(Minghui.org) Ms. Hu Tongyu, 61, a resident of Jianwei County, Leshan City, Sichuan Province, was released from a brainwashing center on June 3, 2013. She has been monitored since her release. Wang Maolin, director of the Jianwei County 610 Office, told her that because they confiscated so many different kinds of truth-clarification materials from her home, she should have been sentenced to five to ten years in prison. He threatened her by saying that if they found a flier or a DVD distributed in the town, they would assume it was her and she would be punished.
Her husband was angry, scared, and worried, and became extremely thin.
Ms. Hu, a retired employee from a kindergarten affiliated with the Jianwei County Government, has practiced Falun Dafa since 1996, and benefited greatly. She attended an experience sharing gathering in 2003 with other practitioners, and was arrested while walking on the roadside. The Jianwei County 610 Office held her at a detention center for two weeks.
A practitioner called out her name from the downstairs of her apartment building in 2008, and was reported by the people who monitored her. Officers from the 610 Office threatened her husband. He worked at the Jianwei County HR Bureau. He became fearful, and eventually divorced Ms. Hu (they later remarried).
The county 610 Office blacklisted Ms. Hu, and during the first six months of 2013, officers from the Leshan City 610 Office ordered their agents to send all of the Falun Gong practitioners who were blacklisted to the brainwashing center. By sending the practitioners to the brainwashing center, the officers could close the case because the torture at the brainwashing centers was severe and difficult to endure, and the likelihood of those “giving up” was greater. Officers from the Jianwei County 610 Office, Domestic Security Division, Political and Legal Affairs Committee took Ms. Hu to the Dashiqiao Brainwashing Center in Leshan City on April 24, 2013. She was released when the facility was shut down on June 3, 2013.
Before her arrest, Ms. Hu had prepared a document that disclosed the identity of the agents who threatened her daughter and her husband. After she was taken to the brainwashing center, local practitioners copied the document and distributed the information to expose their crimes. The agents were angry about this and ransacked her home on May 9, 2013. They confiscated her computer, a printer, a DVD burner, materials, paper, Dafa books, and a photo of the founder of Falun Gong. The total value of the property taken was around 30,000 yuan.
Programs that slandered Dafa and the founder of Falun Gong were played every morning at the Dashiqiao Brainwashing Center. This was followed by the so called “help and educate” presentations. In the afternoon, some of the agents tried to “transform” the practitioners using different methods. The agents threatened the practitioners while trying to make them sign the three statements document.
Upon arrival, practitioners were told they would be sentenced to forced labor. They were placed in handcuffs and warned that an inmate could be ordered to beat them to near-death. The practitioners were reminded that if this were 1949, when the CCP had just taken power, even the director of a village had the power to order the death penalty.
The agents took a different approach the second day. They were very kind and attempted to develop close relationships with the practitioners, calling them sisters. Not long after that, the agents showed their evil nature by trying all kinds things to “transform” them. If nothing worked, they said, “From the bottom of my heart, I have tried my best to do you good, so that you would write the three statements.”
The practitioners were monitored around the clock and not allowed to talk to one another. If a practitioner showed lack of resolve, three or four guards would go to talk to him or her. If the practitioner “transformed,” and signed the three statements, officers from the Leshan City 610 Office would double check to make sure the practitioner was truly “transformed.” Only after they gave their approval would the practitioner be released.
Although Ms. Hu has been released, agents monitor her very closely. Her family lives in fear and she has very limited freedom.
