Brutal Persecution Suffered by Female Falun Gong Practitioners Inside the Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp in Sichuan Province

I am a female Dafa practitioner from Sichuan Province. In 2000, I wrote a letter to the government emphasizing that Falun Dafa is good, as well as the facts of the persecution faced by Dafa practitioners as a result of Jiang's campaign to eradicate Falun Dafa. As a result, my name was put on a blacklist that was known to every level of government officials. As a result of that, I have been targeted for persecution from that day on, for writing some supportive words for Falun Dafa. Under direct government pressure, the boss of my work unit laid me off.

In 2001, local "610 Office" personnel [an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems] and police from the local police station tried to force me into a brainwashing programme. I had to leave home to avoid the constant harassment and threat of arrest. The local public security authorities and police extorted tens of thousands of Yuan from my work unit and family by claiming the funds were to pay for them to search for me. However, in reality they openly stated, "What we want is to make her family penniless" which was in accordance with Jiang's persecution policy against Falun Gong practitioners to, "Ruin their reputation, bankrupt them financially, destroy them physically." Meanwhile, the authorities began harassing family members and friends who knew me by coming to their homes in the middle of the night. In May of 2002, when I was clarifying the truth about Dafa to some people outside of my hometown, someone reported me to the police in order to get a reward, and policemen came and arrested me. Later, I was illegally sentenced to two years of forced labour education and sent to the Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp in Zizhong, Sichuan Province.

Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp is a brutal environment and those incarcerated there consider it to be hell on earth. The 7th squadron and 8th squadron are the squadrons that were organized specifically to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Around 150 Falun Gong practitioners, on average aged over 50, were detained in these two squadrons. These squadrons also had a number of prisoners who were not Falun Gong practitioners, but who had committed different kinds of crimes. The labour camp guards selected them from other squadrons and asked them to watch Falun Gong practitioners closely in return for benefits and sentence reductions. These criminals were tools that were used as the police officials' eyes and ears, as well as sticks to beat Dafa practitioners. Usually, two criminals watched one Falun Gong practitioner closely 24 hours a day in shifts. They were directed to force Falun Gong practitioners to sit or stand in military postures in front of a wall for 18 hours a day, go to sleep at 12 a.m. and get up at 6 a.m. If any of the inmates treated Falun Gong practitioners a little bit better, they were either reprimanded, given corporal punishment, had their sentences extended, or sent back to their original squadron by the police officers. Since their original squadron's production duties were extremely heavy and often required overtime work, they watched Falun Gong practitioners ever more closely, particularly when they faced the prospect of being released earlier.

At the end of November 2002, the police officers directed some collaborators [former practitioners who had given up their belief in Dafa under pressure and now are used to help persecute their fellow practitioners] to cooperate with them and inmates to start another wave of persecution against practitioners by using exceptionally brutal means. Falun Gong practitioners were forced to stand in military postures, and not allowed to sit down even when having a meal. They were only allowed to sleep from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., and were allowed to use the toilet only twice a day at specified times, only after reporting to the prison officials. Additionally, practitioners were force-fed water so as to make them have to urinate more frequently and lose control of their bladder from the reduced toilet privileges. Whenever this happened, prison guards would cruelly force practitioners to soak up the urine from the floor with toilet paper, squeeze it into a bowl and then drink it down. This type of persecution continued until the end of 2002.

After that, the persecution intensified even more. We were not allowed to sleep at all and had to stand 24 hours a day in military postures. About 10 days later, we were allowed to sit in front of a wall, but sleep was still not allowed. This continued until the end of February 2003, when Falun Gong practitioners were finally allowed to sleep at 12 a.m. During that period, the inmates frequently verbally abused and beat Falun Gong practitioners. They even stripped off some practitioners' clothes, beating and forced cold water into their vaginas. When one female practitioner was forced to stand facing a wall without any clothes on, a patrolling prison official came and jeered at her: "don't you look pretty standing this way?" Some vicious male guards stripped the clothes from several female practitioners, forced one down to the ground, and then forced another female practitioner on the top of her in order to humiliate and degrade them.

During this period, two foreign reporters came to the Camp to investigate whether the reports that they had a water dungeon which they used for torture were true. They arrived at the 8th squadron and asked one practitioner who would not renounce her belief in Falun Gong. The practitioner only replied, "I won't say anything." After that, the guards hung her by her hands from the window frames for four days and four nights.

The question remains, does Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp have any water dungeons? One practitioner told me that she was once locked in a water dungeon. It is located behind the building of the 4th squadron.

Prior to the Chinese New Year of 2004, the labour camp started another round of brainwashing and torture, attempting to force practitioners to renounce their belief in Dafa. Because of overseas Dafa practitioners' gave support in exposing the persecution inside the labour camp to the world, the brutal "transformation" period ended as soon as it started.

At present, the prison guards in Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp are forcing detained female Falun Gong practitioners to work almost non-stop. Everyone has to crochet flowers using over three pounds of cotton thread each month. Practitioners can only sleep from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. each night and sometimes they have to work up to two to three consecutive nights without any sleep so as to finish the production quota for the month. If they cannot finish the production quota, their sentence in the forced labour camp will be extended.

Contact information of Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp in Zizhong is enclosed below:

Director of Education Division at Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp: Li Ziqiang.

Police Officers of the 8th Squadron at Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp: Li Qi, Yang Zhengrong, Liao.

The phone numbers of the 8th Squadron, Nanmusi Women's Labour Camp: 86-832-5212613; 86-832-5212174.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/5/9/74208.html