Older Practitioner Ms. Liang Huaiyuan Brutally Tortured in Anhui Province

Name: Liang Huaiyuan
Gender: Female
Age: 65
Address: Jianju No. 1 Village, Bangbu City, Anhui Province
Occupation: Engineer
Date of Most Recent Arrest: March 5th, 2008
Most Recent Place of Detention: Bangbu Detention Centre
City: Bangbu
Province: Anhui
Persecution Suffered: Sleep deprivation, forced labour, brainwashing, forced injections/drug administration, being hung up, imprisonment, torture, extortion, home ransacked, detention

Since the persecution of Falun Gong began in July 1999, Ms. Liang Huaiyuan has been arrested, her home has been searched and she has been injected with unknown drugs. She was also forced to leave home several times to avoid persecution.

When Ms. Liang went to Beijing in December 2000 to appeal, she was arrested and brought back to her hometown by Zhang Peijie from the Bangshan District 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong). She was held at Bangbu First Detention Centre for over seven months and had 5,000 Yuan¹ extorted from her.

Officials from the Bangbu 610 Office ordered personnel from the Jianju No. 1 Village Residential Committee to monitor her. Jin Xin, director of the residential committee, watched her when she left home, tapped her phone and harassed her. When Jin brought Gao Feng, a plainclothes officer from the Xincheng Public Security Bureau, and a dozen other officers to search Ms. Liang's home, she refused to open the door. Jin and Gao then used a crowbar to break the lock on her door and forced their way into her home.

Ms. Liang was held in the Bangbu First Detention Centre from 2002 to Spring 2003, and had to do forced labour for more than ten hours a day. She was sometimes not allowed to sleep for days. As a result, she often had headaches and lost consciousness. When she was sent to the Bangbu Provincial Prison Hospital, she was diagnosed with high blood pressure and heart problems.

Officials from the Bangbu and Bangshan 610 Offices worked with the police to search practitioners' homes and arrest them during the evening of July 20th, 2003. Zhang Peijie led five police officers to search Ms. Liang's house. They stayed there for four hours and confiscated her address book, Walkman, MP3 player and Falun Gong books. Zhang then took Ms. Liang to a detention centre.

When the officials at the detention centre refused to take her because of her high blood pressure, Zhang put pressure on them to take her for the night. The next day, Zhang took her to the Provincial Prison Hospital. The deputy head of the hospital, whose last name is Chen, forced Ms. Liang to take medicine to lower her blood pressure and locked her in a small room. It was a hot summer's day, the temperature was 40 degrees Celsius, and all the windows and door to the room were sealed.

Chen ordered six inmates in the hospital to hold Ms. Liang down on a bed in the afternoon of July 30th, 2003. Her hands and feet were tied to each corner of the bed, and she was injected with unknown drugs. A few minutes later, a lot of blood came out from between her legs and she lost consciousness. Later that night, her blood pressure dropped dramatically and her heart gradually stopped beating. The officials from the 610 Office wanted to leave her to die, but the doctor in charge, with the last name Mao, paid 300 yuan from his own pocket to ask someone to go to get a specialist from the Bangbu Hospital to come and treat her. After a few hours of emergency treatment, she began to regain consciousness.

Ms. Liang was bedridden for a month and could not open her eyes for two weeks. She barely had enough energy to talk. When she eventually tried to get up, she fell back onto the bed and began to bleed internally. Blood was in her urine, and her limbs were swollen and purple. She could not stop trembling, and the soles of her feet began to fester. Even though Ms. Liang's health was in critical condition, she was still tied to the bed.

When Ms. Liang was discharged from the hospital 48 days later, she needed assistance to walk. The authorities even extorted 5,000 yuan for medical expenses from her family. Officials from the Bangbu 610 Office said that she could get her money back if she wrote a guarantee statement to renounce her belief. However, she refused.

Six months after Ms. Liang was released from the Provincial Prison Hospital, officials from the Bangbu 610 Office put her in a forced labour camp for three years. She was released in 2006.

Li Baizheng, from the Bangbu 610 Office, and a few officers from the Xincheng Public Security Bureau searched Ms. Liang's home on May 12th, 2006, but did not find what they were looking for. They told Ms. Liang to report to the bureau at 2:00 p.m. She immediately left and became homeless for three months to avoid further persecution.

The police searched the homes of more than 20 practitioners on March 5th, 2008, and arrested some of them. Shi Yong from the Vice Squad, Jin Xin, Gao Feng and a dozen officers from the Bangbu and Bangshan 610 Offices broke into Ms. Liang's home, searched it and arrested her.

Ms. Liang, 63 at that time, was taken to the Bangbu Detention Centre. Her blood pressure was found to be very high and she had an irregular heartbeat. She was taken to the 331 Military Hospital, where she went into a coma. Doctors at the hospital said that she could die at any moment. Detention centre officials refused to take her, and Ms. Liang was later released.

Yang, from the Xincheng District 610 Office, and Qin, from the police station, went to Ms. Liang's home two weeks later and told her that officials from the Bangbu 610 Office and the Political and Legal Committee had ordered her to be sent to the Hefei Forced Labour Camp for a year and a half.

The officials at the labour camp refused to take her because she failed their health examination. She was taken to the 105 Military Hospital and diagnosed with high blood pressure and irregular heartbeat. She was taken back to Bangbu during the night, and officials from the 610 Office ordered her family to pay for all her medical expenses.

When Ms. Liang heard that Gao Feng wanted to send her for brainwashing sessions in June 2008, she left home again to avoid further persecution.

In 2010, officials from the Bangbu 610 Office ordered her former employer to stop her pension for that year.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/12/10/233467.html