(Minghui.org) A resident of Yushu City, Jilin Province was arrested in 2018 and later sentenced to one year in prison for not renouncing her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Below, Ms. Li Xiujuan, 57, recounts the ordeal she was put through in detention.
A few people knocked on my door on June 13, 2018 and said they were from the water company and wanted to read the water meter.
I opened the door. Four plainclothes officers from Gongpengxiang Police Station broke in. They showed me their IDs and said someone had reported me to them.
The officers ransacked my home and confiscated my computer, printer, Falun Gong books and related materials. I refused to go with them to the police station. They called in two more officers, who handcuffed me, carried me downstairs and pushed me into the police car. My husband was also taken to the police station.
I was taken to Yushu City Detention Center around 11 pm. I refused to wear the inmate uniform and held a hunger strike to protest the arbitrary arrest and detention.
Because of my hunger strike, I was force-fed three times while held at the detention center.
The inmates first carried me to the medical room, where guards tied me to a chair. A nurse named Li Yanling inserted a feeding tube through my nose into my stomach. It was a very painful experience.
They force-fed me with some sort of bean powder, milk and some unknown medicine. Each force-feeding took about an hour. The doctor verbally abused me at the same time. After each session, I always had blurred vision, fatigue and weakness in my whole body, and tinnitus.
Another practitioner detained there, Ms. Guo Shuxue, was also force-fed. The guards kept the feeding tube in her body. She also became very weak, had blurred vision, and lost her hearing afterwards, likely due to the toxic effects of the unknown drug.
After each forced feeding, the guards forced me to wear a straitjacket that tied up my hands and arms behind my back. When I screamed from the enormous pain, instead of loosening the cuffs, the guard tightened it to increase my suffering.
The guards often forced me to wear the straitjacket for days on end. I was suffocating. Because the metal cuffs were behind my back, I couldn’t lie down or even sleep on my side. My heart felt extremely uncomfortable. My arms and hands swelled badly and turned blue because of bad circulation. The torment was beyond description.
The last time, they cuffed my hands and feet together, and I was unable to move at all. I finally compromised and agreed to wear the inmate uniform when I was in urgent need to use the restroom.
While interrogating my husband, the police threatened to arrest him if he refused to answer questions about the ownership of the Falun Gong-related materials confiscated from our home.
Although my husband didn’t attend my trial on January 23, 2019, the prosecutor read his testimony against me. I was sentenced to one year in prison with a 5,000-yuan fine.
I appealed the verdict to Changchun City Intermediate Court, but the appeal was rejected.
I served four more months in the detention center and was released in late May 2019.
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