(Minghui.org) A Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, resident was sentenced to three years in March 2025 for her faith in Falun Gong.
Officers from the Zhanqian Police Station arrested Ms. Yang Xiuhua at the Harbin Railway Station on the morning of November 10, 2024, as she was about to board a train to go out of town to attend a wedding. The details of her indictment and sentencing remain to be investigated.
This is not the first time that Ms. Yang has been targeted for her faith. She previously served three years at the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison from 2002 to 2005. Because she went on a hunger strike in protest in October 2002, the guards gave her a 500-milliliter IV injection of a pink fluid. They said it was a nerve-damaging drug specifically developed to harm Falun Gong practitioners, at the directive of Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese dictator who launched the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999.
After the injection, Ms. Yang felt extremely sick and uncomfortable. Her skin became so loose that one could pick it up. She also experienced strange sensations, with everyone looking like a skeleton to her. Her head felt heavy and dizzy. While she survived, another Falun Gong practitioner, Ms. Bi Yuping, died on the same day when she was given the same injection.
Ms. Yang and other jailed practitioners were also subjected to other forms of abuse. From November 26 to December 2, 2003, the prison conducted another round of intensified persecution of the practitioners. Warden Chu Shuhua established a task force to carry out the task.
Ms. Yang was stripped to her undergarments and tossed into snow piles on November 26. She was made to stay outside until 9 p.m. The next day the guards cuffed her hands behind her back and exposed her to the cold outdoors again. They also beat her hands with bamboo sticks. For the following two days, her hands were cuffed behind her back and secured to a bed frame. After that, she was taken outside again and forced to run laps. When she removed the prisoner’s name tag forced upon her, inmate Li Mei cuffed her hands.
Ms. Yang went on a hunger strike for 20 days in March 2004. The guards force-fed her corn paste twice every day, while she was handcuffed and shackled. They also kicked and punched her. Her teeth became loose and her tongue was lacerated after the guard repeatedly used a large metal device to force her mouth open. They then left the device in her mouth for the entire day. After each force-feeding session, the floor was littered with her hair and blood. She later went on another hunger strike for six months.
For a period of time, inmate Luan Shumei forced Ms. Yang to stand during the day with her hands cuffed to a bed, when no one else was around. When other inmates returned to the cell, Luan made Ms. Yang sit on a small stool. At night, when everyone went to sleep, Luan cuffed Ms. Yang again until midnight.
When Ms. Yang refused to wear the prison uniform in May 2004, she was cuffed to a bed frame. This torture resulted in severe swelling of one of her arms.
Ms. Yang went on another hunger strike on July 4, 2004 and was put in solitary confinement for five months. Inmates Lyu Chunguang, Song Shubo, and Ren Xiuli once taped her nose and mouth and hung her up to a metal beam, with her feet off the ground. Inmate Shang Xiaomei force-fed her, as well.
The guards also directed inmates to beat Ms. Yang on a regular basis. Wang Daiqun was especially cruel. She often poked Ms. Yang’s eyes, punched her in the ears and breasts, and kicked her groin area.
Wang once stripped Ms. Yang to her bra and underwear and locked her in a bathroom with all the windows open. There was no heat in the room. Wang wore two layers of winter clothes but still had to pace around the room to keep warm. However, she let Ms. Yang shiver in the cold.
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