Facts of the Persecution of Practitioners in the Beijing Women's Labour Camp

In November 2001, Dafa practitioner Li Xiaofeng from Pinggu County, Beijing, was illegally sentenced to one and a half years of forced labour education for clarifying the facts of Falun Dafa to the public. In December 2001, she was sent to the Beijing Labour Education Personnel Dispatching Department. Because she refused to give up practising cultivation inside the department, she was beaten mercilessly by drug addicted criminals under orders from the Middle Brigade Leader Wang Chao and Middle Brigade Assistant Leader Zhang. Afterwards, they forcibly took her fingerprints.

In the beginning of 2002, Ms. Li was transferred to the Second Brigade of the Beijing Women's Labour Camp under control of Brigade Leader Cheng, and Assistant Brigade Leader Liu Liping. There, she persisted in her upholding her beliefs in Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance, and the Brigade Leaders ordered drug addicts to beat Ms. Li. She suffered from repeated mental abuse and sleep deprivation as well. Once, a gang of criminals, under orders from Cheng and Liu, beat her until her entire body was covered in bruises. Cheng and Liu Liping quickly tried to shirk responsibility for their crimes and found a false witness to testify against Ms. Li. They also tried to coerce her by saying: "If anyone asks, you'd better say you accidentally bumped into something!" When this came to the attention of the many other Falun Gong practitioners being held in the Second Brigade, they decided not to allow these kinds of despicable crimes to go on any further and intensified their efforts to send forth righteous thoughts together. The labour camp officials became very frightened at that point and split up the Second Brigade just before the 2002 Spring Festival. Ms. Li was transferred into the labour camp's intensive training group under the command of Cheng and Liu Liping was put in command of the Fifth Brigade. The condition of Ms. Li is currently unknown. Her release has been postponed even though her sentence has passed.

In Beijing's Haidian District Detention Center, some practitioners have refused to disclose their addresses and names in order to protect the safety of those who know them. At first the police tried to trick them into disclosing their identities, but when they saw it wouldn't work, they started to punch and kick them and shock them all over with electric batons. One female practitioner (a reporter) was shocked every day and as a result there wasn't an inch of un-injured flesh on her body. The Chief of the Preliminary Examination Section even said to her: "We're not afraid if you try and sue us. We have been ordered to do this by high-level authorities." One policeman in the Preliminary Examination Section liked to take female practitioners into confined rooms late at night and swear at and beat them at random. When a female practitioner went on a hunger strike to demand her release after this abuse continued, a policewoman tortured her so badly that she could not even stand up. With the assistance of several criminals in the detention centre, the policewoman injected unknown drugs into the practitioner for days on end, which induced uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea. After a while, the practitioner began vomiting blood and was on the verge of death. Her current whereabouts and condition are unknown.

The Beijing Women's Forced Labour Camp persecutes Dafa practitioners ruthlessly. Practitioners there are not allowed to speak to one another, are put through forced brainwashing, and suffer from sleep deprivation and physical punishment. When practitioners Liu Yan and Lu Kuan firmly persisted in upholding their beliefs, the Head of the Fifth Brigade, Chen Xiuhua, lead a group of criminals to torture them both mentally and physically. He then promised the criminals a reduction in their sentence terms if they beat the practitioners at will from then on. For every meal, practitioner Lu Kuan was only given a small piece of steamed corn bread and some salted vegetables. In November 2002, her sentence was illegally extended by 10 months.

Officials in charge of the persecution dispatch agents from the State Security Department and secret agents to arrest practitioners from their homes. During 2001 and 2002, policemen arrested practitioners on a mass scale, regardless of age, health, or time of day or night. Some practitioners with symptoms of heart disease and blood pressure over 200 were taken away at will and put into labour camps. According to the law, people with serious health conditions cannot be sentenced to labour camps, but these labour camps were forced to accept them all. One practitioner who was paralysed from the waist down after an accident was sent straight to the Tiantanghe Hospital in Daxing District, where she was tortured.

In the Beijing Labour Education Personnel Dispatching Department and Beijing Women's Forced Labour Camp, Police officers force practitioners to work up to 16-17 hours a day. In the Personnel Dispatching Department, some are even forced to work up to 20 hours. One time, just before a high-level official came to inspect the dispatching department, Brigade Leader Yang Jingfang told everyone: "If a leader asks you something, whoever answers incorrectly will be responsible for her words."

Every brigade in the Beijing Women's Forced Labour Camp has a box for accusation letters [to report bad doings by policemen and leaders] in the restrooms. The letters are picked up by representatives of higher-level officials on a regular basis. One time, a practitioner put some letters in an accusation box [about the abuse they had suffered] and these letters happened to be picked up right before the eyes of Brigade Leader Chen. As soon as the representative left with letters, Chen immediately reprimanded the person who was supposed to monitor the practitioners, and demanded the person to write a "self-criticism" paper. From that day on, a lock was put on the restroom door, and any person using the restroom was closely monitored. Once a practitioner went to the restroom, the leader would stand outside as a guard to make sure they did not slip any letters into the accusation box.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/8/3/55065.html