Falun Gong Practitioners Face Escalated Persecution After Liaoning Province Expands Prison Capacity

(Minghui.org) Since the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline, in July 1999, the authorities in Liaoning Province have been actively carrying out the persecution policy. An untold number of practitioners have been incarcerated in various prisons across the province, with many of them tortured to disability or even death.

To accommodate the increasing demand for prison facilities, the Liaoning Province No. 2 Women’s Prison was officially established on August 31, 2019. Those who were detained in the third, eighth and tenth wards of Liaoning No.1 Women’s Prison began to move to the new prison beginning on November 13, 2019. Both of the prisons are located in Shenyang City. 

After the coronavirus pandemic broke out in late 2019, prisons in Liaoning Province have taken the opportunity to impose total closure, and the vast majority of Falun Gong practitioners detained there for their faith have lost contact with the outside world. Family visits and phone calls have been banned, and this situation has continued for over a year. 

Being denied family visits isn’t the worst of it for the practitioners. In order to force them to renounce their faith, the guards are using various torture methods on the practitioners, such as electric shocks, beatings, hanging up by the wrists for long hours, handcuffing behind the back, starvation, freezing, denied restroom use, deprivation of sleep and brainwashing.

Many practitioners were also forced to do intensive labor without pay, mostly to make protective gear to meet the surging demand in the pandemic. The prison guards usually kept the machines running 24 hours a day and the inmates and Falun Gong practitioners were assigned different shifts to work on the machines.

Below are some persecution cases of Falun Gong practitioners at the first ward in Liaoning Province No. 2 Women’s Prison.

Ms. Jiang Jun, a Shenyang City resident serving an eight-year term, was recently held in solitary confinement for not walking like the inmates are required to walk.

Ms. Li Zonglan, a 70-year-old resident of Shenyang City serving a seven-year term, was taken to the new prison in late 2020. Because she eats slowly due to issues with her teeth, the inmates constantly beat and verbally abused her. She is being forced to do the unpaid labor.

Ms. Hu Zhiqin, a Dalian City resident in her 60s, is also serving a seven-year term. She has been subjected to beatings and verbal abuse in the correction team and ordered to renounce her faith. She has become blind in one eye due to the torture, yet she is being forced to work more than ten hours each day.

Ms. Zhao Jing, a Fushun City resident in her 70s, was sentenced to five years in 2016. Despite her advanced age, she is still forced to do intensive labor in the workshop. All of her hair has turned gray as a result of the physical abuse.

Ms. Lin Jingping, a Dalian City resident in her late 40s, is serving a four-year term. To force her to give up her faith, the inmates have deprived her of sleep, written the name of Falun Gong’s founder in her shoes, and threatened to call her severely ill father to torment him. 

Ms. Cao E, a Dalian City resident, was sentenced to 3.5 years in 2017. Upon her admission to the prison, the guards didn’t allow her to use toilet paper for four months and forced her to clean herself with water after using the restroom. After her clothes became wet as a result, the guards didn’t allow her to change her clothes.

Ms. Sun Zhengyu, of Shenyang City, was imprisoned in late November 2018 to serve a 3.5-year term. Before being transferred to the new prison, she has been held in solitary confinement for 15 days with her hands cuffed behind her back and her mouth taped. At the new prison, as she refused to stand in the cafeteria, the inmates dragged her to the guards' office and forcibly handcuffed her. This caused her bones to fracture in her left shoulder blade and right elbow. She was held in solitary confinement for 17 days and not provided with any medical care. She was released on March 19, 2021.