(Minghui.org) A Keshan County, Heilongjiang Province, woman imprisoned for her faith in Falun Gong has lost most of her eyesight after being drugged by the inmates for several months.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ever since Ms. Li Yingju, 75, was admitted to Heilongjiang Women’s Prison on October 8, 2018, the prison authorities have prohibited her from getting her own food and have ordered inmates to deliver her meals to her.
On the morning of July 23, 2019, another Falun Gong practitioner, also imprisoned there for her faith, noticed that inmate Huang Xiaoxia was putting some kind of powder into Ms. Li’s breakfast. When Huang noticed she was being watched, she turned around, trying to prevent the practitioner from seeing what she was doing.
For the next few days, the practitioner noticed that Huang did the same thing to Ms. Li’s breakfast every morning. Sometimes it was another inmate, Ma Qingyu, who put in the powder, while Huang concealed what Ma was doing.
The practitioner also noticed that Huang got the drug from somewhere every evening and ground it into powder and wrapped it in a piece of paper in the morning, before putting it into Ms. Li’s food.
Someone once reminded Huang that she’d forgotten to put the drug away. She replied, “It’s fine, the guards all know about it.” The practitioner later realized that all the inmates in the same cell knew that Ms. Li was being drugged.
Because the prison authorities didn’t allow Falun Gong practitioners to talk to each other, it took a month for that practitioner to find an opportunity to tell Ms. Li what was going on.
After Ms. Li refused to eat her breakfast, Huang cursed her for several days and then put the drug into her lunch and dinner.
Now Ms. Li can’t see a person standing six feet away. She says it’s like there is a piece of plastic hanging in front of her eyes.
Ms. Li was arrested on March 8, 2018, for distributing information about Falun Gong. She was sentenced to four and a half years in the Nongken Court on July 12, 2018. Her 84-year-old husband died three months after she was sentenced.
Prior to her latest term, she served another five years, also for practicing Falun Gong.