63-Year-Old Liaoning Woman Dies Destitute After Years of Persecution for Her Faith
(Minghui.org)
Name: Zou XiujuChinese Name: 邹秀菊Gender: FemaleAge: 63City: DalianProvince: LiaoningOccupation: SaleswomanDate of Death: August 10, 2023Date of Most Recent Arrest: July 21, 2010Most Recent Place of Detention: Fushun City Brainwashing Center
A 63-year-old native of Dalian City, Liaoning Province died on August 10, 2023, while living in destitution to avoid being arrested for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Zou Xiuju was predeceased by her older brother, Mr. Zou Wenzhi, who died at age 54 on October 16, 2000, after being beaten non-stop from 8 a.m to about 4 p.m. that day by security guards at his workplace, Alkali Manufacturing Plant of the Dahua Corporation. They targeted him because he refused to renounce Falun Gong.
Ms. Zou was also brutally tortured each time she was detained for practicing Falun Gong, the practice of which she credited for restoring function to her right arm that had been disabled in a car accident. Over the past 24 years of persecution, she was given two forced labor terms and held in other facilities on different occasions. When she was not in custody, the local police and community workers shadowed Ms. Zou and harassed her at home any time they wanted, including in the middle of the night.
The police once said to her, “You’ll be the first one we go after whenever there’s a quota to arrest Falun Gong practitioners.”
Ms. Zou was forced to live away from home in recent years, only to die in destitution.
One Year and Two Months of Forced Labor from 2001 to 2002
Four officers from the Zhongnan Road Police Station broke into Ms. Zou’s home in April 2001. They didn’t show any search warrant and confiscated all her Falun Gong books. They put her on criminal detention at the Dalian City Detention Center.
The sudden arrest caused Ms. Zou to suffer a mental collapse. For a period of time, she couldn’t think straight and had trouble falling asleep at night.
At the time, more than half of the detainees at the detention center were Falun Gong practitioners targeted for their faith. Every cell was so crowded that detainees could only sleep on their sides. Those who had to use the restroom in the middle of the night often found their sleeping space occupied by someone else by the time they came back to their cell.
After forty days at the detention center, Ms. Zou was given one year of forced labor by the Dalian City Police Department, but she was not ordered to serve time right away due to her poor health. The police arrested her again forty days into her medical parole, after she was spotted distributing Falun Gong informational materials. They added two months to her forced labor term and took her to the Dalian City Labor Camp.
In order to achieve a certain “transformation rate” (percentage of detained Falun Gong practitioners forced to renounce their faith), the labor camp guards used various forms of torture on practitioners and also instigated criminal inmates to “work on” practitioners with incentives such as term reduction.
Ms. Zou held firm to her faith, and the guards put her in solitary confinement with her arms handcuffed behind her back. They ordered her to stand for long periods of time and the inmates assigned to monitor her would beat her feet whenever she moved.
The guards later forced Ms. Zhou to wear boxing headgear and they hung her up in a huge metal cage. They next ordered two inmates to lift her legs and split them as far apart as possible, causing excruciating pain.
Ms. Zou went on a hunger strike in protest and was force-fed. The labor camp doctor directed more than a dozen inmates to hold her down and cover her mouth, before inserting a feeding tube into her nostril. When she almost suffocated, the inmates loosened their grip of her. As soon as she appeared a bit better, the inmates attempted to insert the tube into her mouth. She clenched her teeth tight. They pried open her mouth and directly poured corn paste into her mouth. Guards Yuan Lingyue and Han Jianmin were also present, directing the forced-feeding along with the labor camp doctor.
The guards forced Ms. Zou and other practitioners to do intensive labor, such as embroidering bed sheets, making cotton clothes, and tying seaweed knots for foreign trade companies.
Ms. Zou became extremely weak from the torture and forced labor.
Two Years of Forced Labor from 2005 to 2007
Ms. Zou was arrested again in April 2005, while distributing Falun Gong informational materials. The arresting officers from the Dalian Free Trade Zone (in Jinzhou District of the city) Police Station took her to the Dalian Detention Center. She refused to provide a urine sample during the required physical examination, and one of the arresting officers tried to pass his urine sample off as hers. After she found out about it, she ripped up the lab test form. The police grabbed her collar and dragged her to their cruiser. They then drove her back to the detention center and got her admitted there.
Tortured at Dalian Detention Center
The detention center guards handcuffed Ms. Zou around the clock because she refused to wear the inmates’ uniform. She went on a hunger strike in protest and they subjected her to a torture dubbed “floor ring.” They forced her to kneel down with her hands cuffed behind her back and her feet shackled. The handcuffs and the shackles were linked together to a bed. As she was immobilized like this, her cellmates were made to catch her urine and feces. They detested doing such a “dirty” job and blamed her for making them suffer. They vented their anger by insulting and cursing her.
While Ms. Zou was still suffering from the “floor ring” torture, the guards also force-fed her cold corn paste and intentionally kept the feeding tube in her stomach after they were done with each session. She was in extreme pain from the punitive forced-feeding, on top of having her hands and feet swollen and numb from the “floor ring” torture.
Death Bed Torture at Labor Camp
About twenty days later, in May 2005, Ms. Zou was given two years of forced labor and transferred to the Masanjia Labor Camp, where she was again tortured.
Torture illustration: death bed
Ms. Zou went on a hunger strike in May 2006 and was put on a “death bed,” with her entire body tied up. The guards then pried open her mouth with a mouth opener, which they kept in for eight hours each day for 23 straight days. As guard Ma Jishan adjusted the mouth opener, he broke one of Ms. Zou’s teeth. Blood streamed from her mouth, and Ma simply took off. He later lied that Ms. Zou damaged her own tooth, when in fact she was immobilized on the death bed and couldn’t possibly use a hand or tool to break her tooth.
Ms. Zou later recounted what happened while she was on the death bed and force-fed,
“Ma Jishan opened the mouth opener to the maximum. I felt like I was about to suffocate and die. My heartbeat became abnormal and I managed to use my nose to make some noise. A doctor noticed that and checked my pulse. He immediately told the guard to remove the mouth opener and saved my life. A few days later, however, Ma Jishan put the mouth opener on me again. I bit the mouth opener tight to prevent him from opening it wider. I had to do that eight hours a day when the mouth opener was on. My hands and feet were still restrained to the death bed, with a tape recorder playing programs slandering Falun Gong next to my head. The windows were all covered with newspapers except a small hole, from which others could see me from outside but I couldn’t see them.”
Ma also devised even more sinister ways to torture Ms. Zou. He only force-fed her one small bowl of corn paste a day by adjusting the size of the mouth opener up and down repeatedly to control the flow. With each size change, Ms. Zou suffered tremendously.
Ms. Zou recalled:
“One could suffocate to death when the mouth opener was opened to its maximum as one’s throat would be completely blocked and could only breathe through the nose. If one had a small mouth, their lips would crack as soon as the mouth opener was put in. Because I bit the mouth opener so hard for eight hours every day to prevent it from opening bigger, the metal wire of the opener cut into my gum. Every day I was only allowed one restroom break with the opener on.”
After Ma broke Ms. Zou’s tooth, she protested and guard Liu Yong reprimanded her: “You really don’t know your place when you dared to complain about Ma to the labor camp director. He only broke one of your teeth. Let me tell you that it’s totally fine even if he broke 5 or 10 of your teeth. Sue him anywhere you want. The Communist Party is the ruling Party and what it says counts.”
Liu even yelled at Ms. Zou in front of more than two dozen other practitioners, “Zou Xiuju, let me tell you about Li Baojie. She died after being force-fed and her family hired a lawyer to reason with us. Guess what? I just said a few sentences and the lawyer was scared away. Torture death is deemed suicide, get it? We haven’t beaten any of you to death yet. Count that as a blessing!”
Ms. Li Baojie, also a Falun Gong practitioner, was force-fed at the labor camp on April 7, 2005. She lost consciousness after choking and was rushed to a hospital. The labor camp notified her family to pick her up the next day. She died on the way home. She was 33.
In the summer of 2006, Ms. Zou and three other practitioners refused to do the forced labor or wear the inmates’ uniform. Guard Ma tied them to the death bed for several days with their mouths pried open by mouth openers. He force-fed them water three times a day but didn’t allow them to use the restroom.
Other Tortures At Labor Camp
Guard Wang Shuzheng once stuffed Ms. Zou under a bed with her hands cuffed. He didn’t allow her to use the restroom or change postures. He beat her so hard that her face remained swollen for many days. She was not given any food to eat during that time.
Ms. Zou was once hung up for more than 40 days, from a bit past 5 a.m. to 3 a.m. every day. She was not allowed to brush her teeth, wash herself or change clothes before she was hung up.
On January 9, 2006, Ms. Zou went to bed a bit later than required and was called to the hallway by guard Pei Feng, who ordered her to listen to recordings slandering Falun Gong. Ms. Zou refused to comply and returned to her cell. Pei then ordered inmates Zhang Mei and Gao Yuzhen to drag her to a storage room, where she was restrained in a metal chair for four days. The guards also played recordings slandering Falun Gong non-stop near her. She was not given any water to drink or allowed to talk to anyone.
More Than One Month at a Brainwashing Center in 2010
On July 21, 2010, Ms. Zou was arrested by officer Zhao from the Huazhong Police Station in Ganjingzi District, Dalian City. He took her to the Fushun City Brainwashing Center, where she was held until August 27 that year.
Related Reports:
Snapshot of Lawsuits Against Jiang Zemin Received by Minghui on August 5, 2015
AI: CHINA: TORTURE AND DEATHS CONTINUE
Three Practitioners Were Persecuted to Death in Dalian, Liaoning
AFP: Six Falungong members reported dead in Chinese police detention