Practitioners Tortured and Made to Do Hard Labour at Fenjin Forced Labour Camp in Changchun City

Officials at Fenjin Forced Labour Camp in Changchun try to brainwash Falun Gong practitioners in an attempt to get them to renounce their belief and force them to do hard labour, so that the officials there can make huge amounts of money from it.

Forced to do hard labour

Practitioners at the camp are made to work in a factory that produces bird craft products, which are then exported to Japan. The place is filthy and very dusty. The air is filled with a pungent odour from coloured dyes and the smell emitted from the glue is suffocating. In order to prevent the feathers that are used in the products from being blown away, all of the doors and windows are closed. There is no ventilation, which causes extreme pain to the eyes and throat. Our hands, face and clothes are often covered in dye. If we slow down in doing the work, the guards punch and kick us. When the deadline for the orders got closer, if we haven't finished our quota, our working hours are extended. Sometimes we don't get off from work until late into the night.

Practitioners have to do hard and strenuous work, but they are only given small amounts of very poor quality food. The menu posted on the wall of the canteen in the camp lists an array of substantial meals. But this is just for show, and is not what the practitioners are actually given. Even food that is brought to the camp by the practitioners' families are taken by the guards first. By the time the food gets to the practitioners, there is little or nothing left.

Last winter, in order to make more profit, the prison authorities reduced the heating hours, so that the money they were supposed to spend on heating could be saved and put into their own pockets. As a result, all of those working in the factory were extremely cold, even when they had their jackets on.

Brainwashing

On November 8th, 2012, Shen Quanhong, head of the 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) at Fenjin Forced Labour Camp, didn't allow practitioners' families to visit, stating that it was because of security issues around the time of the 18th National Congress. He also set up a so-called “Assault Team” in a room on the second floor of the Second Team, in order to torture practitioners. All monitoring equipment was removed from the room and two guards led a team of inmates to torture one practitioner, taking turns in three-hour shifts. They forced practitioners to squat down with their hands on their heads. Two criminal inmates then pushed down on the practitioner's shoulders to add more weight, causing extreme pain all over their bodies. Due to long periods of squatting, practitioners' feet became numb until they couldn't stand and they would fall over if they tried to get up.

Xu Zhao, Yu Lihai, Yu Guofeng, Wu Dexiu, and Jiang Yan were taken to the brainwashing centre around December 2011, where they were forced to squat for two to three days. Two inmates were in charge of one practitioner and they punched and kicked them at will. Mr. Wu Dexiu was beaten by Wang Feng, Li Cai, and Li Weidong, who took turns torturing him.

Mr. Jiang Yan, a teacher, was brutally beaten by Li Weidong, Shang Shang, Chen Guangcai and Shen Quanhong, who stood on Mr. Jiang's head. Yang Ligang, the deputy head, was responsible for brainwashing Mr. Jiang. As Mr. Jiang tried to clarify the facts of the persecution to him, he slapped him in the face so hard that he stumbled backward a few steps.

Personnel who participated in the “Assault Team” included Jiang Yan, head of the Second Team, Wang Feng, deputy head of the Second Team, Wang and Yang from the Department of Education, Zhong Wenge, head of the First Team, and Sun Zechao, deputy head of the First Team