Woman Not Allowed to Brush Her Teeth or Bathe for 670 of Her 700 Days in Prison

(Minghui.org) Ms. Zhao Xiaoqing spent 700 days of her three-year-and-two-month term in Shanxi Province Women’s Prison. During that time, she was not allowed to brush her teeth or bathe for 670 straight days. She was also denied family visits the entire time. After she was released in January 2025, she revealed what happened to her.

Ms. Zhao of Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, was arrested in November 2021 for refusing to give up her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. The arrest came only two months after she was released from serving a prior two-year term for practicing Falun Gong. She was sentenced to three years and two months and admitted to the sixth division of Shanxi Province Women’s Prison on February 9, 2023.

Starting in early 2023, all the male guards working at the Shanxi Province Women’s Prison were transferred to other prisons and all the divisions directors were replaced by women. Wang Fuying, a former instructor of the ninth division, was promoted to head the sixth division. Her husband was a prison director and her brother had been the director of the tenth division. Both she and Wang Wenbo, who was promoted from deputy instructor to instructor in the sixth division, worked together closely to persecute Falun Gong practitioners.

Their first target was Ms. Zhao, for whom they developed a detailed “transformation” plan. They tasked Liang Jinping, a former official sentenced to life for corruption who had extensive experience torturing Falun Gong practitioners; Jia Lan, a 30-year-old scammer; and Wang Suping, a 73-year-old collaborator, with monitoring and “transforming” Ms. Zhao.

The inmates forced Ms. Zhao to watch videos slandering Falun Gong all day long and then write thought reports. If Wang Wenbo deemed her thought report “unacceptaable,” she wasn’t allowed to bathe and had to continue watching the brainwashing videos. She usually wasn’t allowed to go to bed until midnight and then had to get up at 4 a.m.

One month after Ms. Zhao’s prison admission, the prison stopped letting her family visit, stopped allowing her to make phone calls, and barred her from buying daily necessities. Wang Fuying also refused to let her brush her teeth or bathe. Wang said during a division-wide conference, “As a woman, it’s natural to pay special attention to personal hygiene, so it is distresssing when one can’t bathe. But since Zhao Xiaoqing refused to ‘transform,’ she gave up that right.”

The ban on personal hygiene lasted throughout the remainder of Ms. Zhao’s term, totaling 670 days.

The guards and inmates also deprived Ms. Zhao of sleep and forced her to stand for long hours. As the torture dragged on, her feet and calves swelled up, and she could no longer fit into her shoes. If she couldn’t maintain her balance and leaned against the wall or closed her eyes, the inmates beat and kicked her, bruising her legs.

One day, three inmates took Ms. Zhao to a warehouse with no surveillance cameras. Liang put her in a chokehold and pushed her against the wall, threatening to kill her if she didn’t renounce Falun Gong. Luckily, another Falun Gong practitioner came in and stopped Liang.

In order to cover up what she’d been doing, Liang began to act crazy by slapping herself in the face, saying that now she didn’t know what she was going to tell the guards if Ms. Zhao refused to renounce Falun Gong. But when no one was around, she put Ms. Zhao in a chokehold many more times, and the marks on Ms. Zhao’s neck never went away during her prison term.

The guards also barred Ms. Zhao from buying toilet paper or using the restroom, especially when she was having her menstrual period. In protest, Ms. Zhao went on a hunger strike. The guards later let her buy toilet paper with special permission.

Between July and August 2024, Wang Fuying and Wang Wenbo worked with the Shanxi Provincial Political and Legal Affairs Committee and 610 Office to put more pressure on Ms. Zhao. They found a male collaborator and arranged him to come to the prison every day to work on Ms. Zhao.

According to a witness, the man verbally abused Ms. Zhao, hit her on the head, and jabbed her in the chest with his cell phone. Even other inmates couldn’t stand the insulting language he used. Ms. Zhao remained calm and firm in her faith. The male collaborator eventually gave up and left.