(Minghui.org) Ms. Huang Zhiping, a resident of Nanchong City, Sichuan Province, was released in March 2023 after serving a 3.5-year prison term for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since July 1999.
Ms. Huang’s prison sentence stemmed from her latest arrest on September 9, 2019. She was held at the Nanchong City Detention Center until April 29, 2021, when she was transferred to Sichuan Province Women’s Prison in Chengdu City, also known as the Longquanyi Prison. She had become so weak due to abuse she suffered at the detention center that the police drove her to the prison in an ambulance with oxygen tanks. Her ordeal continued in the prison, as the guards there also subjected her to various forms of abuse.
Ms. Huang’s family were never allowed to visit her during her 3.5 years of detention.
Prior to her latest imprisonment, Ms. Huang was thrice given forced labor terms and thrice held at a brainwashing center for her faith. Her home was ransacked at least ten times. She was not the only one in her extended family who had been targeted for practicing Falun Gong. Her husband, her sister, and brother-in-law had all been arrested multiple times for their shared faith.
Her father was traumatized by the repeated persecution of his two daughters and two sons-in-law. He passed away in April 2004 when Ms. Huang was taken to a labor camp for the third time.
Ms. Huang’s husband suffered declining health as the persecution dragged on. He passed away on October 21, 2017. Their daughter and son grew up in fear.
The police once forcibly took Ms. Huang’s sister to a mental hospital even though she was perfectly healthy. She was injected with drugs that damaged her central nervous system and caused her to become mentally disordered. At one point, her husband was also detained, leaving their young son to fend for himself.
Ms. Huang went grocery shopping at a farmers’ market on the morning of September 9, 2019. A vendor asked if she had any extra change. She happened to have some 20-yuan bills so she said yes. As she and the vendor were counting the bills, a group of people suddenly grabbed her arms and snatched the cash.
Ms. Huang initially thought they were thiefs. Only after they drove her to Longmen Police Station did she hear them say they were officers from the Gaoping Domestic Security Office. In order to frame her, the police pressured a few vendors to claim that she had used paper currency printed with information about Falun Gong in her transactions with them. Due to strict censorship in China, Falun Gong practitioners have been using creative means to raise awareness of the persecution, including printing Falun Gong messages on paper currency.
The police also found paper currency of various denominations and alleged that Ms. Huang had circulated those at the farmers’ market. As a matter of fact, Ms. Huang had talked to only two people at the market before her arrest, one being the vendor who approached her, and another being a person whom she approached upon noticing his foot was injured.
After fabricating evidence against Ms. Huang, the police drove her to her home in a civilian car. They found her home key in her purse and opened the door. They confiscated from her home dozens of Falun Gong books, portrait of Master (founder of Falun Dafa), a printer, a laptop computer, a tablet, several MP3 audio players, and more than 30,000 yuan in cash.
The police also called in their colleagues in Ms. Huang’s residential area to witness their “evidence” against her. The police later forcibly took photos of her and collected her fingerprints and toe-prints. At night they drove her to the Nanchong City Detention Center. The guards refused to admit her because she didn’t sign the interrogation records. Chen Zhoujun, vice captain of the Gaoping Domestic Security Office, pressured the detention center into admitting her.
Ms. Huang was put on trial at the Gaoping District Court on September 3, 2020. Her children and some of her relatives were present. Her two lawyers pleaded not guilty on her behalf.
During the trial, her lawyers argued that no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong and that their client should not have been prosecuted for exercising her constitutional right to freedom of belief.
The lawyers also pointed out that four of the five vendors who were forced to be witnesses against Ms. Huang had no proof that she had exchanged banknotes with them. The domestic security office police claimed they had a video of Ms. Huang at the market that day, but no video was played in court.
Ms. Huang prepared her defense statement, but due to unknown reasons, she couldn’t talk during the trial. She could only write, nod, or shake her head. The judge instructed the court bailiff to read her defense statement on her behalf. However, the bailiff stopped after a few sentences, as Ms. Huang wrote in the opening that she has been following Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to be a good person.
After the judge ordered the bailiff to stop reading her statement, Ms. Huang wrote a message to the bailiff several times, asking him to finish reading her statement, but the judge didn’t allow it. When the hearing ended, Ms. Huang wrote to her family, “I’m not guilty, and history will prove everything.”
Not long after the hearing, Ms. Huang was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and fined 10,000 yuan.
Ms. Huang filed an appeal, and the local intermediate court held a virtual hearing a few days later to announce its decision to uphold the original verdict. Without her knowledge, the court ordered her bank to transfer 10,000 yuan to it as her fine. Only after the wire transfer did the court ask the detention center to show her the receipt and sign her name on it.
Once Guard Li Jiangxia saw from the surveillance camera that an inmate had her legs crossed and was chitchatting with Ms. Huang. Li called the inmate to her office and questioned if Ms. Huang was teaching her to do the Falun Gong exercises. The inmate managed to avoid directly answering the question. Li then asked Ms. Huang if she taught that inmate the Falun Gong exercises. Again, Li didn’t get the yes answer she wanted. Nonetheless, Li asked the head inmate to impose a one-month no-talking ban on Ms. Huang, who would be punished if she tried to talk to anyone.
As the detention center was packed with inmates, the guards divided the inmates into groups and had them take turns sleeping. Each group only got to sleep three or four hours at a time and then gave up the bed for others to rest. When not sleeping at night, inmates were ordered to walk around in the hallway.
Guard Li said that any inmate who dared to talk to Ms. Huang would be deprived of her turn to sleep at night or barred from eating the meat dish at lunch. Many inmates said that Li was unreasonable and ridiculous.
Ms. Huang refused to memorize the detention center rules and was deprived of her turn to sleep at night and only allowed to eat rice (with no meat or vegetables) at every meal.
Another time Ms. Huang was ordered to wipe the floor. It was summer time, and there was no air conditioner or fan. She felt so suffocated that she almost fainted. She then took off the inmate vest to cool off. A guard saw what happened from the surveillance camera and ordered her to transcribe the detention center rules thirty times. She refused to comply, and the guard immediately said she could only eat rice for her meals and denied her from purchasing daily necessities. The guard also ordered other inmates to take away all the necessities she had purchased earlier, including toilet paper. For more than one month, the guard didn’t allow anyone else to share daily necessities with her. Anyone who defied the order would be deprived of their turn to sleep a night.
Ms. Huang had to use milk cartons that others tossed away to wipe herself after relieving herself. She also dug in the trash can and picked up used shampoo bottles which still had shampoo residue, which she used to wash her hair and clothing.
The guards insisted that Ms. Huang write a statement admitting her mistake. She refused and said she would file complaints against them. After about a one month standoff, director Wang ordered a stop to her punishment. Her complaints couldn’t leave the detention center as the guards refused to deliver the documents to relevant agencies.
The guards also forced all inmates to squat on the floor to fold towels into small squares. Anyone who failed to do perfect squares would be deprived of their turn to sleep at night or barred from eating the meat dishes. Those who stepped on the towels by accident faced the same punishment.
Ms. Huang was not allowed to do the Falun Gong exercises during her detention, which, coupled with the abuses she suffered, damaged her health. She felt dizzy and weak, and she was found to have insufficient blood supply to her heart as well.
Ms. Huang continued to suffer various forms of abuse after she was admitted to the Sichuan Province Women’s Prison on April 29, 2021.
Solitary Confinement Upon Arrival
As soon as Ms. Huang was admitted, she was immediately put in what inmates dubbed “Demons’ Fourth Division.” She was kept in a solitary confinement room with two inmates monitoring her around the clock. One inmate was Xie Jing, a former government official convicted for corruption, and another was Liu Wenzhen, a drug dealer. The two forced Ms. Huang to take off her clothes and put on the prison uniform as soon as she was brought there.
They forced her to read and watch materials slandering Falun Gong all day long. She refused to renounce her faith, and they had her either squat on one foot without changing positions or sit on a one-inch-tall stool motionlessly for long periods of time. They called the two forms of abuse “softies” as the torture did not cause external injuries but often resulted in fainting or bone fractures in elderly people.
Ms. Huang was also ordered to say words insulting herself and Falun Gong before she was allowed to use the restroom. In the summer, she was only allowed to brush her teeth and wash her face once every few days.
Implication Tactic
The guards also used implication tactics to pit some inmates against others. They formed groups of three to six inmates, and whoever failed to obey the prison rules or the guards’ orders would result in punishment of everyone in the same group.
Oftentimes it was Falun Gong practitioners like Ms. Huang who were deemed uncooperative because they refused to renounce their faith. The guards then deprived everyone of the chance to earn points for term reductions. Some inmates cursed at the founder of Falun Gong and accused practitioners of being unkind because they could not receive term reductions.
As a matter of fact, it usually took at least a year to get term reduction applications approved, even if inmates were allowed to earn points toward that end. The applications must be reviewed and approved by the prison, followed by approval by the Procuratorate before the court issued a final decision.
Brainwashing
Education section chief Liao Qiongfang ordered Falun Gong practitioners to write statements renouncing their faith and read aloud their statements in front of other practitioners. She then recorded the reading sessions.
Every Tuesday afternoon all practitioners and their monitors were forced to listen to Liao slandering Falun Gong and its founder. Liao and other guards had received informational materials about the practice and many phone calls from practitioners outside the prison, but they refused to stop participating in the persecution out of self-interest. They even included one question that smeared Falun Gong in the annual mandatory political test that inmates had to take.
Forced Labor
Inmates were ordered to get up at a bit past six every morning. They were given only a few minutes for breakfast, and the elderly and the infirm often had trouble finishing their meals on time.
Everyone was then ordered to work from 7 a.m. to noon, and resume work after lunch at 1 p.m. They were not allowed to return to their cells until close to 8 p.m. There were then all kinds of meetings and study sessions, and it was already 10 p.m. by the time they were allowed to go to bed. Those who didn’t finish their work quotas had to keep working until 11 p.m. or later.
According to insiders, every division in the prison was able to pull in millions of yuan every year by selling products made by inmates. The guards made much higher pay and fat bonuses than average employees at large state-owned enterprises. The forced labor was primarily making clothing and producing parts for electronic products. The clothes were all labeled Binjiang Clothes Manufacturer in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province.
Before they were released, every inmate was asked to sign all kinds of documents, including a non-disclosure agreement promising to not reveal what had happened in the prison.
After Multiple Arrests and Incarcerations for Her Faith, Sichuan Woman Sentenced Again to 3.5 Years