LONDON (EFIC) – The following story is true and every name is real. It is a story about a successful businesswoman who was illegally imprisoned for nine months in one of China’s most brutal labour camps – Wanjia. It is a story of beatings and torture; of survival and perseverance: And it is a testament to the power of her beliefs.
The woman’s name is Yuzhi Wang. She is 47 years old. This is Ms. Wang’s story...
Continued...
Brutal Force-Feedings
I vividly remember my first hunger strike at the Harbin City Detention Centre. In order to force feed me, the doctors at the Harbin City Detention Centre used a metal clamp to pry open my teeth and then pushed a thick rubber tube down to my stomach. My mouth was filled with blood and my body was covered in bruises after every force-feeding. Several people were there to beat and subdue me for these force-feedings. They would pour two big bowls of cold water mixed with corn flour into me, saying that it was for ‘stretching the stomach’. When I screamed, the police were afraid of others hearing me. They ordered inmates to gag and beat me even more.
The force-feeding at the Wanjia Forced Labour Camp was even more violent and cruel. The doctors there used force-feeding as a torture method and didn’t care whether practitioners survived it or not.
Before force-feeding me for the first time, I saw them grab a female Falun Gong practitioner named Shang by the hair and knock her head against the wall and floor. When she was finally unconscious, they forced the tube into her nose to force-feed her. There was no sterilization – they simply brushed the tube around in a basin then forced it through her nose and down into her stomach. Then they injected ground corn grain mixed with cold water.
After they’d finished with her, the two prison doctors turned around and looked at me. They stood there with their forceps and tools in their hands and said, “You see that? You’re next.” After that, I was subjected to this kind of force-feeding every day in jail.
They would beat us to the point where we were almost unconscious before tying our arms and legs down and forcing the tubes through our noses and down into our stomachs. We were tied up to prevent us from pulling the tubes out because of the excruciating pain.
On one occasion I witnessed a female practitioner named Minxia Guo being force-fed. The nurses grabbed Minxia’s hair and pinched her face and body. She was black and blue everywhere. Her whole body began to twitch. When I condemned the guards and doctors for what they were doing, they turned on me and beat me up as well.
One day I heard the desperate cry of a man in the woman’s ward. It was the husband of a Falun Gong practitioner named Yanhong Ding. He had begged to be able to visit her, and when he finally was allowed to come in, they force-fed her right in front of him. This man cried terribly while his wife struggled in pain.
I always knew that if I would simply write a letter denouncing Falun Gong, denouncing its teachings and promise to never practice again, I would be released immediately. But if it is wrong to believe in ‘Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance,’ what hope does humanity have? This persecution was forcing people to choose between their lives and their conscience. I knew that I was being forced to make that choice, and I chose my conscience because I knew that when good men and women renounce good, wholesome beliefs under pressure from a dictatorship, something much greater than us dies.
Torture at the Labour Camp Hospital
Due to the filthy conditions in the labour camp, many practitioners developed purulent scabies. They had pus cysts and blood all over their skin. The worst ones were as big as a peach. During the day the sores were continually discharging pus and mucus. During the night they became so itchy that it was impossible to fall asleep.
Every practitioner that developed scabies would be sent to the hospital run by the forced labour camp – but it wasn’t for medical treatment. When practitioners arrived at the hospital, they were dragged into a small closed room, and forced onto the ground. The doctors would violently remove their clothes, and use sharp steel knives or metal spoons to scratch the pus cysts. They would scrape the spoons back and forth through the flesh and blood, while the practitioner on the ground would be screaming in pain. When they finished with the digging, they would force the practitioner to stand against the wall so that they could clean the blood from their bodies. The water from the faucets was not normal tap water; it was filthy, freezing cold and full of rust.
I remember a new prison doctor who came – a university graduate. Whenever he treated a practitioner, he would follow the correct medical procedure to prick open and wash each of the vesicles. When the chief of the Wanjia Hospital saw what he was doing, he pushed the doctor aside, picked up a steel spoon and started using the spoon to dig into the pus cysts.
This kind of murderous “medical treatment” would be repeated every few days along with daily beatings and force-feeding through the nose.
Any Practitioner Tortured to Death will be Counted as a Suicide
After enduring such torture, many practitioners ended up on the verge of death. I know of at least 8 Falun Gong practitioners who have been tortured to death in Wanjia Forced Labour Camp since the persecution began. The guards told all the practitioners that if they were beaten to death, it would be counted as a suicide and their bodies would be cremated immediately – before informing the families, so there would be no evidence of any torture.
Although I lived in this extreme horror every day, I was determined to survive without compromising my beliefs.
A Struggle to Let the Outside World Know About the Persecution
My husband and children cried and begged the guards to be allowed to visit me on many occasions, but to no avail. Family members of Falun Gong practitioners were not allowed any visitation rights.
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On another occasion, my two younger sisters came from overseas to visit me. They stood at the door, crying and begging to be let in, and they refused to leave. Suddenly it started raining. They covered their faces with their raincoats and went straight past the security guard, and quickly ran inside the hospital. By then I had been on hunger strike for over 50 days.
When I saw them I somehow found the strength to get out of bed. I got outside the door and grabbed the guardrail in the corridor with all my strength. I stared at my two younger sisters. When my sisters saw how emaciated I was, they began crying loudly in the corridor. I was crying too. I told them, “You need to contact international organizations and let the world know what is happening to me!”
In March, 2002, I started writing letters on tissue paper within the Labour Camp to the Harbin Justice Bureau, the Harbin Public Security Department and to the Province’s Public Security Ministry. The letters I wrote were each five feet long. On several occasions they were almost taken away by the warden.
The day after I finished the letters some people from the Justice Bureau came to inspect the labour camp. When they came to my ward I personally handed the letters to them.
Finally Released
After nine months in prison, my health had deteriorated so much that I couldn’t even stand up. My eyes and nose were festering with blood and pus from the force feedings and my eyesight was almost gone. My hunger strike lasted more than 100 days. Towards the end of it, my nose was so swollen that the doctors could no longer force a tube into it. I was on the verge of death, and the doctors knew it. They called my relatives and gave them the responsibility of nursing me back to health.
When I was finally released in May 2002, I had been in jail for nine months. Nine months that seemed like an eternity...I felt as though I had just emerged from hell.
After my release, I immediately began practicing the Falun Gong exercises again. My body and eyes quickly recovered. When the police realized I was healthy once again, they wanted to send my back to the labour camp.
In June 2002, to avoid further persecution, I went to visit my family in the United Arab Emirates. On the way, I used every opportunity to tell the Chinese people at the airports the truth about the persecution. Eventually, someone from the Chinese Embassy saw me and persuaded the local police to arrest me, telling them that I was a dangerous criminal. The Chinese Embassy asked the United Arab Emirates to deport me back to China. Miraculously, through around-the-clock efforts by Canadian Falun Gong practitioners and the Canadian Government, I was given special permission to move to Vancouver, Canada in November 2002, to be with my son.
The rescue efforts of the Canadians probably saved my life.
What I have been through in the past three years is a nightmare. Although the nightmare is over for me, there are still hundreds of thousands of bloody nightmares like mine on-going in China. I hope that by publishing my story, I can help end these nightmares as well.
I attribute my ability to survive the horrific torture to the principles of Falun Gong: ‘Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance’ exist deep in my heart, far beyond the reach of any electric baton, far beyond the reach of a prison guard’s fist. Lies and slanderous propaganda dissolve when faced with the truth. Brutality and torture is no match for compassion. Violence and hatred cannot penetrate tolerance.
For nine months, they tried to make me believe these principles are not true.
They failed.
I feel real freedom is not obtained externally, but internally within the realm of ‘Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance.’ Even when faced with extreme torture and persecution, true Falun Gong practitioners can withstand the unimaginable – even to the end of their life – in order to defend a common good greater than ourselves: the universal principles of ‘Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance.’
Yuzhi Wang is currently living with her son in Vancouver with a Minister’s Permit for Canada. She spends her time letting people know about the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
At the time of Ms. Wang’s release from Wanjia Labour Camp in May 2002, reports had been verified by the Falun Dafa Information Center of eight Falun Gong practitioners who had died inside the labour camp from severe torture. Since her release, six more have been reported dead inside Wanjia Labour Camp.
To arrange an interview with Ms. Wang, please contact in Canada Cindy Gu +1 647-999-8530 or Joel Chipkar +1 416-709-8678.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE EUROPEAN FALUN GONG INFORMATION CENTRE
Peter Jauhal 44 (0) 7739 172 452.
More contacts. http://www.falungonginfo.net/europe.htm
Email: [email protected]
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