(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioners held in the No. 1 Prison District of Heilongjiang Province Women's Prison were assembled in a small room in March 2005. They were then taken to another room and had blood samples drawn under the coercion of prison guards. The same thing also happened to practitioners in other prison districts.
The small room was on the fifth floor of the prison district. Some of the practitioners who had blood drawn included Ms. Chen Weijun, Ms. Yu Xiuying, Ms. Gao Xiuzhen, Ms. Gao Guizhen, Ms. Zhang Jing, Ms. Guan Shuling, Ms. Xu Jingfeng, Ms. Zhang Xiaobo, Ms. Zhang Linwen, Ms. Zhang Liping, Ms. Zhang Shufen, Ms. Yao Yuming, Ms. Liu Xuewei, Ms. Fan Guoxia and Ms. Xu Jiayu. Ms. Chen Weijun and Ms. Yao Yuming who later died as a result of persecution.
The practitioners were forced to crouch for long periods of time as a form of torture. During an intense crouching session on March 23, 2005, prison guard Yue Xiufeng took Ms. Zhang Shufen and Ms. Yao Yuming out of the room, saying that she wanted to talk to them. After a while, an inmate who was assigned to watch the practitioners went over to Ms. Yu Xiuying and told her to leave the room to talk with a prison guard. Seeing that Ms. Zhang and Ms. Yao had not returned, Ms. Yu refused to leave. The prison guards then got dozens of inmates working in the workshop and ordered them to go into the small room.
Told They Were Drawing Blood to Check Their Health
Prison guards, including Hao Wei, Zhang Fan and Wang Liying then got a hold of Ms. Yu and dragged her out, while the inmates prevented other practitioners from helping her. The inmates then tried to reassure the practitioners that the purpose of the blood tests was to check that they were in good health.
One practitioner said, “We are in good health, so we don't need such blood tests.” Some inmates, afraid of getting into trouble with the prison guards, pleaded with the practitioners to get their blood tests done. An inmate said, “Go, please! Much work is waiting for us. We cannot go back to work until you agree to go.” Some inmates tried to push the practitioners out of the room, while others pushed practitioners to the ground, grabbed their arms and legs and carried them out by force.
The blood draws were carried out in an office on the sixth floor. The room was crowded with people, including someone in a white medical suit along with prison guard Yue Xiufeng. Nurses from the prison hospital pricked the practitioners' arms and quickly drew a tube full of blood. If any practitioner tried to resist, they were held down by force. There was blood all over the floor and tables.
Other Prisons Followed Suit
The same thing happened in a number of other prison districts. On March 21, 2005, prison guards Yan Yuhua, Zhang Shuli and Jia Wenjun from the No. 9 Prison District deceived practitioners by telling them to use the toilet, and then tried to get their blood drawn. When the practitioners resisted, prison guards ordered inmates Zhao Xueling, Song Ning, Nie Qing, Xu Shuqing, Zhang Fengling and Bai Lijun to assault them.
According to some inmates, all blood samples were encapsulated in plastic bags and the source of the blood was tagged with labels of the practitioners' personal details.
Generally, only Falun Gong practitioners are singled out for blood tests within prison and labor camp populations. Since practitioners are routinely physically abused and tortured in detention, it is unlikely that such testing is a sign of concern for their physical wellbeing. It is instead much more likely that the blood draws are related to the Chinese Communist Party's systematic crimes of harvesting organs from imprisoned practitioners, in which practitioners become part of a massive living organ bank.
