Exposing the Slave Labour of Falun Gong Practitioners in Shandong Province's 1st Forced Labour Camp

Since July 1999, when the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, Shandong Province's No. 1 Forced Labour Camp (popularly known as Jinan City's Jiangshuiquan Forced Labour Camp) has spared no effort in carrying out various persecution efforts. One of the methods used is to make prisoners put in long hours of hard labour.

From 2002 to 2003, one of the tasks in the labour camp was to stick labels onto medicine packages. The labels were printed by Jinan City's Tianyi Printing Company. (Formerly called the Donggang Company, it is known to the outside world as a company that produces high-class non-carbon paper.) Labels must be affixed both inside and outside the package. The contents are "Beijing's Pressure Lowering No. 0" produced by Beijing's Shuanghe Medicine, Ltd.

Practitioners in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd divisions of the labour camp must stick the "Shuanghe" label on the packages of "Beijing's Pressure Lowering No. 0." The medicine boxes are closely packaged in a bigger paper box and delivered to the labour camp. The paper boxes come in two sizes. The big box contains 2,000 medicine boxes, which are placed in two layers. The smaller box can hold 1,000 medicine boxes. In order to make more profits, the labour camp usually has the larger-sized boxes delivered.

Practitioners from the 1st, 2nd, and the 3rd divisions are each forced to finish three to four boxes each day. Young practitioners can complete eleven boxes at most in a day. In other words, everyone has to put labels on 6,000-8,000 medicine boxes; sometimes, even over 20,000 boxes.

Approximate working hours are 7:30 to 11:30 a.m., 12 to 6 p.m., and 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and even 9 or 10 p.m. Practitioners have to do 12 to13 hours of high-intensity labour everyday. Long hours of labour causes extreme pain in the back, shoulders, and hands, and particularly in the neck area. The neck becomes so numb it cannot move.

Guards from the labour camp cooperate with a young man named Wang, who is assigned by the Jinan City's Tianyi Printing Company. They gave strict requirements for the labelling process. Usually, a company's label is stuck on the assigned spot in an appropriate position. But Wang demanded that the label be put on the box in a very particular and specific position, not allowing even a little crookedness. He required that the label be centred, with a specific distance to top, bottom, left, and right. Many people cannot achieve that degree of exactitude, and the labels are often crooked or the distances not right. In those cases, it is considered a wasted product. The labourer will either be bullied by the guards or be ordered to take the unqualified products back to his or her cell and redo them after the regular day's work is done. Very often, they work till 11 or midnight, and they still need to start another load of work the next day.

The guards don't ease off even on older women. Those who are young and quick with their hands don't escape constant monitoring and harassment. A young female college student from the 2nd division is quick with her hands. Everyday she has to finish more than ten boxes. One day, for some reason, she only completed six boxes. The guards ordered a "collaborator¹" named Su Fenghua to question her. Su asked, "With quick hands like yours, how come you finished less than the average person?" One time, fewer labels were delivered. The guards ordered some quick hands from the divisions to come and do them. One guard, Xu Ruiju, pointed to the seven or eight boxes by the table and said to the college student, "These boxes are just for you."

The 2nd division guard, Cao Dongyan, is in charge of production. She walks around and does inspections. Falun Gong practitioners are forced to work long hours. Everyday they are in an extremely stressful state. If anyone doesn't meet the quota or slacks off a little bit, she will suffer officer Cao Dongyan's wrath. Humiliation and verbal abuse become an everyday thing. Often someone faints in the production room. Practitioners who operate the sewing machine often accidentally have the machine needles punch through their fingers. In addition, one doesn't know when Cao Dongyan's hoarse and hysterical yelling will begin.

Behind every business deal between the forced labour camp and outside companies, prisoners' blood and tears are exchanged. Since Jiang Zemin's regime initiated the persecution, they've used the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a tool to persecute Falun Gong practitioners who believe in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance." We have seen too much evil and too many crimes against conscience and morality. We believe in the universal principle of " Good is rewarded, Evil is punished," and "No one can escape punishment under the law in this world, nor can they escape judgement from Heaven."

Note

1. "Collaborators": Former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/10/15/140275.html