Yang Xuan, female, 33 years old, is from Xinyi City in Jiangsu Province. She joined The Church of Almighty God in 2008. After being arrested in July 2018, she was subjected to 22 days of brutal torture including “exhausting the eagle” and “doing the splits.” At 12:30 a.m. on July 26, 2018, Yang was at the home of a Christian in Xuzhou City when seven police officers with the local police station suddenly pried open the door and burst in to arrest her. That day at 5:00 p.m., the officers took Yang to a hotel in Xuzhou for interrogation, attempting to force her to give up information on where the church money was kept. She refused to divulge anything. They viciously boxed her ears and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her down and back up over and over again. They pulled her hair so violently that it fell off her head onto the floor here and there. The officers then handcuffed her behind her back to the back of the chair so that when she slid down, the weight of her entire body was pressing on her two arms. The teeth on the handcuffs dug deep into her flesh—the pain was unbearable.
The next day Mr. Liu, the chief of the police station, continued to interrogate Yang Xuan on the whereabouts of the church money. Seeing she wouldn’t say a word, he viciously smacked her in the face, tweaked her ears, and pressed on the acupuncture points around her neck—Yang was in incredible pain. One officer barked at her: “It’s national policy to ‘lock some up, do some in.’ For cases like yours, there’s no limit to how long we can interrogate you!”
On August 3, the police transferred Yang to a hotel in another city (Xinyi) to continue their secret interrogations. In an effort to force her to give up information on the church money, they wouldn’t allow her to sleep for three consecutive days. They also viciously smacked the sides of her head over and over, and grabbed her head and banged it into the wall. She heard a humming sound reverberating through her head and her entire face was bruised.
By the evening of August 12, Yang hadn’t slept for ten days, but the police still continued to torture her. Two officers stood next to her, one on each side, grabbing her legs and yanking them out to the side to make her “do the splits.” She was in so much pain that her entire body was trembling uncontrollably—she was crying out in agony. Early morning of August 16 when the officers were soundly asleep, Yang seized on the opportunity and luckily, was able to escape from the hotel. Suffering 22 days of brutal torture at the hands of the police, Yang Xuan had been brutalized in both body and heart. She walks with a limp to this day from the injury done to her legs through torture, and her thumbs and the back of her hands are numb, lacking feeling.
