(Minghui.org)
Name: Lyu HoufenChinese Name: 吕厚芬Gender: FemaleAge: 66City: TianjinProvince:Occupation:Date of Death: August 9, 2023Date of Most Recent Arrest: December 28, 2017Most Recent Place of Detention: Tianjin Women’s Prison
Ms. Lyu Houfen had developed tuberculosis and become emaciated by the time she finished serving five and a half years for practicing Falun Gong on June 28, 2023. The Tianjin woman’s health kept declining after she returned home. She needed support when walking. Her lungs and stomach had suffered so much damage that she had trouble digesting even a few sips of porridge. She died on August 9, 2023, at the age of 66.
Ms. Lyu credited Falun Gong for restoring her health and turning her into a calmer and more considerate person. Because of the persecution, however, she was repeatedly targeted for upholding her faith. Prior to her prison sentence, Ms. Lyu had also served 15 months of forced labor.
Latest Arrest
Ms. Lyu was seized by four officers at around 8:30 a.m. on December 28, 2017, as soon as she stepped out of her apartment building. According to insiders, she was one of 37 local practitioners arrested that day.
The arresting officers took her to the Guangkai Police Station, before transferring her to the Nankai District Detention Center. In the meantime, more than a dozen other officers raided her home and confiscated many valuables.
The Nankai District Court held a hearing of Ms. Lyu’s case on January 23, 2019. The prosecutor used the items confiscated from her home, including Falun Gong materials, as evidence against her. Ms. Lyu told the court that those items were her lawfully owned assets and that she broke no law in practicing her faith. Her lawyer also emphasized the prosecutor’s lack of evidence in charging his client and pointed out that there was no independent, third-party forensic agency to verify and authenticate the prosecution evidence as required by law.
The court never informed Ms. Lyu’s lawyer or family of her verdict. Her family was surprised to find that she was no longer at the Nankai District Detention Center when they went there to visit her in December 2019. A guard said that she had been transferred in September 2019, but refused to disclose the location to her family.
The family went to the presiding judge to inquire about Ms. Lyu’s case. Only then did the judge reveal that he had sentenced her to 5.5 years and ordered her to be taken to the Tianjin Women’s Prison to serve time.
“Sorry, I just forgot to tell you that,” the judge said to the family.
Ms. Lyu was brutally tortured in prison and eventually lost her life less than two months after she was released. Another local practitioner, Ms. Chen Ruiqin, died in the Tianjin Women’s Prison around early February 2017, after suffering brutal torture there. She was 44.
15 Months of Forced Labor
Ms. Lyu was previously arrested on September 3, 2009 after a security guard at a local residential complex reported her for distributing Falun Gong informational materials there. The Dasi Police Station in Xiqing District soon arrived and took her to the Xiqing District Detention Center.
Ms. Lyu recounted this episode of persecution in her criminal complaint filed in 2015 against former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin for launching the persecution of Falun Gong. She wrote,
“The police dragged, pulled, and pushed me to their cruiser. After we arrived at the police station, they pushed me out of the cruiser and dragged me inside. I refused to answer their questions, and they snatched my purse and took away my cell phone (which was still not returned as of 2015). They took pictures of me against my will and didn’t allow me to drink or use the restroom. They also restrained me on a tiger bench and my wrists bled after being handcuffed for an extended period of time. I lost feeling in my left thumb for several years.
Torture illustration: tiger bench
“After I was taken to the detention center, I was beaten and verbally abused whenever they saw me doing the Falun Gong exercises. The guards searched me all the time. They also kept strong lights on and the TV turned to the maximum volume all day long. I was forced to sleep on the concrete floor and wash myself with cold water. The guards also had me do hard labor, recite the detention center rules, wear the prison uniform and have my picture taken against my will. I was made to eat, sleep, and relieve myself in the cell. When the Dasi Police Station and the Xiqing District 610 Office came to the detention center to interrogate me, they ordered me to be handcuffed during the entire interrogation.”
Ms. Lyu was later given 15 months of forced labor. She was again subjected to various forms of abuse for refusing to renounce and denounce her faith or memorize the labor camp rules. The guards assigned drug addicts to monitor Ms. Lyu around the clock. They forced her to sit on a small stool or stand facing a wall for long periods of time. They also put her in solitary confinement from time to time. They forced her to do hard labor, restricted her food and water intake, or limited her purchase of daily necessities. They didn’t allow her to talk to or even make eye contact with others.
Three months before her term expired, Ms. Lyu was put on strict management again because she still refused to renounce her faith. She was forced to watch TV programs slandering Falun Gong and was deprived of sleep. The guards and inmates also held her down and forced her to fingerprint the prepared statements to renounce Falun Gong.
Taking Up Falun Gong
Ms. Lyu had poor health since she was a child, and her suffering became even more acute the day after she gave birth to her child. She had a fever and diarrhea, as well as headaches and dizziness. As time went by, she found herself plagued with more and more diseases, including chronic pharyngitis, superficial gastritis, duodenitis (an intestinal condition caused by inflammation of the lining of stomach), myocardial infarction, neurasthenia (chronic fatigue), tachycardia, bone spurs in her lower back and neck, hyperosteogeny (excessive growth of bone tissues), anemia, hemorrhoids, and sinusitis.
She was only around 30 at that time, but her doctor said her organs were like those of a 50-year-old person.
In addition to medical treatments, Ms. Lyu also tried qigong and dancing in an attempt to improve health. Nothing helped, and her poor health also strained her relationship with her husband. The couple quarreled all the time, and Ms. Lyu often felt sorry for herself.
In April 1997, a relative urged her to give Falun Gong a try. She heeded the advice and went to the local park to observe Falun Gong practitioners’ group exercises. What she saw shocked her: a man rode his tricycle towards the exercise site with a woman on it. The woman, who had a flushed face and a swollen neck, was panting heavily with her mouth wide open. After they got close to the exercise site, she climbed down from the tricycle and sat on the ground to do the exercises with other practitioners. After the music stopped at the conclusion of the exercises, she got up briskly, like a totally different person.
Ms. Lyu was amazed that a sickly woman would become totally normal after just doing some Falun Gong exercises. She decided right then and there to practice Falun Gong. Since then, studying Falun Gong books and doing the Falun Gong exercises became a major part of her life.
Ms. Lyu’s illness symptoms gradually disappeared. She also became more cheerful, broadminded, considerate, tolerant and understanding of others. Whenever her husband or his mother had conflicts with her again, she was able to put herself in their shoes and remain calm. Her relationships with her family improved and her mother-in-law even apologized for mistreating her in the past.
Related Reports:
Tianjin Woman Secretly Sentenced for Her Faith
Tianjin Woman’s Family Kept in the Dark of Her Whereabouts
Tianjin: 24 Arrested in One Day for Refusing to Renounce Falun Gong
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