(Clearwisdom.net)
Fifty eight-year old Dafa practitioner Tang Baozhi from Jinhua City Zhejiang Province and her daughter Chen Yao were illegally sentenced in 2006 and were detained in Zhejiang Province Women's Prison located in Hangzhou City. In order to resist the persecution of herself and her daughter, Tang Baozhi started a hunger strike in the beginning of April 2008 and it has been over 400 days since then. Officials in Zhejiang women's prison prohibit her family from seeing her and her family is extremely worried about her.
Tang Baozhi was arrested by the police on October 26, 2005. Her daughter Chen Yao was detained on October 28, 2005. They did not cooperate with the 610 Office personnel in the brainwashing class and later they were sent to the Jinhua Detention Center. Ms Tang was sentenced to 5 years in prison in June 2006 and Chen Yao was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months. The mother and the daughter were transferred to the Zhejiang Province Women's Prison in Hangzhou. Chen Yao has been locked in a small cell and force-fed many times. In the second half of 2007, she was sent to a "Youth Hospital" set up by the Zhejiang province prison administration bureau. Her lower limbs had withered and she could not walk due to the persecution. Chen Yao went on a hunger strike to resist the persecution on January 7, 2008. Ms. Tang requested that the prison release her daughter for medical treatment but the prison did not agree, so Tang Baozhi went on hunger strike herself to protest on April 8, 2008. The prison fed the mother and the daughter by force via tubes.
Tang Baozhi used to be a model worker in Zhejiang Province and worked for the bus transportation industry at Jinhua City. Before cultivation, she had many symptoms of disease and received no help from various medical treatments. She could not see much improvement after practicing other kinds of qigong for many years either. Later she started to cultivate Falun Dafa and she recovered soon after. Because she had benefited in body and mind from Falun Dafa, she became a volunteer teaching assistant for the practice site and taught Falun Dafa to other people.
Tang Baozhi went to Beijing to appeal in November 1999. Later she was caught by the police and taken back to her hometown where she was illegally detained and then to 3 and a half years. Her home was searched many times. Her husband had been abducted and sent to a brainwashing center and was persecuted there twice. Her daughter, Chen Yao, 32 years old and a graduate of Tongji University, Shanghai, was also sent to a brainwashing center and lost her job. Her younger sister Tang Xiaomei's house was searched many times and her computer was confiscated by the police.
Fang Yuhong, second in command of Zhejing Women Prison, led several guards to inhumanly torture the practitioners who kept their belief in Falun Dafa. They built many secret prison cells. The cells had no windows and photos insulting Dafa were pasted all over the walls. They play video tapes insulting to Dafa all day long and use very strong light. Dafa practitioners are detained there from six months to a year. They are prohibited from sleeping and if they fall asleep, they stab them with needles to awaken them. They only provide a small bite of rice and little bit of pickle to keep the practitioners alive. Sometimes they tie the practitioners' hands and feet on the bed continuously for several months and prohibit them from going to the bathroom. The practitioners have to go in their pants. For a couple of months the practitioners are prohibited from taking a shower. Even the summer, they are prohibited from taking a shower for months at a time and are not allowed to change their underwear. Under the instruction of Fang Hong, those murderers often press the practitioners down to the ground, beat and kick them, and hit the practitioners' heads against the wall.
The Dafa practitioners protested and tried to appeal. Fang Hong did not allow any appeal. So in the end, Dafa practitioners went on a hunger strike to protest. In recent years, there have been many hunger strikes in Zhengzhou women's prison from several days' duration to several years.