(Minghui.org) Ms. Huang Yuping, 61, worked in a rural credit union and had a happy family before the persecution of Falun Gong started in 1999. She has been arrested four times over the past 17 years, detained for several years, and tortured, all for practicing Falun Gong.
Ms. Huang, who is from Qihe County, Dezhou City, Shandong Province, was most recently arrested on February 29, 2016, for talking about Falun Gong to people at a farmers market. She was taken to the Dezhou Detention Center on March 15, and formally arrested on April 21.
Ms. Huang was put under surveillance in 1999, after the persecution of Falun Gong began. Her phone was tapped and she was fined 11,000 yuan, for practicing Falun Gong.
Her husband worked for the county government. The head of the county put tremendous pressure on her husband. He criticized him openly during large assemblies, and threatened those whose family members practiced Falun Gong. He said that their children wouldn’t be accepted into any college or the military. Her husband succumbed to the pressure and divorced her.
Police officers Dong Qiang and Zhang Guofeng took Ms. Huang to the Civil Affairs Bureau and forced her to sign the divorce papers on October 18, 1999. They then took her to the local detention center. She was transferred three days later to the county brainwashing center.
Ms. Huang was arrested on October 1, 2000, for appealing peacefully in Beijing for the right to practice Falun Gong. She was taken to the Shandong No. 2 Forced Labor Camp on November 3, 2000, for a three-year term.
She was held in solitary confinement in December 2000. It was during a cold winter, but she was not allowed to wear a warm coat or warm shoes. She was hung by handcuffs, with her arms behind her back, from metal rings. The tips of her feet barely touched the ground. If she put her feet flat on the ground, the handcuffs cut into her wrists. It did not take long for her to lose consciousness.
Under such duress, she wrote a guarantee statement promising to give up Falun Gong, after which she was released from solitary confinement.
She was then forced to watch videos that slandered Falun Gong daily, and write “thought reports” after each video. The reports had to follow a guideline put forth by the guards.
Ms. Huang was released from the forced labor camp on March 14, 2002. She was subsequently fired by her employer.
Ms. Huang was given one-year-and-six months of forced labor, taken to the Shandong No.1 Women's Forced Labor Camp on April 7, 2003, and held in the “Strictly-Controlled Division.” Guards ordered the criminal inmates to abuse and insult Falun Gong practitioners, and rewarded the criminals with sentence reductions.
All the inmates were forced to do hard labor from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and sometimes even until midnight. Ms. Huang's health was affected and she developed high blood pressure.
Guard Wang Shuzhen ordered inmate Sun Xiaohong to beat Ms. Huang because she wasn’t sitting “properly.” The inmate pushed Ms. Huang's head onto the floor. A large bump appeared on Ms. Huang’s head, her neck was injured, and her nose bled. The guard just watched, and instructed the inmate to seal her mouth with tape.
More brutal brainwashing methods were used at the camp for four months, starting in mid-May 2004. All steadfast practitioners were held in solitary confinement. They were forced to stand straight throughout the day, and deprived of sleep, food, and water.
Her term was extended by three months for refusing to give up Falun Gong. She was eventually released on December 25, 2004.
Someone reported Ms. Huang to the police for talking about Falun Gong in a shop in Qihe County on March 31, 2008. She was arrested and taken to the Dezhou Detention Center. Huang Jilong, Xu Peiyong, and other officers from the county domestic division ransacked her home that day.
She was given two-year-and-three month forced labor term, and taken to the Jiangsuiquan Forced Labor Camp in Jinan City on April 14, 2008. Her family was not allowed to visit her, but the guards extorted money from them for her medical treatment. Ms. Huang had been healthy after practicing Falun Gong, but torture and detention had affected her health.
Ms. Huang read Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Gong, for the first time at a relatives' home in late 1996. She learned that Falun Gong teaches people to follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and that practitioners always consider others first. She realized that Falun Gong was the right path for her to follow.
Before she took up the practice, she was the deputy director at the Eastern Furniture Factory in Qihe County. She would take decorative materials from the factory for her own home and not pay for them. After learning Falun Gong, she felt she should follow its requirements and not exploit her employer. She went to the furniture factory and paid about 7,000 yuan for the materials she had taken home.
Ms. Huang followed the Falun Gong principles in every aspect of her work and life. She always tried to understand things from other people's points of view. She was respectful of her parents-in-law, and she, her husband, and their son were happy together.
After Jiang Zemin started the persecution of Falun Gong and sought to “Destroy practitioners physically, ruin their reputations, and bankrupt them financially,” she suffered the full extent of the persecution.