(Minghui.org) A 43-year-old Nongan County, Jilin Province, resident, has lost her ability to walk after five years of torture in prison for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Li Cong was arrested at home on May 31, 2019, by officers of the Qingshan Village Police Station. Judges Wang Rongfu and Jia Xiaoqiu of the Dehui City Court sentenced her to six years with a 20,000-yuan fine on November 12, 2019. She appealed with the Changchun City Intermediate Court, which ruled to uphold her original verdict on February 18, 2020. When she was transferred from the Nongan County Detention Center to the Jilin Province Women’s Prison in July 2020, her son was not even 10 years old.
Ms. Li was tortured as soon as she was admitted to the prison because she maintained that she had never committed a crime and refused to be treated as a prisoner. The captain of the Newcomers’ Team, Zhao Wei, personally orchestrated the persecution of Ms. Li and ordered that she be held in a separate cell. Zhao transferred three inmates with experience in torturing Falun Gong practitioners from the 8th Ward, including Li Jing and Ding Ling, to monitor Ms. Li.
The inmates forced Ms. Li to sit on a small stool only a few inches high and beat her while she was handcuffed to a bed. They tortured her every night while other inmates slept. The sound of the beatings, shouts of verbal abuse, and Ms. Li’s screams often woke up the inmates on the same floor and made some of them too traumatized to fall back to sleep. Zhao also placed a death bed next to Ms. Li and threatened to use it to torture her.
After two months in the Newcomers’ Team, Ms. Li was assigned to the 8th Ward, designated to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The 8th Ward is housed in a four-story building, with one cell on each floor—Cells 111, 211, 311, and 411—used to specifically target practitioners who refuse to renounce their belief.
Ms. Li was held in Cell 211. The prison guards selected the most vicious inmates from the 8th Ward to torture her, including Zheng Dan, Zha Guang, Tian Xiaoyun, Yang Yali, Li Mingzhu, and Li Minghua. Ms. Li had to sit on a small stool until midnight every day, and the inmates often beat her. Tian and Li Minghua often dragged Ms. Li to the bathroom to verbally abuse her, pour cold water on her, and open the window to freeze her in winter.
On August 11 and September 11, 2020, inmates Tian, Zha and Wang Shuwen attempted to force Ms. Li to write a statement to renounce Falun Gong. Because the door was closed, no one could see what was going on inside, but they could hear the sounds of someone being beaten and Ms. Li struggling.
Ms. Li was taken to a solitary confinement cell on November 24, 2020. The inmates stripped off her warm clothes, poured water over her, and opened the window to freeze her on December 16 and 18. By the time she was let out of solitary confinement at the end of December 2020, she was emaciated and in a delirious state. Yet inmate Li Minghua still forced her to watch, read, or listen to slanderous Falun Gong materials.
Ms. Li was transferred to Cell 311 in the summer of 2021 for further torture. Inmates Sun Yingjie, Lyu Jinmiao, and Zheng Dan were the main ones who monitored and tortured her. Ms. Li was subjected to similar torture as in Cell 211, and all the inmates on the second and third floors could often hear her shouting “Falun Dafa is good” while she was being tortured.
A month later, guards Qian Wei and Zhao Xin called out these inmates to dress them down for their failure to “transform” Ms. Li. They suggested that the inmates pinch the sensitive part of Ms. Li’s inner thighs. Ms. Li did not give in, even as the torture intensified. The guards used her shouts as an excuse to lock her up in a solitary cell for three months. When Ms. Li was let out of the solitary cell for the second time, she could no longer walk and had to be carried to her cell.
Related Reports:
Falun Gong Practitioners Subjected to Brutal Torture in Jilin Province Women’s Prison
Exposing the Torture of Falun Gong Practitioners Jailed at Jilin Province Women’s Prison
Changchun Women’s Prison Instigates Inmates to Torture Falun Gong Practitioners
How Guards in Jilin Province Women’s Prison Torture Falun Gong Practitioners
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