(Minghui.org) Ms. Guan Longmei, a resident of Shanghai, started practicing Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, in June 1999. She quickly quit smoking, drinking, and gambling. She came to understand that the meaning of life was to return to her original, true self. Falun Gong also saved her family from the verge of breaking up because of her bad habits.
Only one month into her practice, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began an all-out persecution of Falun Gong due to its overwhelming popularity. Having benefitted from the practice, Ms. Guan spoke out for Falun Gong and exposed how the CCP fabricated lies to demonize it.
For staying firm in her faith, Ms. Guan has been wrongfully imprisoned three times for a total of more than 12 years in the past 22 years. Her husband also divorced her due to the pressure from the persecution. But no matter how devastating the persecution has been, it couldn’t change Ms. Guan’s heart. She maintains that she didn’t do anything wrong in upholding Falun Gong and looks forward to the day when justice is restored in China.
Brutal Torture in Qingpu Women's Labor Camp
On September 19, 2001, Ms. Guan and other practitioners distributed informational materials about Falun Gong near a university and were arrested by officers from Wujiaochang Police Station.
The police officers began rounds of interrogations the next day. They ransacked her home without a search warrant and took away her Falun Gong materials, including books and lecture tapes. The raid aggravated the lower back pain of her bedridden husband.
Ms. Guan was given two years of forced labor on October 16, 2001, and taken to Qingpu Women's Labor Camp in Shanghai. To force her to give up her belief, the prison guards and inmates tortured her in all kinds of ways.
Hanging and Freezing
Ms. Guan wrote a solemn declaration in December 2001 to retract the statement she was forced to write against her will to renounce Falun Gong. At night, the guards took her to the Strict Monitoring Team and instigated inmates to torture her. The inmates ordered her to stand with both feet close together. As she couldn’t fully put her feet together because of her curvy body, they hung her in the air by a window with both hands tied together in the back and kept the window open to freeze her.
Torture Reenactment: Hanging with hands in the back
The hanging caused excruciating pain in Ms. Guan's arms and back, as if thousands of knives were stabbing her. She could not help but scream in pain. Inmates gagged her with smelly nylon socks. The guards also threatened to seal her mouth with heavy-duty tape if she screamed again.
The inmates moved Ms. Guan to a storage room at 5 p.m. when other prisoners came back for dinner. They kept her hanging there until midnight. By the time she was let down, 11 hours had passed. Then they tied her hands to two ends of the bed until the next morning. The hanging resumed on the second day for nearly 20 hours.
Torture Reenactment: Handcuffed to a bed
Isolation, Sitting on a Small Stool, and Tying Up
The guards realized that Ms. Guan's arms would be disabled if the hanging continued. They changed to other means of torture. They locked her up in an isolation unit in the daytime and let her return to her own cell at night. During the day, they forced her to either stand or sit on a small stool. At the same time, they forced her to listen to recordings that slandered Falun Gong all day long. At night, they tied her arms and legs to each corner of the bed.
Torture Reenactment: Tied up in bed
On one occasion, Ms. Guan could not sleep for five days straight. As a result, she was tired and felt painful, as if being cut by a knife. Her weight quickly dropped due to the torture.
Persecution in Hongkou District Detention Center
After her release in September 2003, Ms. Guan was closely monitored by agents from the Hongkou District 610 Office, an extralegal agency created specifically to persecute Falun Gong. She was followed around the clock for five stretches of time, with each one lasting more than 30 days. The agents also frequently visited her home, severely disturbing her normal life.
On June 2, 2006, more than 20 plainclothes officers led by an agent from the 610 Office suddenly broke into Ms. Guan's home without a search warrant. They ransacked her home and took away many Falun Gong books, information materials, and 4,000 yuan in cash. Five officers arrested Ms. Guan and dragged her into the police cruiser.
Ms. Guan's son tried to stop the police from taking her away. He said to the police, “My mother follows the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to become a good person. What is wrong with that?” One policeman tried to choke him but was stopped by a neighbor, who challenged the legality of the raid.
Ms. Guan was interrogated the whole night in Jiaxing Police Station. The officers told her to fingerprint a statement, but Ms. Guan refused. One officer kept scolding her. He also pulled her hair and twisted her arms backwards.
Ms. Guan was taken to Hongkou District Detention Center the next day. She went on a hunger strike for six days and was taken to Tilanqiao Prison Hospital. A prison doctor instigated inmates to tie her limbs to the four corners of a “death bed,” with her chest and waist also tied up. They next force-fed her.
Torture Reenactment: Tied up on a “death bed”
The torture lasted more than 20 days in the hospital. When Ms. Guan was taken back to the detention center, she was emaciated again.
After nine months of detention, she was sentenced to six and half years in prison by the Hongkou District Court. In April 2007, she was taken to Shanghai Women's Prison.
Brutal Torture in Shanghai Women's Prison
At first, Ms. Guan was locked up in a confinement room established for newly arrived prisoners and watched by two inmates in turns. The windows of the confinement unit were closed. She was not allowed to use the restroom and thus could only urinate into a spittoon inside the unit.
The inmates tortured her from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. They forced her to stand for half the day and sit on a small stool for the other half. At the same time, she was forced to listen to recordings that slandered Falun Gong. She was allowed to go to bed only after 11 p.m. every day.
During the apricot harvesting season, it was very hot inside the unventilated unit. Ms. Guan kept sweating and was not allowed to change out of her wet clothes. She thus developed small itchy blisters on her body.
After the confinement, Ms. Guan was assigned to the No. 3 Ward and watched by four inmates day and night, including during sleep. The inmates threatened to “transform” her (force her to renounce her faith, likely through torture). Instead, she inspired their kindness by telling them the facts about Falun Gong and how the CCP demonized the practice to carry out its persecution.
Two years later, she was forced to do unpaid work at the shop.
In later years, the prison and Hongkou 610 Office asked Ms. Guan’s family many times to persuade her to give up practicing Falun Gong. She told them, “I have followed the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to become a good person. Do you want me to become a bad person?”
The 610 Office agents were angry and threatened to send her to a mental hospital.
Unable to withstand the pressure, separation, intimidation, and coercion of the 610 Office, Ms. Guan's husband divorced her.
She was released at the end of 2012.
Arrested Again
Ms. Guan was arrested again on the morning of June 9, 2014, when she was handing out informational materials about Falun Gong. Officers from the 610 Office ransacked her home in the afternoon and seized many Falun Gong books, DVDs, computer, and 3,000 yuan in cash.
Ms. Guan was detained in Pudong Detention Center following the arrest. During the detention, she was interrogated frequently with threats and deception. She was tried on January 6, 2015, and sentenced to three years and six months by Pudong New District Court on January 14.
More Torture at Shanghai Women's Prison
Ms. Guan was taken to Shanghai Women's Prison again in June 2015. She was locked up in an air-conditioned room immediately upon her arrival. The low temperature set in the room made her shiver, further aggravating old injuries in her arms and back.
She then went through one week of sleep deprivation and brainwashing. Two inmates were assigned to watch her around the clock. They played videos slandering Falun Gong nonstop. Ms. Guan could not sleep because of her old wounds. She was extremely exhausted due to lack of sleep, and she struggled through the pain each day.
After the brainwashing, the guards locked her up in a monitoring room alone and assigned four inmates to monitor her. They forced her to watch derogatory videos, read slanderous articles, and then write “thought reports.” Her psychological pain was beyond words.
Ms. Guan was tortured this way for three years and six months before she was finally released on December 8, 2017.
Ongoing Harassment
After her release, Ms. Guan moved from Hongkou District to Pudong New District to avoid harassment, but the police still found her and continued to harass her.
On October 4, 2020, two officers from Pudong Gulu Police Station broke into her home and seized a Falun Gong book. Ms. Guan was also arrested and taken to Gulu Police Station, where three or four policemen held Ms. Guan down on a chair and forcibly drew a blood sample from her middle finger.
Since August 2020, more than ten Falun Gong practitioners in Pudong New District, Shanghai have had their blood samples and biometrics forcibly taken by the police. Some suspect that these samples were collected to establish a massive DNA database for forced organ harvesting, as well as to enable deeper surveillance of practitioners through China's extensive monitoring network.
In the persecution of Falun Gong, in addition to the relentless torture and long prison terms, many practitioners have been killed for their organs by the authorities to supply the lucrative transplant industry in China.
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