Female Practitioners Incarcerated in Water Dungeons in Nanmusi Forced Labour Camp

In 2000, Ms Tao Juhua and Ms Zhu Yinfang were arrested for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa. They were severely persecuted in the Nanmusi Labour Camp for not cooperating with the illegal treatment and detention they received.

Ms Tao Juhua, Ms Zhu Yinfang and other Dafa practitioners were locked up in prison cells for their perseverance in regularly doing Falun Gong exercises. Ms Tao Juhua was forced to sleep on the corridor floor every night, and was later confined to a water dungeon.[1] She practised the Falun Dafa exercises to protest every time the labour camp held meetings to defame Falun Dafa; in so doing she was beaten by collaborators [former practitioners who have turned stopped practising Falun Dafa due to pressure and torture] and security guards. One night, the CCTV (Chinese state-owned TV) programme "Focus" defamed Dafa, so she began to do Dafa exercises to validate Dafa. The guards dragged and threw her against a wall. She vomited a large quantity of blood. On June 20, 2001, Ms Tao Juhua was moved to the 8th Squad. She refused to call out her "number." Squad Director Li Jun ordered collaborators to handcuff her behind the back to the iron bars of the window of the confinement cell, with a quilt stuffed between her arms on her back to cause further pain. After she fainted the collaborators poured cold water on her in order to revive her for continued torture. When she would practise the exercises, drug addict inmates were often ordered to beat her with metal pipes. Her backside was completely purple and black from the beatings.

Ms Zhu Yinfang was forced to wear shackles attached to an iron weight weighing over 30 kilograms (75 lbs). She persevered in reciting Teacher's articles, and would erase the defamatory materials posted by the guards. When she gained her freedom in September 2001, she had already been detained for 7-8 months longer than the original illegal sentence she had been given.

On October 14, 2001, while clarifying the truth, Ms Tao Juhua, Ms Zhu Yinfang, Zhao Xiangrong and others were again illegally arrested by the police. Every day, practitioners recited Teacher's teachings aloud in the detention centre, used righteous thoughts to free their hands from the handcuffs and performed the exercises. They were violently beaten by the guards. In the beginning, the guards put handcuffs and shackles with iron weights on each of them, and then used another shackle to link two people to each other. Later they shackled practitioners' hands and feet together.

By the end of November they were transferred to the newly built Chengdu Detention Centre. There they refused to be subjected to a form of sitting torture, and were handcuffed, brutally beaten, and kicked by three guards and over 10 criminal inmates. Ms Tao Juhua fainted and vomited blood; wounds covered her arms. She had many swollen lumps on her head, one as big as an egg, and a broken rib on her left side. When she did not eat or drink for five days, the inspectors just walked past her without a word. At last the guards started to force feed her. Ms Tao lost a few teeth from the force-feeding and the rest of her teeth became loose from the brutal procedure. Her eyes sometimes could not see and she also started losing her hearing.

The guards put double shackles, each with six iron weights, on Zhao Xiangrong and Zhu Yinfang. Ms Zhu's face was so swollen from being kicked with boots that she was unable to open her mouth. When other practitioners suffered from the persecution she would, even with those shackles on, cover them with her own body trying to protect them. She was covered with wounds and injuries all over. The guards ordered the criminal inmates to pour cold water over her whole body, including her coat and cotton shoes. They sealed her lips with tape, pulled her by the hair and stomped and kicked her on the head.

At present, Zhao Xiangrong and Ms Zhu are still incarcerated and we are unable to obtain any recent information on their situation and condition.

[[1] Water Dungeon - Wearing cotton coat and pants, practitioners are forced to sit down beside the cell vent in a very uncomfortable contorted position, unable to stretch or lie down. The water dungeon area is very small and one cannot lean against the wall for support. The practitioner is forced to sit on the cold cement floor. The police then pour water onto the floor, soaking one's coat and pants with freezing water. After they repeatedly pour water into the dungeon, one's body will be completely soaked and partially immersed in water. Oftentimes the water can go chest deep. Ice-cold water and wind chill one to the bones. If one does not yield, this torture can continue indefinitely].

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/7/4/53447.html