(Minghui.org) Ms. He Tao, in her sixties, is a retired worker from the Nuerhe Paper Mill in Jinzhou City. She was sentenced to a five-year prison term by the Taihe District Court on September 19, 2016. She appealed to the Jinzhou City Intermediate Court, which upheld the original verdict on November 29. She was taken to the Liaoning Province Women's Prison in late December 2016.
She was arrested on May 18 when she was distributing materials about Falun Dafa.
Imprisoned and Tortured
Ms. He began practicing Falun Dafa in August 1997. Ms. He has been arrested and imprisoned many times since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched the persecution in 1999.
Police officers used the excuse of wanting to talk to Ms. He to lure her to the Taihe Police Department in February 2000. She was arrested and held in a detention center, and taken to the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp six months later. She was released after failing the physical exam.
Ms. He was arrested again on November 11, 2002, for talking to police officers about Falun Dafa and sending a book to the local police station. She was given a four-year prison term.
She was subjected to numerous forms of torture in Dabei Prison in Liaoning City. In order to force her to give up her belief, prison guards deprived her of sleep for over 40 days. She was prevented from drinking water for three months, during which time the guards gave her only steamed cornbread to eat. She was also forced to do slave labor for 16 hours a day. Her bathroom use was restricted, and during the night, inmates convicted of murder were directed to take turns torturing her.
On one occasion, an inmate stripped off Ms. He's clothes, stuffed her mouth with a towel, tied her up with rope, and lifted her off the ground in the water room. The prison guards stopped the tortures only after she went on a hunger strike to protest.
More recently, Ms. He returned to Chifeng City to visit her family on September 28, 2009. Within an hour after she arrived, she was arrested by Chifeng police officers and officers from the Nuerhe Police Station of Jinzhou City. She was held in a detention center located in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region for nearly six months.
During Ms. He's current imprisonment, she has been tortured by inmates in the Jinzhou City Women's Detention Center who were instigated by prison guards. Kong Suhua, a head inmate, ordered murder convicts to beat her numerous times. One convict held Ms. He's head and beat her severely. She suffered from headaches, as well as bodily injuries. Her blood pressure registered a reading of over 200 mm Hg.
The letters she wrote to the Procuratorate, presenting the facts about Falun Dafa, were intercepted by the detention center and never mailed.
Related article:Additional Persecution News from China – October 17, 2016 (17 Reports)
