------Urgent Appeal-------
Victim:
Ms. Zhao Yuhong, female, 50, was a resident of Zhaoyuan City, Shandong Province
Location:
The Women’s Prison of Shandong Province
Perpetrators:
Police of the Women’s Prison of Shandong Province
Description:
Ms. Zhao Yuhong was arrested in March 2002 for distributing Falun Gong truth clarification materials. Later, she was sentenced to four years in prison and sent to the Women's Prison in Shandong Province. As of today, she has been incarcerated in that prison for over three years. Because she persistent in practicing the Falun Gong exercises, the guards in the prison cruelly torture her. Her thumbs and forefingers have been disabled and is unable to take care of herself. She is also mentally traumatized. For a long time, Ms. Zhao could not speak and has difficulty to sleep.
On March 8, 2005, Ms. Zhao's 74-year-old mother went to visit her at the prison. When the elderly woman visited her daughter, with support of another person, Ms. Zhao walked very slowly to meet her. Each step was taken with painstaking effort. Her face was pale and emaciated, with a dull look in her eyes. She was extremely weak and fragile. Ms. Zhao's mother was heartsick seeing her like this. She asked her daughter tearfully, "Why have you come to such a state?" Ms. Zhao told her that the prison staff has recently escalated the persecution of practitioners who refuse to give up their belief. In spite of the torment Zhao Yuhong has endured, and because she perseveres in practicing the Falun Gong exercises, the doctors in the prison injected her with an unknown drug, making her weak all over and unable to move her legs. Her physical condition is deteriorating rapidly and she is on the brink of death.
It has been reported that the Women's Prison of Shandong Province, under the name of "Xingye Development Limited Corporation of Shandong Province," produces large quantities of goods for export. The detainees in the prison assemble a variety of clothing and tools to be exported to the U.S.A, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Germany. Several million toy owls have been assembled at the prison for Germany through a contract with South Korea. The prison staff forces detainees, including detained practitioners, to perform slave labor in order to make money for them. Detainees are forced to work long hours. Sometimes the work continues overnight, and the detainees go without sleep for several days in a row. Practitioners are not even allowed to take a short break to wash their faces or brush their teeth. They have worked for as long as eight days and eight nights continuously. They work such an inhumane schedule 365 days a year.
The guards order criminal inmates to fiercely beat Falun Gong practitioners, without any concern that practitioners may lose their lives from the savage beatings. They also incite collaborators to abuse them verbally and otherwise humiliate and torture them. These collaborators take turns forcing practitioners to stand or squat for a long time, beat and kick them, deprive them of sleep, and commit other atrocities. type=case,Psychiatric Torture;type=case,women;type=Prison,Shandong Province Women’s Prison;location=Shandong,Zhaoyuan |
