(Minghui.org) A 46-year-old construction engineer serving a seven-year term for her faith in Falun Gong has been put on strict management and denied contact with her family for more than nine months.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. He Lichun, of Qujing City, Yunnan Province, was arrested on August 23, 2017, after being reported for using banknotes printed with information about Falun Gong. With strict information censorship in China, many Falun Gong practitioners are using creative ways to spread information about their faith, including printing messages on paper currency.
Ms. He was strip-searched, interrogated and abused in the police station. The bruises on her wrists, arms, left knee and right leg didn’t go away until months later. The Qilin District Court sentenced her to seven years in Yunnan Province No.2 Women’s Prison in 2018.
Since July 2019, the prison has intensified the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. It allocated specific cells for the strict management of practitioners, with three designated levels of torture, from the most severe first tier to the intermediate level second tier to the least severe observation tier.
Ms. He was taken to the first-tier management cell in November 2019. There, she could only sleep on bare concrete year-round with only a thin comforter. The guards took away all her warm clothes, leaving her with only thin clothes. No matter how cold it was in the winter or whether it was raining, she wasn’t allowed to close the window.
The guards woke her up every day at 5:40 a.m. After briefly washing herself, she was ordered to sit on a small stool until 12 a.m. She was allowed to use the restroom four times a day at specific times. She could take a shower once every week for only five minutes. Laundry was bi-weekly, not including the comforter. Meanwhile, the guards ordered her to clean the public shower rooms and restrooms. If she refused, she wasn’t allowed to wash her dish or use the restroom.
The guards also prohibited her from buying sanitary napkins and toilet paper, leaving her with nothing to use during her menstrual periods.
Because the inmates often withheld her food and she wasn’t allowed to buy additional food, Ms. He is emaciated and starved all the time.
Related report:
Ethnic Yi Woman Sentenced to 7 Years for Using Bank Notes Bearing Messages about Falun Gong
