Three-Hundred Female Falun Gong Practitioners Suffering in Harbin Women's Jail

Harbin Women's Jail is the main location where female Falun Gong practitioners who have been sentenced to jail in Heilongjiang Province have been kept. There are at least 300 Falun Gong practitioners detained there. The police guards have adopted different means to persecute different Falun Gong practitioners. To those practitioners who agree to work in the jail but do not give up their practise of Falun Dafa, the police force them to work long hours so as to crush their righteous belief in Dafa by exhausting them with intensive work. For those who refuse to work, the police resort to all kinds of physical punishment and maltreatment.

Jail Zone No. 9 is a prime example of this. Around forty Falun Gong practitioners are detained in this zone. Before March of 2003, police guards forced all Falun Gong practitioners detained there to continuously walk between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m., except at lunchtime. They also forced practitioners to squat down and listen to broadcasts with fabricated events that defamed Dafa. The whole session is watched and any practitioner that stands up to defend Dafa is forced down at once. Police guards only give half a bun to each practitioner for every meal. Ordinary prisoners are allowed to eat a regular ration of food. Practitioners are routinely under fed, getting only a little bit or none of the vegetables they should be fed according to the rules in the jail. At the same time, practitioners often suffered harsh punishment.

In March of this year, one of the practitioners in Zone No. 9 was punished by being made to stay in confinement. Other practitioners in the zone sent one practitioner to check with the guards about the reason. The guard then commanded criminal prisoners to tie him up and brutally beat him. All the practitioners, including those who compromised under pressure, have stepped forward to question the guards. All the practitioners who were doing forced labour also held a strike to protest their poor treatment. Then the guards punished all the practitioners and tried to force them to walk for hours, however no practitioner would comply with their orders. The guards then interrogated practitioners one by one. Some were sent to torture; some were tied up and made to squat on the floor for extended periods, some could not bear the pain and were forced to work. The next day, guards sent some male guards over to beat up those female practitioners who would not renounce their belief and forced them to sit on the ice-cold concrete floor in the chilly March of northeastern China. Some practitioners' legs have been injured from this torture. Similar things also happened in other jail zones. Some practitioner in Jail Zone No. 3 had swollen legs, some could not see any more. All practitioners still insisted on studying the Fa [the teachings of Falun Dafa] despite the severity of the situation. Now it has been over 100 days and their persecution still continues.

Former Team Leader of Jail Zone No. 9 Yang Hua and present Team Leader Zheng Jie are both very malicious. They separated those practitioners who were able to recite Teacher's articles from memory and put them in solitary confinement to isolate them from other practitioners. One of the practitioners was sent to solitary confinement because he protected other practitioners from being persecuted. Another practitioner was sent to solitary confinement for encouraging other practitioners to be firm in their righteous thoughts. One practitioner has been detained in confinement for over 400 days. The confinement in the jail is not used to punish other prisoners who are actually criminals; instead, it has become a special tool used to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The practitioners detained in solitary confinement can only get a bowl of corn flour soup for every meal, and are constrained with handcuffs and shackles from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Guards took off practitioners' handcuffs only for several minutes while they ate their meals. The way practitioners are handcuffed by the guards is especially cruel and unusual. Their hands are handcuffed behind their back with one arm twisted over the shoulder downward and the other twisted from the lower back upward. One practitioner could not bear the pain and wrote the so-called pledge [to stop practising Dafa]. When her mother visited her, she even received high-pressure treatment that almost endangered her life. Guard Zheng Jie also tried to force her mother to sign the Death Statement, which indicated that her mother promised not to make the jail take responsibility if her daughter died. This practitioner's mother got so angry that she fainted on the spot. Zheng Jie still would not let it go and tried to force this practitioner's 16-year-old daughter to sign the statement. Eventually, Zheng Jie didn't allow any more family visits. This practitioner kept righteous thoughts and actions and has declared that her signature to give up practising Falun Dafa was invalid.

We have seen that the practitioners who have been illegally detained earlier have adopted all sorts of ways to react to the evil persecution because of their understanding and for other reasons. However, now they are more and more clear-headed, and quite a lot of them do not cooperate with the evil doer's requests. They have remained together as one body.

Appendix: Harbin Women's Jail Phone: 86-451-86684001 (to connect to various jail zones); 86-451-86694053 (office on duty during off hours)

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/8/4/55101.html