmates then placed portraits of the founder of Falun Gong on the ground, on the wall, or in the restroom. Ms. Liang removed the portrait from the restroom during break time. The guards shocked her with electric batons after finding out about it.
Inmate Yuan Wei cursed at Ms. Liang and once slapped her in the face so hard that she bled.
Ms. Liang was later moved to a different cell to share a bunk bed with another practitioner. That practitioner refused to hang the prisoner’s badge on her bed and was beaten by Kang. Ms. Liang tried to stop Kang and he kicked her hard in her ribs. She hurt for quite a few days afterwards.
Kang later summoned the other practitioner to his office and beat her again. She was beaten so hard that she couldn’t climb to her top bunk. Ms. Liang then swapped with her and had her use the lower bunk bed.
Ms. Liang later suffered high blood pressure as a result of the relentless torture and intensive forced labor. Her blood pressure reading was around 220/130 mmHg (a healthy range is no more than 120/80 mmHg). The guards mixed hypertension drugs into her food without having her examined by doctors first. She refused to eat the food after finding that it tasted strange. The guards then force-fed her the medicine.
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