(Minghui.org) A 60-year-old resident of Wuhan City, Hubei Province, was arrested on November 10, 2023 after being reported for talking to people about the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of her faith, Falun Gong. It is unclear at the time of writing whether Ms. Cai Rufen is out on bail or still in detention.
Prior to this latest round of persecution, Ms. Cai previously served three forced labor terms and two prison terms totaling 10 years. She was also fired from her teaching job at the Xinzhou District First Middle School in 2006. Her years of service were wiped out from her pension calculation formula, rendering her with no retirement benefits.
Ms. Cai was seized by two plainclothes male officers from the Xinzhou District Police Department while on her way to work. One of them said he was named Yuan Junping, while the other refused to reveal his name.
The two officers snatched Ms. Cai’s purse, which contained some cash and her cell phone, after taking her to the Zhucheng Police Station. She had her house key on her person and they used force to take it from her, causing her hand to bleed. A third male officer then showed up and he also refused to reveal his name. They ordered her to go with them to a case processing center located in the Xinzhou District Detention Center for a physical examination.
When Ms. Cai refused to comply, officer Yuan punched her in the mouth three times. He and the other two officers dragged her into their cruiser. After arriving at the case processing center, she refused to get out and Yuan threatened to strike her again. She then got out.
The police were unable to make Ms. Cai give her palm prints and fingerprints and Yuan threatened to have her organs harvested. They then forcibly drew her blood and held her down to have a CT scan of her chest. She struggled as they put their feet on her buttocks to stop her from moving.
Next up was a urine test. Ms. Cai again refused to comply and a woman doctor was called in to persuade her. She told the doctor that she broke no law in practicing Falun Gong. The doctor then stopped trying to persuade her. A male officer said they’d “work on” her themselves using a urinary catheter. The police eventually gave up on collecting a urine sample upon learning that the blood sample collected earlier was good enough for the medical information they had intended to gather from the urine sample.
The woman doctor then lifted Ms. Cai’s undershirt to give her an electrocardiogram. The three male officers stared at her breasts and did not look away until she saw them peeking and condemned them.
After the exam was done, Ms. Cai was handcuffed and shackled to an interrogation chair. One of the officers who refused to reveal his identity fabricated an interrogation record without asking her any questions. He wrote down what she said during the arrest and ordered her to sign the document. She refused.
The police kept Ms. Cai restrained in the chair and went out to raid her home using the house key snatched from her. They next raided her office. After returning to the case processing center, the officer who fabricated the interrogation records complained that Ms. Cai’s boss was protective of her. He threatened to seize her boss’ factory.
Throughout the arrest, physical examination, and interrogation process, the three officers, in plainclothes, wore no body-cams. They did not show their IDs or badge numbers. They also failed to produce a search warrant or issue a list of confiscated items as required by law.
Ms. Cai was held at the case processing center for about 36 hours before being taken to the Wuhan City First Detention Center. She was given another physical examination there but was denied admission after she was found to be in poor health. The three officers handcuffed and shackled her and took her to the Zhucheng Police Station. They called her family many times asking them to apply for her bail release. Her loved ones did not cooperate. The police then lied, saying that she was being given emergency treatment in a hospital, but her family did not fall into the trap.
A witness reported seeing the police ransacking Ms. Cai’s home a second time. It is unclear whether she is still detained at the time of writing. Her latest persecution episode was preceded by multiple arrests and a decade behind bars, all for her faith in Falun Gong.
Ms. Cai went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in October 1999 and was arrested. She was held at a brainwashing center for an unknown amount of time.
The Xinzhou District Police Department arrested Ms. Cai again in February 2000 when she refused to reveal the source of a Falun Gong flyer that the police suspected her of putting up in town. They held her a local hotel for two weeks and ordered her employer, the Xinzhou District First Middle School, to arrange two people to watch her around the clock. Ms.Cai’s living expenses and those of her two monitors were deducted from her pay. Two weeks later she was transferred to the Wuhan City First Detention Center, where she was handcuffed for more than two months.
Around mid-May 2000, Ms. Cai was given one year of forced labor and transferred to the Hewan Labor Camp. She was twice put in solitary confinement and for a period of time was only allowed two hours of sleep every night. She was forced to do hard labor without pay.
Ms. Cai was released in February 2001, only to be taken to a brainwashing center two months later by her school under the directive of the local 610 Office. She escaped and her school did not dare to let her resume work when she later returned, for fear of reprisal by the authorities.
Ms. Cai returned to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong again (exact time unknown). She was arrested and taken to the Qinghe Detention Center in Haidian District, Beijing. She went on a hunger strike for 28 days and was force-fed for 27 days. Once, the feeding tube was inserted into one of her lungs by mistake and her pulse was no longer detectable. The doctor gave her oxygen and she didn’t recover until the next morning.
When Ms. Cai was caught doing the Falun Gong exercises, she was cuffed to a ring anchored to the floor. She was later moved to a dispatch center in Daxing District, Beijing. She refused to write statements to renounce Falun Gong and was brutally beaten in a room with all the windows shut. The guards punched and kicked her, and slapped her in the face. They also poked her wrists with ink pens. She still has scars on her wrist today. The guards eventually managed to put a pen in her hand and grabbed her hand and wrote a statement renouncing her belief.
The police later gave Ms. Cai one and a half years of forced labor. She served time at the Xin’an Labor Camp and the Beijing Women’s Labor Camp. She held firm to her faith and was forced to stand all day long without sleep. Her vision became blurry and she started having hallucinations, imagining bugs crawling on the wall.
One time, the guards forced her to bend over and they twisted her arms behind her back as high as possible. She suffered excruciating pain and collapsed on the ground. They forced her up and did the same torture again. She was abused like that from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. the next day.
When Ms. Cai refused to read materials slandering Falun Gong, the guards read it out aloud. She covered her ears and they pulled her hands away and forced her to listen to them reading the negative propaganda.
Ms. Cai was arrested at work in June 2005 and was later sentenced to three years in the Hubei Province Women’s Prison. The local board of education terminated her in 2006 under pressure from the local 610 Office.
The prison guards subjected Ms. Cai to various forms of torture when she refused to wear the inmates’ uniform or renounce her faith. They punched and kicked her, forced her to stand on a small stool, whipped her face with a towel, slapped her in the face, deprived her of sleep, and put a board across her neck to humiliate her. The long-time standing abuse again caused her to have hallucinations.
Ms. Cai soon became very weak and two inmates had to help her walk to the visitation room when her family came to see her.
Ms. Cai was arrested again in March 2011 after being reported for distributing Falun Gong informational materials. She was given one and a half years of forced labor at the Hewan Labor Camp. She was forced to stand for three straight days without sleep. She still held firm to her faith and was deprived of sleep for another eight days. She became confused and had hallucination again. She was so weak that she often lost her balance while being forced to stand for long periods of time. Once, she collapsed on the ground and the loud sound startled the guard on duty. She was then allowed a bit of sleep every night.
Ms. Cai was also forced to make electronics and her vision quickly declined. She then refused to do hard labor again and the guards ordered her to study anti-Falun Gong materials. She did not comply and the guards ordered inmates to read the materials to her. When she stopped them, the guards punished her by depriving her of sleep for three nights.
Ms. Cai was given another three years in prison after she was arrested in 2017. She again endured horrific torture at the Hubei Province Women’s Prison, including being forced to stand for long hours every day for eight months straight. She again had hallucinations.
On February 21, 2020, when Ms. Cai was set to be released, her family was told by the authorities that she would be transferred to the Xinzhou District People’s Hospital and then to a hotel for quarantine (due to COVID-19 outbreak). It is unclear how long Ms. Cai was detained beyond her prison release date.
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