Falun Gong Practitioners Forced into Intensive Slave Labour in Hazardous Conditions at Chaoyanggou Labour Camp

In April of 2001, the guards at the Chaoyanggou Labour Camp took advantage of the fact that detainees of all brigades were working outside the camp. This enabled them to enslave and torture Falun Gong practitioners illegally.

Detainees in the 2nd brigade were ordered to work in a factory producing floorboard materials. There the harm of inhaling plastic dust was a very serious problem and almost no safety equipment was offered. Practitioners were forced to do hard labour even when they were not given enough food to eat in any one of the three meals in a day. When they were loading and unloading PVC material, everyone had to carry bags close to or over one hundred pounds and pile them up neatly. Practitioners were soaked with sweat, gasping for breath, while the guards and the head of the hooligans were shouting and cursing the practitioners to work harder. They never cared if practitioners died from the hard work. Some practitioners were weak and emaciated due to the torture they suffered.

Then, detainees in the 4th brigade were ordered to work in a brickyard on the western side of the camp, where the bricks were produced. The situation there for production was extremely harsh. There was no workshop, and everything had to be done in just an open area without any shelter at all. More than ten piles of some kind of powder was the raw material used to produce bricks. Around the piles of powder stood several big sieves and more than ten people were sifting stove-powder. If one slowed down he would be cursed or beaten. Other people were using carts to transfer powder, and some were transferring bricks just produced. Everyone had to work at a jogging pace. Falun Gong practitioners were forced to work for as long as ten hours per day, pushing carts for a distance of ten thousand meters in total; and the labour intensity was so heavy that a common person could not take it. In addition, the tools and devices were simple and broken, the sunlight was cruelly hot, and the powder and dust filled the air, making everyone's eyes, nose, ears and whole body full of powder and dust.

Such a harmful and terrible mode of production seriously damaged the practitioners' health. Due to the long term exposure to the sun, their skin became black-red and one could not tell their face from their hair. The sun made the burned skin on their back become cracked and very painful. Their waists were bent by the heavy work load. There were large blisters all over their hands. After the blisters broke, they could not even touch water to wash their own clothes. Seeing that they had been tortured to such a extent, their family members held back their tears; but felt a stabbing pain in their hearts when they came to see them on visiting days. The policemen in the camp threatened their family members, and pressured them to persuade the practitioners to give up their belief in Dafa.

Detainees in the 6th brigade were mainly working on farms. From sowing to reaping, there was almost no time for a break. Thirst under the strong sun, laboring in the field, cruel torture in the guards' room, suffering in the classroom of the water-house, and hunger and scabies tormented practitioners all the time.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/5/16/74788.html