(Clearwisdom.net) Ms. Zhao Shuyuan was an engineer at the Karamay Petroleum Bureau in Karamay, Xinjiang Province. She was sentenced to nine years in prison because she refused to give up her belief in Falun Gong. In February 2003, she was incarcerated in the 9th Unit of the 4th Section of the Xinjiang Women's Prison. The prison police were furious when they were unable to force Ms. Zhao to renounce Falun Gong. In December 2003, when Ms. Zhao Shuyuan refused to sing the prison song and recite the rules for the other inmates, the assistant captain of the 4th Section Ms. Ma Ling organized a meeting to verbally abuse and attack Ms. Zhao. After the meeting, Ma Ling locked her into a small cell under intensive watch. Ms. Zhao then started a hunger strike to protest the illegal detention and unjust persecution. In response to her protest, the prison police repeatedly tortured Ms. Zhao with punitive force-feeding (1). Ma Ling inserted and withdrew feeding tubes again and again, which caused excruciating pain and injury to her trachea. As a result of the injuries she sustained from these violent force-feedings, Ms. Zhao was unable to speak for a very long time. Despite her injuries and poor health, Ma Ling continued to subject Ms. Zhao to brainwashing. To protest the brainwashing, Ms. Zhao started another hunger strike. After a few months of torture and force feeding, Ms. Zhao was nothing more than skin and bones. She could not walk without help.

Because Ms. Zhao has been determined in practicing Falun Gong, the Captain of the 9th Section, Ms. Li Jianxin, escalated the torture inflicted on Ms. Zhao starting in June 2004. They made Ms. Zhao sit on a small wooden stool for more than 10 hours while her arms were handcuffed to both sides of the headboard. They would not remove the handcuffs even during the night. In addition, they arranged prison inmates into several groups of three to watch Ms. Zhao around the clock. Each group would watch her for 15 days. Li Jianxin even established an award program to encourage the prison inmates to assist in the persecution of Ms. Zhao. She offered one proclamation and two months off a prison term for those prison inmates who would watch Ms. Zhao for three consecutive months.

Since June 2004, they have been repeatedly torturing Ms. Zhao with punitive force-feeding. On August 23, Ms. Zhao was sent to the Xinjiang Women's Prison hospital for emergency resuscitation. That same afternoon, Ma Ling went to the hospital with several inmates and attempted to return Ms. Zhao to her cell. Ms. Zhao called aloud for help. Her agonizing wails echoed throughout the hospital. One of the inmates quickly covered Ms. Zhao's mouth to smother her cries. Li Jianxin barked at the prison inmates, ordering them to slam Ms. Zhao violently to the floor. She even ordered the inmates to torture Ms. Zhao to death in retaliation. The prison inmates hauled her back to her cell in a brutish manner. They pulled up her shirt, fully exposing her chest to humiliate her as they dragged her all the way back from the prison hospital. The incident occurred during the afternoon labor shift, so there were numerous witnesses who watched the incident in horror. As soon as they had hauled Ms. Zhao back to her cell, Ma Ling and Li Jianxin started to curse her and again handcuffed her arms to the bed. For the next four months, Ms. Zhao was again forced to sit on the wooden stool while handcuffed to the bed for long periods of time each day. By the end of the four months, she had lost the ability to walk. Li Jianxin and Ma Ling then started a new kind of torture. They put foot shackles on Ms. Zhao's ankles and made her stand next to the bed for long periods of time each day. Because Ms. Zhao could hardly stand, they handcuffed her arms to the metal pipes on the ceiling, which forced her to stretch her arms and stand up all day long. To prevent anyone from witnessing their crimes, Li Jianxin and Ma Ling covered the window with an opaque fabric. Only those prison inmates volunteering to watch Ms. Zhao and supervise the torture are allowed to enter the cell. As this report is written, Ms. Zhao is on the brink of death.

Ms. Zhao Shuyuan has a son who is only 12 years old. He misses his mother dearly and longs for her immediate return.

(1) Force-feeding is the number one cause of death among practitioners. Almost every practitioner who has gone on a hunger strike in forced detention has suffered from abusive forced-feeding. Many practitioners not on hunger strikes have also been tortured using this method. The purpose of criminal force-feeding is never to nourish but rather to punish practitioners and to cause so much pain that they will renounce their belief in Falun Dafa. To that end, the police have used many different methods to cause excruciating pain and injury, including: repeatedly inserting and withdrawing the feeding tubes, leaving the feeding tube in the stomach for long periods of time, knocking out teeth during force-feeding, force-feeding highly concentrated saline solution, vinegar, hard liquor, hot pepper oil, mustard oil, boiling water, as well as urine and feces. Many practitioners who have survived the repeated torture of force-feeding are still suffering from the severe injuries the forced feeding has done to their organs.