After Eight Years of Incarceration, Hairdresser Continues to Be Harassed for Her Faith

(Minghui.org) After serving two labor camp terms and a prison term totaling eight years for practicing Falun Dafa, Ms. Luo Meng sustained a severe head trauma due to high-voltage electric shocks, as well as injuries to her lower back and eyes. The injuries and ongoing harassment also forced her to close her popular barbershop.

Ms. Luo, 52, of Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, recovered from several ailments after she started to practice Falun Dafa in 1998. Her skill at cutting hair, as well as her warmth and honesty, made her barbershop, which she opened in 1999, very popular. After the persecution started on July 20, 1999, she refused to renounce her faith and has been targeted non-stop ever since. One time the police assaulted her and even smacked her toddler in her arms.

After she was released from the latest four-year labor camp term in 2012, CCP (Chinese Communist Party) officials continued to harass her. Even her relatives weren’t spared. The authorities also confiscated her ID, making it impossible for her to work or lead a normal life.

In January 2023, Xinglong Town Police Station officers and village officials went to her parents’ home to look for her. Her father, who is in his 80s, and her mother, who is in her late 70s, were terrified.

Unable to find her, the authorities went to the home of her older sister. She recognized three of the officers from a previous harassment and condemned them for persecuting Ms. Luo, “My sister did not kill or rob anyone, yet you shocked her with electric batons. You drove away her customers and she couldn’t afford her child’s college tuition. Her husband divorced her because of the persecution, and now she does not even have a place to live. Why are you still going after her? Leave her alone! You have ruined my family.”

The following is Ms. Luo’s own account of the ordeals she has endured over the past 23 years of persecution.

Falun Dafa Saved My Life and Marriage

Before I took up Falun Dafa, I had sinus and gynecological problems. I dared not cry or laugh too hard because they triggered my migraines. My dry throat prevented me from talking much. Constantly exhausted, I slept all the time, sometimes for days, and had no appetite. I could not become pregnant after getting married. My anger at life brewed, and I often lashed out at my husband. I resorted to gambling to distract myself.

Falun Dafa brought us light and good fortune. A week after I took up the practice in May 1998, I knew for the first time how it felt to be illness free. Once I read Zhuan Falun, the main teaching of Falun Dafa, not only did it change my way of thinking, it also improved my energy level. I was able to ride my bike and work on the farm. I also opened a barbershop to make a living. My relationship with my in-laws improved as well. Seeing that I’d become healthy by practicing, my husband helped me promote it, and his illnesses disappeared as well. I later gave birth to a lovely girl.

Multiple Arrests and Detention

Many people came to my barbershop and business was booming. After the persecution started in July 1999, the police accused me of gathering practitioners in my shop. An officer arrested me and forced me to clean their office, the police cars, and even the dove cage every day for free. This effectively forced me to close my business. I had to ask for permission to breastfeed my daughter, who was only a few months old at the time. They released me in early 2000.

Because I did the Falun Dafa exercises with other practitioners in Qiaotou Park, the police arrested me several more times. They often chained me to the ground outside of a government building to humiliate me in public. Another time they forced me to sit under the scorching sun for hours. The skin on my buttocks blistered and peeled off, and my daughter’s face was burned. In June 2000, an officer slapped me and my daughter who was in my arms. Her face was swollen with finger marks and her lips were bruised. The police confiscated my bike and never returned it.

One day the police arrested me at home without a warrant. They pushed me into a police vehicle, drove to the police station, and threw me down on the front lawn a few times. My husband came and saw how they treated me. He fought with them and they handcuffed him and kept him in a dark room.

Several armed police officers took me from home late at night on July 19, 2000, and handcuffed me to a tree. I asked them to let me feed my daughter as my breast milk wet my shirt, but they would not allow it. They detained me for two weeks. During that time, my daughter got very ill, and my mother-in-law had to care for her.

18 Months in a Forced Labor Camp

I was arrested again for handing out a Falun Dafa flier in October 2000. An agent from the Guanghan City 610 Office beat me in Xinglong Police Station and handcuffed me to a window rail overnight. The next day, they tied me to the back of a truck with a sign hanging around my neck to humiliate me. I was then taken to the Nanmusi Women’s Forced Labor Camp to serve an 18-month term.

The guards in the labor camp often hit me in the head with electric batons. They also beat, insulted, and force-fed me. For over a month they forced me to stand in a military posture from 6 a.m. to midnight. Because I refused to slander and criticize Falun Dafa and its founder, they beat me again. Sometimes I had to sit all day on a small stool with my hands on my knees. It was a torture that was designed to injure one’s lower back and buttocks and make one’s legs to swell.

In the cell, we were each given only one bucket of water for shower and laundry. We sometimes combined the water and used it together. By the time we finished the washing, the water was incredibly filthy.

A guard threatened to turn me into a vegetable. When I asked what she meant, she made me sit still for long hours on a small stool. In protest, I stopped answering roll calls. A guard then frequently shocked my face and ears with an electric baton. This made me mentally incoherent. I could not think clearly or control my emotions. I would cry or laugh uncontrollably. I’d switch between Mandarin and Sichuan dialects for no reason. The guards then handcuffed me to the metal gate of a solitary confinement cell. The inmate who watched me often beat me or blew cigarette smoke on my face. I was released on May 1, 2002. I did not recognize anyone I used to know.

Second 2.5-year Forced Labor Camp Term

When I was working in the rice fields one day, two men came and dragged me away. They held me in a detention center for two weeks.

At the market in August 2002, three Guangxing Police Station officers beat me in public. They handcuffed me and took me to the police station. One of them wrote a deposition and ordered me to sign. I tore it up, and he repeatedly punched me in the head. The police arbitrarily gave me another 2.5-year forced labor camp term without due process. They covered my head and took me to Nanmusi Women’s Forced Labor Camp.

As soon as I got to the camp, a guard laughed at me and gloated, “You are back in less than 100 days.” The guards tied my hands and feet and locked me in solitary confinement. It snowed that night and I had to sit on the freezing concrete floor.

The guards made me and a dozen other practitioners stand still in our cell one time. When someone walked by and asked a head guard why we were standing still, the guard said we were doing it voluntarily. A practitioner and I shouted, “She forced us to.” The inmate then dragged me to another cell and beat me. They warned me not to talk about the beating when I was back in my cell.

Because I told another practitioner in my cell that they beat me, the inmates took me downstairs. The head guard taped my mouth shut, handcuffed me to a tree branch, and hung me up. The inmates took turns beating me. The skin on my wrists split, and the scars are still visible today.

The next morning the guards forced me to hold my arms up and handcuffed me to the top window rail. I can’t remember how long I was handcuffed like that. Then they made me stand still for 15 days without sleep. I could not bend my legs for a long time after that.

If I wanted to use a toilet, I had to report to the guards and refer to myself as a criminal or I would not be allowed to go. I refused to call myself a criminal. Often I had to restrain my urge to go, and sometimes I had to relieve myself in my pants.

The guards made everyone do intensive labor in the cell and gave us 15 yuan (2.25 USD) every month as compensation. The work included sorting pig hair, crocheting, making embroidery, beading, and sewing cotton balls. We had to crochet almost every day from 6 a.m. to midnight. If we did not finish our quota, we had to stay up, sometimes all night, to finish it. The next morning we had to continue crocheting without a break. One time we were forced to work for days without a break.

Before I was released, I gave an inmate a pear, even though she frequently beat me. In tears, she said, “It’s so wrong for the police to arrest good people like you.”

Imprisoned for Four Years

I went to a disaster resettlement site to cut a woman’s hair on May 20, 2008, after the Wenchuan Earthquake. After discovering that I practiced Falun Dafa, two officers arrested me and held me in Xiangganglu Police Station from noon to evening without giving me anything to eat or letting me talk. They confiscated my Falun Dafa book, phone, and cash and never returned them. I was later sentenced to four years at the 7th ward in Sichuan Province Women’s Prison. The guards threw away a lot of my coats, quilt covers, shirts, pants, and shoes.

The guards took a sample of my blood, claiming they were “checking my health.” I suspected it was for the organ harvesting database.

One morning the guards did not let anyone in the ward eat breakfast after I refused to answer roll call. This was done to get the inmates to hate me.

When I refused to write a thought report to say I was guilty of practicing Falun Dafa, the guards made me stand in a military posture and shortened my shower time. They made me work all day and then stand still in the evenings until midnight. They ordered the inmates to watch me around the clock and forbade me from making purchases, meeting my family, or making phone calls.

When I refused to write statements to renounce my faith, the guards made everyone in my cell stay up late at night. They made me stand still overnight and work the next day. I often fell asleep as I stood and hit the wall or fell on a table. Later the guards made me sort copper wires for electronics. If I could not finish the quota in time, I’d have to participate in intensive physical training.

Harassment Continues

When I was released on May 19, 2012, I had a severe knee problem. I’d had to use my hands to help sit down or get up. My toes were numb. I could barely pick up a small bucket of water.

A few days after I got home, agents from the local 610 Office and a local official came to my home. They had my daughter read an article and videotaped her. I protested and they took her elsewhere to videotape her. They made my family monitor my daily activities. My mother-in-law kept urging my husband to divorce me. My husband fought with me constantly.

I found a job at a restaurant. But after only two days, I couldn’t move my neck due to the torture in custody. When I found another job in a hotel, the authorities forced my supervisor to monitor me.

Due to the harassment, my family became hostile toward me and were ashamed that I’d been in prison.