(Minghui.org) A 57-year-old woman in Wuhan City, Hubei Province remains detained since her arrest on May 31, 2023, for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Hu Yanhua, a retiree of Wuhan No. 2 Printing and Dyeing Factory, was held in a lockup for ten days and then taken to a mental hospital, even though she had no mental illnesses. After nearly two months in the mental hospital, she was transferred to a brainwashing class on August 8, 2023.
This is not the first time that Ms. Hu has been targeted for her faith. She was arrested in 2004 and detained for one day. Her next arrest took place on September 7, 2004. After she was arrested a third time in early May 2006, she was held at a brainwashing center for eleven months before being taken to Wuhan No. 1 Detention Center, where she was held for another month. Her home was raided three times prior to her latest persecution episode and she was extorted of more than 7,700 yuan in cash over the years.
Details of Latest Persecution
Ms. Hu was arrested at around 10 a.m. on May 31, 2023, right outside her apartment building as she returned home from work. The arresting officers, all in plain clothes, were from the Laodong Police Station in Jiang’an District and the Zongguan Police Station in Qiaokou District.
The next day (June 1), the police raided her home and took her to the Wuhan City Second Lockup (which is used to detain male suspects on administrative detention) to serve a ten-day detention.
Ms. Hu was not released on June 11, when her detention expired. According to an eyewitness, an officer (with badge number FJ0091) arrived at the lockup at 9:30 a.m. that day and completed the check-out paperwork for Ms. Hu. About 30 minutes later, another police cruiser pulled up. Three uniformed officers (with badge numbers 025405, 025442, and 025445) and a plainclothes officer jumped out and seized Ms. Hu.
Ms. Hu’s family was never informed of her whereabouts. They learned from an insider that the police who checked her out from the lockup were from the Laodong Police Station. They drove her straight to Youfu Hospital (a mental hospital to the east of the Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan), where she was kept for nearly two months.
On August 8, three officers from the Laodong Police Station led some community workers to pry open Ms. Hu’s home. They confiscated several flash drives, a computer tower, some clothes, and other personal belongings. Hours later, they picked her up from the mental hospital and took her to the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center.
The Jianghan District 610 Office has been holding brainwashing sessions at various places targeting local Falun Gong practitioners since the beginning of the persecution. For many years since May 2000, the brainwashing sessions have been held in Erdaopeng Industrial Park, which was thus known to locals as the Erdaopeng Brainwashing Center. In recent years, the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center was relocated to the office building of the Caidian District Bureau of Parks and Land, which is near Yusunshan Cemetery. So the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center is now known to locals as the Yusunshan Brainwashing Center too.
According to available statistics, at least several hundred local practitioners have been held at the brainwashing center at one point or another since the end of 1999. Some were held there for up to two years.
At least 17 practitioners died, five were driven insane, and many more were maimed as a result of the abuse they suffered at the brainwashing center. Ms. Wan Dajiu was taken to the brainwashing center on May 6, 2019, about two weeks after she finished serving a four-year prison term for her faith in Falun Gong. When she was released from the brainwashing center in late October 2019, she was in a delirious state. She was mute and didn’t know how to eat or relieve herself. Her family suspected she was drugged at the brainwashing center. She died shortly after her brother took her to a hospital. The exact date of her death remains to be investigated.
Related Reports:
Hubei Woman Dies Weeks after Being Released from Brainwashing Center—Family Suspects She Was Drugged
A Dozen Falun Gong Practitioners Held in Brainwashing Centers in Wuhan
Wuhan Authorities Build New Brainwashing Centers in Bid to Eradicate Falun Gong
Wuhan Opens Nine New Brainwashing Centers to Incarcerate Steadfast Falun Gong Practitioners
Wuhan Brainwashing Center Unlawfully Detains and Tortures Falun Gong Practitioners
Hubei Province Continues to Hold Falun Gong Practitioners at Brainwashing Centers
Four Practitioners Persecuted at Yusun Mountain Brainwashing Center
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