(Minghui.org) A 75-year-old woman from Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province was recently released after being incarcerated for two years and eight months because she refused to renounce her faith in Falun Dafa.
Ms. Liang Meihua was tortured in Nanchang City First Detention Center for 17 months, and in Jiangxi Province Women’s Prison for 15 months. The authorities shackled her, hung her up by her wrists, made her stand for long hours, sprayed her eyes with menthol oil, and denied her family visits. She eventually contracted tuberculosis.
In the past 24 years of persecution of Falun Dafa, Ms. Liang has been incarcerated for a total of 13 years. By the time she was released from prison, dozens of Falun Dafa practitioners remained locked up there.
Ms. Liang Meihua
Most Recent Arrest and Trial
The officers from Xihu District Police Department arrested Ms. Liang, who was at another practitioner’s residence at the time, on July 18, 2020. After over 20 hours of interrogation, the police put her in Nanchang City First Detention Center the day after the arrest. Her arrest was approved a month later on August 18.
Ms. Liang’s hearing was held on June 3, 2021, at Xihu District Court. While she was reading her defense statement, the judge kept interrupting her. Two months later, the judge sentenced her to two years and eight months in prison with a 5,000 yuan fine. She appealed the ruling to Nanchang City Intermediate Court, and the judge upheld the lower court’s decision in December 2021.
Tortured in Detention Center
From her arrest to her conviction, Ms. Liang spent 17 months in Nanchang City First Detention Center, during which time she was made to sleep on the concrete floor because the center was overcrowded.
The head of the cell often abused her. One time the head had five other inmates beat her because she refused to stand up. Later a guard framed her for participating in a brawl and shackled her legs to the legs of two inmates. The inmates purposely pulled her legs in the opposite directions, causing injuries to her legs.
At the end of 2020, the head of the cell and six other inmates beat Ms. Liang for no reason. She fell to the ground and couldn’t get up.
Intensified Torture in Prison
Ms. Liang was transferred to Jiangxi Province Women’s Prison on December 15, 2021, after the Intermediate Court denied her appeal. In the first 15 days, she was given only a little plain rice each day and nothing else to eat. She was also not allowed to wash for 10 days because she refused to renounce her faith.
She was transferred to the 7th brigade, and the guards forced her to work in a shop from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. After the forced labor, they made her stand still in her cell until midnight. She had only thin clothes on cold winter days.
A guard dragged Ms. Liang to a remote storage room after she refused to sign the statements to renounce Falun Dafa. Several guards from the riot team used a piece of canvas to tie her wrists to a roof beam and hung her up. They pushed her back and forth, causing enormous pain to her shoulders and wrists.
Meanwhile, one inmate sprayed menthol oil into her eyes, and another dug into her ribs with his fingers. Eventually, the canvas broke. She landed on her head on the concrete floor ten meters away. They picked her up and repeated the torture. Her wrists bled and her eyes watered. She was barely conscious.
About ten days after the hang-up torture, Ms. Liang coughed blood. At Changzheng Hospital a doctor diagnosed her with tuberculosis, and she was hospitalized for a month. When she was transferred to the prison hospital, the prison doctor tried to prescribe her some medicine, but she refused, knowing that the authorities have been giving practitioners nerve-damaging drugs. The prison doctor then had her sign a liability waiver, saying that she was responsible for whatever happened to her in the prison.
Through doing the Falun Dafa exercises, her tuberculosis went away a few months later in October 2022.
The entire time she was in prison, she was not once allowed to call home or be visited by her family. She was released on March 17, 2023.
Past Persecution
Ms. Liang, born in December 1948, was a director in a local department store before she retired. She suffered stomach pain, bronchitis, dizziness, and heart disease in her younger years. When her rheumatic arthritis took over, all her joints became swollen and deformed. No doctors she saw were able to help her until she discovered Falun Dafa in 1996. Within one week of practicing Falun Dafa, her pains subsided and she completely recovered a month after. In addition to the health improvement, her character also improved and so did her relationships with family and neighbors.
After the persecution started, her life was turned upside down because she refused to give up Falun Dafa. In June 2001, she was put in a forced labor camp for a year. The following year, she was arrested and given 5 years in prison in July 2002.
A few years after she was released, she was again arrested in June 2010 and sentenced to 3 years in prison. She was taken back into custody in November 2013, only a few months after her term expired, but was released soon on bail due to her health condition.
She was arrested one more time and sentenced to 3.5 years in April 2016. After she was released in October 2019, her former employer arbitrarily suspended her pension.
Related reports:
Ms. Liang Meihua Sues Former Chinese Dictator Jiang Zemin for Illegal Imprisonment and Torture
Falun Gong Practitioner Ms. Liang Meihua To Be Tried
Ms. Liang Meihua from Nanchang City Severely Persecuted During Ten Years of Imprisonment
Ms. Liang Meihua Defends Herself at Illegal Trial Held in Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province
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Category: Torture of Women
