Beijing Tiantanghe Women's Forced Labor Camp Viciously Persecutes Dafa Practitioners and Hides the Truth from Reporters

The Tiantanghe Women's Forced Labor Camp has recently been renamed the Xinan Women's Forced Labour Camp. The labour camp's Third Unit is called the "Advanced Team." Whenever inspections by outsiders take place, this is the only team that is allowed to be inspected, and the inspections are always falsified to make the unit look good. In reality the conditions are brutal and inhumane, especially for Falun Gong practitioners.

Jiao Xuexian and his assistant Huai Chunhong are in charge of the Third Unit. Jiao and Huai order drug addicts to watch the steadfast practitioners in the unit and to assist in their ongoing torture. Many practitioners are locked in a small room and forced to stand or hold their arms in the air for long periods of time. They are also deprived of sleep and toilet privileges. The drug addicts, incited by Jiao and Huai, force practitioners into absurd positions, making them cram their heads under a small stool. Often the practitioners are insulted and female practitioners are harassed. Sometimes practitioners are forced to stand naked outdoors on winter nights. Exhaustion is another torture method. They force the practitioners to run by assigning two people to accompany them and prod them. After a few minutes their tormentors are replaced with others, and the practitioners are forced to continue running. If the practitioners get too tired and stop running, they will be dragged. The prolonged torture is meant to force the practitioners to compromise their beliefs.

The authorities take precautions to prevent people from learning about their brutal treatment of practitioners. When they beat practitioners, they first seal their mouths with tape or tie up their necks to prevent their screams from being heard. Normally they wait until all the other prisoners are in another building visiting with their families before they carry out their tortures against the practitioners. At other times they may force everyone else to go outside for a walk so they cannot hear what is going on. When they are finished, they let the other prisoners back in.

People are constantly coming to inspect the Third Unit, so Jiao and Huai hide their crimes and make the conditions look good before anyone comes. First, they remove the determined practitioners from the team. Then they let everyone else read newspapers or watch TV. They tear down the newspapers that usually cover the windows and open all the curtains and doors to create a feeling of openness. After the inspection tour is over, everything reverts to its previous repressive condition.

From the end of September to the beginning of October every year, foreign reporters are allowed to visit and inspect the labour camps. Near the end of September 2001, US reporters were allowed to interview prisoners in the Third Unit. At that time around 100 people were detained in the unit. Every division had rooms packed with bunk beds and people, but on the day of the interview, there were only three or four beds in each room and the total number of people was only 40. The extra inmates and their beds were sent to the second floor and hidden from the reporters. TV's were installed in every division, and the corridors were filled with fish tanks and fresh flowers. The labour camp authorities wanted to show the foreigners a good environment and they wanted to create the impression that there were not many people detained in the camp. But after the inspection was over, they forced everyone to carry their beds back down.

Near the end of September 2002, I heard the police say that foreign reporters would be visiting the camp again. This time, they said, would not be like last year. They intended to let the reporters interview practitioners who had been brainwashed under the persecution and who would give out false information about Falun Gong. Determined practitioners were removed from the scene to prevent them from shouting out "Falun Dafa is good" and speaking the truth. While the fake interviews were being conducted under strict police supervision, everyone else was quiet behind closed doors, watching TV. The results of these falsified interviews were terrible, because the brainwashed people said bad things about Falun Dafa against their consciences.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/4/19/99960.html