Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Gao Rongrong, an accountant at the Luxun Fine Arts College in Shenyang City

On May 7, 2004, Gao Rongrong's face is covered with burns from electric baton shocks. The picture was taken ten days after the torture

Ms. Gao Rongrong, 36, was an employee of the finance office of Shenyang City’s Luxun Fine Arts Institute in Liaoning Province. At the beginning of the nationwide persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, Ms. Gao was already considered as a key target of the persecution. As a result, her employer fired her.

In July 2003, Ms. Gao was arrested for her beliefs and sent to the Longshan Labor Camp.

On March 22, 2004, Ms. Gao refused to slander Falun Gong, so Tang Yubao, the deputy chief of the second brigade in the labor camp, dragged her from the upper level of her bunk bed down to the ground. He then seized her by the throat and dragged her outside in order to beat her. He ordered guards to take Ms. Gao to the management office and cuff her to the heating pipe. They punched and kicked her, and continuously shocked her with electric batons on her head, face, neck, hands and feet for over half an hour. Later the director of the labor camp, Li Fengshi, came in and said to Ms. Gao, “This is a despotic place; otherwise what’s the use of handcuffs and electric batons here? I don’t believe we cannot handle you, Gao Rongrong.”

The torture seriously impaired Ms. Gao’s health. She suffered from liver pain, stomachaches, vomiting, lack of appetite and intermittent fever. She became deaf in one of her ears after Tang Yubao slapped her. The chief of the first brigade, Yue Jun, ordered prisoners to humiliate Ms. Gao by cutting the hair on the top of her head down to the scalp (her hair had grown back when the pictures were taken).

On May 7, 2004, Tang Yubao and group chief Jiang Zhaohua took Ms. Gao to an office and cuffed her to the heating pipe again. Tang and Jiang continuously shocked Ms. Gao with electric batons for 6 to 7 hours. Ms. Gao’s face was left swollen, blistered, charred, and deformed beyond recognition. Her hair was stuck to the bloody pus on her scorched skin. Her swollen face reduced her eyes to mere slits, and her mouth was also distorted due to the swelling. Even the inmates could not recognize her.

That same day, Ms. Gao was forced to jump out of the window of the office on the second floor. After she was sent to the hospital, she was diagnosed with 2 fractures of her pelvis, her left leg was severely fractured and the bone in her right heel was split. Due to her weak physical condition, the hospital could not even perform surgery on her.

To cover up the torture, the Longshan Labor Camp and the Shenyang City Judicial Bureau lied, saying that the charred electric shock wounds on Ms. Gao’s face were just abrasions due to her fall from the office window.

Besides Ms. Gao, on May 7, 2004, Tang Jinbao and others also tortured Falun Gong practitioners Ms. Jin Kegui and Ms. Liang Shujie with electric batons. Most of Ms. Jin’s face was severely burned and swollen, and pus oozed from her wounded skin. She had black eyes and she limped due to the beating. When Ms. Jin’s daughter came to visit, they would not let her see her mother.

Ms. Wang Xiuyuan, a 52-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from the Shenhe District, Shenyang City, was detained in the Longshan Labor Camp, and kept there even though her term had ended. She was tortured until she was on the verge of death. Then in April 2004, she was released so that the Labor Camp could avoid its responsibility for her impending death. She died one week later, on April 27, 2004.

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Wang Hong suffered kidney failure due to the torture in the Longshan Labor Camp; she died in August 2001, a few days after being released from the labor camp.