Carefully Staged Event at Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp Misleads and Deceives Chinese and Foreign Reporters

Under the direction of Jiang Zemin and his cohorts, inside Beijing's Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp violence and brainwashing are used to persecute innocent and upright practitioners. Meanwhile, outside of the labour camp, false kindness, and lies are used to deceive the general public inside and outside of China. On June 12, 2001, the media visit to Tuanhe was actually a carefully arranged show to mislead and deceive the reporters.

First of all, the labour camp chose the visit date of June 12, 2001. Tuanhe handpicked and prepared the "transformed" ex-practitioners for interviewing. To demonstrate the camp's willingness to be fair, this time they also let some firm practitioners talk to the reporters. In the past, the labour camp was concerned that their illegal torture would be exposed. Every time a reporter was at the camp, firm practitioners were hidden from the media. Why not this time?

Actually, the two firm Falun Gong practitioners (Mr. Yang Haidong and Mr. Fong Bin) that were to be interviewed had just been transferred from the Beijing labour education to the Tuanhe camp the day before the media visit. These two had not yet experienced any of the illegal persecution happening in the camp.

Mr. Yang Haidong had been suffering from mental stress during his detention. Having an introverted and quiet personality, and under the camp police guard, Mr. Yang did not talk much at all and would probably not mention any persecution. On the other hand, Mr. Fong Bin was extroverted, but had not been beaten or verbally abused during his detention, as this was his first time at this camp. So Mr. Fong did not have anything to say about the camp. Thus, after careful evaluation of the situation, the Tuanhe labour camp dared to allow these two practitioners to be interviewed.

On the afternoon of June 11, 2001, police officers escorted Mr. Yang and Mr. Fong from Beijing labour education to the Tuanhe forced labour camp. The two were sent to Branch 5, which had been established in early 2001, for the purpose of detaining Falun Gong practitioners. At Branch 5 terrible torture cases had not yet occurred like they had in Branches 2 and 3, where beatings had severely injured practitioner Mr. Lu Changjun's lower torso. In reality, this was another fraudulent arrangement by the camp. Through rounds of bloody torture and deceit, some of the detained practitioners had given up practicing cultivation. This plus a strict blockade on all information, allowed the labour camp to declare that 90% or more of the practitioners educated through labour had been "transformed" [renounced their belief]

The Tuanhe labour camp also set up a detention branch that did not use overt violence, and so could be used to showcase the "education through labour accomplishments" and a "civilized window" to deceive people. Mr. Yang Baoli, former branch lead, once proclaimed, "Branch 5 forbids physical punishment or any crude mistreatment!" Actually, this and the new branch dorm, built later for camp personnel, were just a show for outside visitors. Upon arriving at Branch 5, the two new practitioners were forbidden to talk to other detainees, and thus, they did not know what the actual situation was for other firm practitioners.

Early on the morning of the visiting day, June 12, 2001, the labour camp hid the truly firm practitioners and the ones that had been transformed against their will and had not yet completely renounced their belief. At that time the camp received three groups of detained practitioners. They took Branch 2 to Warehouse 1 and Branch 3 to Warehouse 2, and left Branch 5 alone in the west-side dorm. Meanwhile, Branch 7, comprised mainly of drug offenders, also detained a small number of Falun Gong practitioners in a small room behind the warehouses. Branches 2 and 3 also moved their TV set to the warehouse and for the first time ever, played a movie to the group, as they feared the practitioners would shout out and expose the deceit. At that time many detainees were wondering why they were relocated to a dirty warehouse to watch a video. The camp police left those that had already betrayed their beliefs in the branch dorm. They had been trained and rehearsed on how to answer questions from the reporters, such as "How is the food?" "Is there any physical punishment?" etc. It was staged to prevent any errors from happening during the interviews.

At some time past 9 am, Jiang Haiquan, deputy lead of Branch 3, and another policeman went to Branch 5 to get Mr. Yang and Mr. Fong and escort them to the east-side dorm of Branch 3 for chatting. Jiang personally beat and verbally abused many Dafa practitioners. Mr. Zhao Ming, Mr. Wei Rutang, Mr. Yang Shuqiang, Mr. Zhang Jiuhai, and others suffered under his vicious attacks. Jiang was promoted to Deputy Director of the camp's Education Department. The two practitioners did not know what was going on, when at around 11 am, dozens of reporters came to interview them. There were reporters from Hong Kong, Macau, and other countries, including representatives of Dagongbao, Mingbao, South China Morning Post, Macau Daily, Taiwan's The China Times, The Times, from Germany and France, as well as Xinhua News and many other Chinese media. The two practitioners were taken to two different rooms for interviews but always watched by the camp police.

Indeed, Mr. Yang and Mr. Fong had no idea that they were to be interviewed and worse, they did not know that the reporters were interested in the human rights issues inside the labour camp, at which they had arrived only the day before and did not know about at all.

The interview was arranged at 11 am, as noon was the collective lunchtime. The reporters did not have a lot of time to interview the men and could not dig out the whole truth. The interviews where done under great time pressure. When asked about beating and verbal abuse, the two practitioners had to say they had not experienced either; but did not add that they had only been on site for one day. However, Mr. Fong did appear to be very firm and stated that he could sacrifice everything for Dafa. He did not realize that his words created a false image to the people: You see, the labour camp allows Falun Gong firm believers to freely express their own will! His statement fed into the camp deceit and delighted the perpetrators of the event.

Try to visualize how different the interviews would have been if firm practitioners that had been in the camp for a long time and who had experienced the cruel tortures had been interviewed. How different would the result have been? Would the labour camp dare to arrange it? How about now, would the camp allow certain named practitioners another round of interviews?!

After about 20 minutes of interviews, Mr. Zhuang Xuehong, Deputy Head of the camp at the time, hurriedly announced that lunch was ready and time was up. In this way the staged interview was quickly ended because they feared that the reporters would see some discrepancy if the meeting was allowed to continue for very long.

Under the labour camp's staging and direction, how could people who did not know the truth see any discrepancies? Even family members of the detained Falun Gong practitioners were misled and deceived when they saw green bushes and red flowers at the camp. Someone said, "This is a nice environment. You see the nation spends so much money and effort to take care of you! The camp leaders are kindly looking after you!"

Those innocent family members would never know that the so-called "conversions" were closely tied to financial incentives for the camp police. At that time, the bonus for camp police was 1,000 Yuan per converted practitioner. The penalty for non-conversion or reversal was 1,500 Yuan. Could the family members imagine the vicious faces of the camp personnel when they brutally applied electric batons or frantically struck the firm practitioners?

During the interview, a reporter asked one of the escorts, Mr. Jiang Haiquan, how the camp usually accomplished "conversion." Playing to the reporters, and under the flashing cameras of Chinese and foreign media, he shamelessly replied, "In the same way as you see today, on an equal basis we calmly and peacefully exchange our thoughts. To convert or not to convert is their own choice." How false was the kindness and how shameless was the lie! This carefully staged show deceived everyone present, as well as the two newly arrived practitioners, Mr. Yang and Mr. Fong.

These facts only expose a small part of the whole truth. It was out of the bag of propaganda tricks from the Jiang regime. However, the tricks cannot hide forever the crimes committed in the forced labour camp. The deceit will eventually be exposed to society and the world.

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Editor's Note:

By presenting the facts, this article reveals the inside story of how Tuanhe forced labour camp deceived Chinese and international media. However, we would like to make the following points:

Tuanhe forced labour camp cannot evade liability for illegally holding innocent Falun Gong practitioners; no matter how the camp tries to artificially beautify the external environment. Tuanhe forced labour camp is liable for "conversions" accomplished by depriving and trampling on citizen's freedom of belief bestowed by China's Constitution--no matter how the camp craft the image of the wicked camp police.

Currently, Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China are deprived of their freedom of speech guaranteed in China's Constitution. Even worse, the detained practitioners lost their basic human rights and during the interviews the practitioner did not have real personal freedom. Under this condition, the interview orchestrated by Jiang Zemin's regime cannot be believed at all. This is no different from the previous situation of the Nazi's inviting the world media to interview the Jews detained in their concentration camps.

Given these two points, a reporter may reach the correct conclusion even without talking to camp detainees. In fact, even if the camp did not apply crude punishment to the individual practitioners, the camp had already participated in the persecution by detaining practitioners just because of their beliefs. It is an illegal, forced, detention, and deprivation of the freedom of belief. Even if there were minor mix-ups of details or names in earlier reports about persecution occurring in the camp, one cannot deny the fact that cruel tortures were used to force a large number of practitioners to give up their belief in Falun Gong. People in society and the world we should use our consciences together with our voices to condemn and stop this persecution.

We call upon all reporters to help paint the real image of what happens inside Tuanhe and other Chinese forced labour camps. We hope that Dafa practitioners will stay firm under all of the circumstances in counteracting the evil authorities and not letting them exploit any gaps. We also hope that the family members of practitioners as well as the innocent people in the world will not to be deceived by Jiang Zemin and his cohorts.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/8/27/56307.html