(Minghui.org) While incarcerated at the Liaoning Women's Prison for her belief in Falun Gong, Ms. Liu Yanjun, a school teacher from Donggang City, was brutally tortured and sent to the prison hospital in November 2004. According to recent reports, she was once used as a guinea pig for the “medical training” of inmates while she was in critical condition.
According to witnesses, such “medical training” is in fact a torture method used on practitioners who refuse to renounce their belief in Falun Gong. The prison often orders inmates with no medical background to “provide medical care” to practitioners who are on hunger strike or injured from physical torture.
After these criminals get ample practice inserting intravenous needles and/or force-feeding tubes into practitioners, they often go on to become the next crop of willing torturers.
While hospitalized at the Liaoning Women's Prison hospital in November 2004, Ms. Liu was force-fed two to three times a day by two inmates. Hospital director Wang Nina also had a third inmate practice inserting IV needles into her.
Among the inmates held there at the time, a few had had formal training in the medical field. However, director Wang chose someone who had never done it before. Wang had reportedly trained another inmate the same way previously, having her practice on Falun Gong practitioners.
Ms. Liu was emaciated at the time, yet her hands and feet were swollen due to prolonged periods of being tied to a bed in a spread-eagle position. Finding a vein on her swollen hand would have been hard even for experienced medical personnel. The trainee spent the entire afternoon and pierced Ms. Liu's skin more than a dozen times without success. Ms. Liu's hand was torn-up and bloody.
One of the inmates assigned to monitor Ms. Liu tried to stop the torture. The trainee responded, “I was ordered by director Wang to practice on her. What should I do?” They eventually found someone with experience to insert the needle after the prison guards left.
Ms. Liu was sentenced to a six-year prison term in 2001 for practicing Falun Gong. She was tortured to the brink of death and released on medical parole in December 2002. However, in May 2004, she was arrested again and sent back to the Liaoning Women's Prison, where she endured brutal torture until her release in December 2006.
The prison guards beat her and put her in solitary confinement because she refused to renounce her faith. She was tied to a bed for long periods of time and was subjected to brutal force-feeding, resulting in a serious stomach problem. By the time she was hospitalized in November 2004, she was in critical condition and extremely emaciated.
Ms. Liu and her family have been targeted by local authorities since the Communist regime launched the persecution in 1999.
Liaoning Women's Prison (辽宁女子监狱): +86-24-89296755 (main)Jia Fujun (贾福军), director of Liaoning Women's Prison: +86-24-89296666 (office)Yang Li (杨莉), former director of Liaoning Women's Prison: +86-13390118299 (mobile)Fang Shuxia (房淑霞), political commissar at the Liaoning Women's Prison: +86-24-89296677 (office), +86-13390116633 (mobile)Xu Min (徐敏), deputy director of the Liaoning Women's Prison: +86-24-89296633 (office), +86-15698806633 (mobile)Yang Xiuming (杨秀明), director of the Liaoning Women's Prison Hospital: +86-15698806671 (mobile)Shi Ying (史英), chief of Prison Service Division at the Liaoning Women's Prison: +86-13390117599 (mobile)