(Minghui.org) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, a year after Ms. Jin Hong learned the practice. Because she refused to renounce her faith, the 57-year-old from Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, was twice arrested and incarcerated. The authorities tortured her in an attempt to break her will and force her to “transform” and give up her faith.

Ms. Jin’s first incarceration took place in December 2000, when she was given two years in the Longshan Forced Labor Camp. She was arrested again on December 4, 2019, for handing out Falun Gong calendars and sentenced to four years at Liaoning Provincial Second Women’s Prison. 

In prison, the guards instigated certain inmates to try to force Ms. Jin to give up the practice by any means. The measures these inmates used were unusually cruel, because once they “transformed” a Falun Gong practitioner, they would be rewarded with reduced sentences and other benefits. The guards turned a blind eye to the torture even when Ms. Jin complained that her life was in danger. 

The guards and inmates sexually abused her, stabbed needles into her nails, waterboarded her, stretched her limbs to the limit for hours, made her stand still around the clock, deprived her of sleep, and beat her relentlessly. Ms. Jin sustained permanent injuries and nearly died many times. 

The following is Ms. Jin’s account of what happened to her in prison. The torture reenactment photos were demonstrated by Ms. Jin herself.

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1. Two Months of Sleep Deprivation, Standing Still, and Relentless Beatings 

When I arrived at the second ward of the prison on March 18, 2021, a guard asked a lot of questions to see if I was inclined to give up my faith. I told her that I’d committed no crime and would not stop practicing Falun Gong. When I was transferred to the first ward on April 21, guard Wang Jing again asked if I would acknowledge that I’d committed a crime for practicing Falun Gong. Again I declined. She then had two inmates, collaborators Qiao Xiaoni and Wang Yanling, watch me around the clock. 

Beginning on April 22, the collaborators took me to office room 206 after breakfast every day and tried to brainwash me into giving up my faith. The office area required swiping a guard’s badge to enter. For the first few days, they chatted with me to get some idea about my personal information. After finding out that I had no intention of renouncing Falun Gong, the torture began. 

Claiming that I didn’t answer correctly at roll call, Qiao beat me and forced me to stand for several hours on April 28. She also instructed another inmate, Jiang Mengmeng, to hit me on the head. When I told the head guard Bai Chenglu that night that the inmates had assaulted me, she ignored me and left. I tried to talk to her again the next day, but she still ignored me. 

After over ten days of “study” in room 206, guard Wang Jing came in one afternoon and asked me why I hadn’t signed the statement to renounce Falun Gong. After I told her the inmates physically assaulted me, she told me there was no point reporting them. She admitted that she was aware that all the beatings took place in surveillance camera blind spots.

From what I know, these headguards were the ones telling the collaborators to torture and “transform” the practitioners using any means necessary. That meant the collaborators could do whatever they wanted to the practitioners with no consequences. They had almost the same power as the guards when it came to persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. 

A collaborator ordered me to copy and sign the statement to renounce Falun Gong on the afternoon of May 3. I turned her down, and the torture escalated. 

When I returned to the cell after dinner on May 4, inmates Jiang Mengmeng and Zhang Xiuling dragged me to a corner, a surveillance camera blind spot, held me down, and wrote the name of the founder of Falun Gong on the soles of my feet and shoes to insult the founder and humiliate me. 

Torture reenactment: Writing humiliating words on my feet

The following month, I had to stand still almost around the clock and was only allowed to sleep for an hour and half between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. If I moved even a little while standing, the inmates would slap, punch, and kick me. After inmates Qiao Xiaoni and Cheng Xianfeng beat me on May 7, all of my teeth were loose and one fell out. The inmates also took off my warm clothes and shoes and left me standing on cold concrete. I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom or eat lunch. 

Torture reenactments: Standing and beating

On May 8, the inmates ordered me to go back to room 206. When I refused to go, inmate Cheng kicked me. I ran to a head guard and asked for help. The guard, not wanting me to make a scene, quickly opened the door for the inmates to take me to room 206. They threw me on the floor and kicked my legs, lower back, and rib cage. Qiao kicked me so hard that she bruised her toe. 

Torture reenactment: Kicking

As a result of the physical tortures during the day plus long hours of standing and sleep deprivation, I often lost consciousness and fell flat when I stood at night. My legs were swollen like two large logs, and my feet were swollen and numb. I had a hard time walking. 

By the end of May, Wang Ran, a prison official, came to talk to me after seeing me faint in a video. I told her it happened because I was tortured and deprived of sleep. Instead of trying to stop the torture, she changed my standing routine from 22 hours a day to four hours, which lasted from June 1 to 26. Wang read books slandering Falun Gong to me one afternoon and tried to brainwash me into giving up my faith for “doing her a favor.” 

2. Brutalized for Three Days as Persecution Intensifies 

Leg Crippled, Needles Jammed into Nails, Pubic Hairs Plucked Out, Nipples Pulled, and Suffocation 

The torture worsened from June 26 to 28, 2021. When I returned from the prison’s workshop to the cell on the evening of June 26, guard Tian Tian began to reprimand me for making a mistake during the roll call. She ordered me to stand overnight and instructed inmate Qiao to watch me. Qiao was upset and slapped me in the face. She later had the head guard of the seventh team transfer me there. That night the head guard, Li Xiaoyi, put me in a cell with violent inmates. She ordered them to do whatever it took to make me give up my practice. 

As soon as I entered the cell, the inmates forced me to take off my shoes and tried to drag me to a corner that the surveillance camera didn’t cover. They pulled out much of my hair when I resisted. As a result of the beatings, one of my molars came loose and later fell off, and my left kneecap was permanently injured when they kicked it. 

Torture reenactment: Beating

After the beating they forced me to sit on a small stool and kept me awake all night. The head guard Li sent two inmates to take turns watching me. As soon as I closed my eyes, they hit me. 

Torture reenactment: Sitting on a small stool without sleep

The next morning, inmates Xu Yunxia, Cheng Xianfeng, and Li Xue had me stand still all day barefooted. They gave me very little food and water. On the window sill next to me, there was a paper that said, “I repent for the crime I committed.” When I refused to sign it, they beat me. When it hurt them to hit me with their hands, they smacked my face with a roll of packaging tape. My face was swollen and bruised, and I almost passed out because of the impact and pain. They pinched my arms so hard that my arms later turned purple. 

The windows in the room where they tortured me were covered. When an inmate outside the room heard the noise inside while I was being tortured, she reported it to a prison official, who told her to mind her own business. I also reported the violation to officials when I went out to use the bathroom. They pretended that they did not see me. 

Around 5 p.m., the head guard Li and the inmates brought in eight millipedes they’d collected on the lawn outside and threatened to put them on me and stick them inside of my vagina if I didn’t sign the statement. 

I demanded to talk to the guard at 8 p.m., but to no avail. An hour later, eight inmates came in and started to punch me in the head. When their hands hurt from hitting me, they used shoes and plastic bottles filled with water to smack me. Some pinched my arms. I tried to persuade them not to do evil, but they said that the guards and the government had ordered them to and that they would be punished themselves if they didn’t beat me.

Torture reenactment: Beating

They stripped me naked and immobilized me against the ladder of a bunk bed in the cell. They tied my hands behind the ladder, taped my mouth shut, and taped my legs so I couldn’t move. They put the millipedes on my body and inserted sewing needles underneath all five nails on my right hand. 

Rope and needles were contraband items in prison. The inmates wouldn’t have been allowed to have them without the guards’ permission.

Then they covered my head with a thin plastic bag and tied the opening around my neck. The air inside quickly ran out and the plastic stuck to my face, and I could not breathe. I started to jerk involuntarily as I struggled to breathe. Seeing that I was dying, they removed the bag. 

The worst was yet to come, as I still refused to cooperate. One of them began to pluck out my pubic hair and later used tape and quickly removed it, while another pinched and pulled my nipples. One of them smashed my breasts with her shoes, and still another stuck her toe inside my vagina and said that she had infected toes. 

They eventually got tired and went to bed at around 10 p.m., leaving me naked, tied to a ladder, overnight. They left the window open to freeze me. That night whenever I moved and the ladder made a squeaky noise, they smacked my head with a water bottle, and a painful swelling developed behind my ear. 

Being Stretched, Kicked in the Groin, and Water Boarded

When morning came on June 28, my face and arms were covered in bruises, my clothes were torn, and my legs were crippled. With my ripped clothes barely covering me, the collaborators transported me to a torture room inside a workshop. They forced me to stand, still barefoot, all morning. They gave me no water or food and wouldn’t let me use the bathroom. 

Inmates Wang Yanling and Qiao came to see me in the afternoon. They pretended to feel sorry for me and said that the torture would end once I signed the statement to renounce Falun Gong. At the time I believed that I had reached my physical and mental limits. I saw no end to this torture and didn’t think that I could put up with it any longer. I signed the statements to renounce my faith. They then told me that I had to make a video reading aloud the statement they’d prepared for me. I looked at it and saw nothing but phrases that slandered the practice. At that moment I regretted what I’d signed and told them that I wanted to void it. 

Later that day, another practitioner also imprisoned there saw the bruises on me and tried to take me to the guard to seek justice. When Sun Weijing, the director of the first ward, saw us, she instructed guard Wang Yan to put a mask on me and give me long sleeve clothes to wear next day so that my bruises weren’t visible.

Back in my cell that evening, the inmates continued to torture me. They might have thought that I would give in completely after another night of torture. They tied my arms to the rails of the top bunk bed and my feet to the legs of the bed as far apart as possible. They put books and stools between my legs to spread them out even further to intensify the pain. The legs of the stool stuck into my calves and caused even more pain.

Torture reenactment: The stretching torture using stools to spread the legs further apart 

Very soon, I could not feel my arms or legs shortly. They kept me in that position until the next morning. Even a year later, I still couldn’t feel my fingers, toes, or heels. They kept me awake overnight. 

Around 5 a.m. on June 29, inmate Lu Yanqing poured liquid detergent on the floor to make me slip (I wasn’t allowed to wear my shoes) and further spread my legs. She repeatedly kicked my lower abdomen and groin. When her feet hurt, she switched to a pair of hard shoes and continued. My abdomen turned purple and my crotch area was severely swollen. 

Torture reenactment: Kicking the lower abdomen and groin

Because I still said nothing about renouncing Falun Gong, the inmates brought in a bucket full of water, tied my arms behind me, and pushed my head into the water. With my legs still attached to the bed legs, I could barely move. After I stopped moving for a while, they pulled my head out of the water, and quickly pushed it back in before I could catch my breath. They repeated this for the next 20 minutes until a patrol guard came over and warned them that they made too much noise and might attract unwanted attention. 

Torture reenactment: Pushing my head underwater

I nearly died a few times during this torture. My neck was injured because they pushed my head down so hard and yanked it up so many times. I could not raise my head for a long time after that. I felt I could faint at any moment after three full days of torture.

Moments later, they forced a long-sleeved top on me and took me to the workshop while dodging the crowd. I tried to appeal to guard Li again about the torture, but she still gave me the cold shoulder.

In the torture room in the workshop, two collaborators again presented me with the renouncing statement to sign. I told them I’d rather die than sign it. One of the collaborators wrote down the details of my injuries and said that she’d report them to the prison authorities and assured me justice. No one ever came to ask me any questions. 

I was severely bruised and swollen from the waist down, and as a result, I couldn’t squat down or get up without something to grab onto after using the restroom. The extreme pain kept me awake at night. With the constant standing and sleep deprivation over the past two months, I was about to collapse from the excruciating pain and exhaustion. 

I saw a few head guards and prison officials when the inmates transferred me between my cell and the torture room. I tried to report the inmates to those authorities, but they just ignored me and reminded the inmates not to let anyone see me all beat up and miserable and to try to keep hidden what they were doing to me. 

At one point I got back the statement I’d signed on June 28 from the guard and tore it up. 

(To be continued. See Part 2)