The Atrocities Committed at the Xishanping Forced Labour Camp in Chongqing

On November 23, 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Justice held a meeting in Haikou City, Hainan Province. The main topic of the meeting was how to force the Falun Gong practitioners held in either the prisons or the forced labour camps to renounce their belief in Falun Dafa. They would consider any method that incurred minimal cost to the Ministry. According to the minutes of the meeting, the Deputy Head of the Education Division of the Xishanping Forced Labour Camp shouted at a meeting of the entire detainees of the No. One Section, "According to the instructions from above, we will take strong measures to resolutely strike those Falun Gong practitioners who refuse to renounce their beliefs and are unwilling to reform themselves."

The Political Director of Re-education Through Labour from the Bureau of Chongqing Municipality, Tu Deyu, personally attended the meeting to assume command. He transferred more than 20 policemen who were all heads of sections or above, to Section One of the Seventh Division. The Deputy Director of the forced labour camp, Long Shishun, took the post of Division Chief, and Liu Hua, who heads the four main perpetrators who fiercely torture practitioners, took the post of Section Head.

Thereafter, the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners began to escalate. During the day and every day for very long hours, Falun Gong practitioners were forced to take part in what they called "military training." The practitioners were forced to "stand in 'army corps' position," march in double time, do frog jumps and "pinup butterfly" (closely pressing oneself to a wall with the four limbs extending in four directions). In the evening they forced practitioners to stay up until after midnight, and abused them physically by slapping the practitioners on their faces with the sole of a shoe, whipping their hands and legs with bamboo sticks, seizing the practitioners by their ears and slamming their heads against the wall, and burning the practitioners with cigarette butts or a lighter. These depraved people forced the practitioners to sit straight with eyes looking straight ahead and two hands on the knees, and forbade the practitioners to speak. They also placed mosquito-repellent incense all around the Falun Gong practitioners to bring them to tears with the smoke, but forbade them to move or close their eyes; otherwise, they would be punched and kicked. The torture also included using electric batons to shock sensitive parts of the body, not allowing the practitioners to go to toilet, and striking their backsides with their pants stripped off.

Usually the torture would last for a long period of time. These perpetrators were vicious and cruel. It is known to all the detainees in the forced labour camp that, "The Number One Section of the Number Seven Division is hell on Earth."

Falun Dafa practitioner Zhang Quanming from Changshou District, Chongqing Municipality was forced to get up at 6 o'clock every morning and was not allowed to go to sleep until 2 o'clock the next morning. During the day, besides the so-called "military training," he was forced to "confess" (he was forced to stand for a long time or bend 90 degrees in front of a bucket full of human waste with both hands on his head. The police would force his head into the bucket from time to time to amuse themselves).

Evening is the time the perpetrators would resort to even more violence. Punches and kicks were their daily routine. Whenever there were newly arrived Falun Gong practitioners, they would be met by blows so as to intimidate and threaten these practitioners. Incited by policemen Liu Hua and Li Zongquan, the drug addicts Pu Jun and other criminals who were on night duty would poke Zhang Quanming, who had only four hours to sleep, every ten minutes. Mr. Zhang was not allowed to drink and could only go to the toilet to urinate once a day, and to have a bowel movement once every five days. As a result, he suffered from constipation and could not excrete naturally. This kind of persecution lasted for more than six months.

Falun Dafa practitioner Lin Decai was slapped on the face dozens of time by the drug addict Xia Xianke, who acted on orders from the policemen Huang Yong and Chen Jianping, simply because Mr. Lin refused to curse Teacher. After the beating, Mr. Lin was sent to the "strict control group" where he was given very little to eat. For breakfast he was only given a piece of steamed bread the size of one square inch. For lunch and dinner, the depraved policemen Xiao Xingming and Zhou Benzong incited drug addicts Deng Ping and Pu Jun to count fifty grains of rice for Mr. Lin. In addition, they beat him at least once every day.

In order to cover up their crimes of badly beating up the Falun Gong practitioners, the policemen would use a strip of cloth to tightly bind the practitioners' mouths so that they could not make any sound before or during the beating. Lin Decai was not the only practitioner who had suffered from the beating. Among them, Zhang Peijin was beaten up until he lost consciousness. His buttocks were black and blue and hyperaemia was evident in large areas. He could not sit up for more than a month. In the course of the beatings, Wu Qun's ribs were broken.

Regarding all these atrocities, the policemen from the Chongqing Forced Labour Bureau and the Xishanping Forced Labour Camp always had a number of excuses: "It is the government's decision to persecute Falun Gong. We only implement it. Even if Falun Gong is redressed, the state would be responsible and therefore has nothing to do with us." "As long as the current Party is in power, it will be impossible for Falun Gong to be reinstated." "We adopt the severe repression against you [Falun Gong practitioners] to compel you to renounce your beliefs." "According to the Chinese legal system, there is no law regulating the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners."

The police coerced drug addicts, thieves and other criminal inmates to torture practitioners. Whoever refused to do it would be punished. They would lose bonus points, be beaten up or forced to stand for a long time or be transferred to a production unit to do hard labour as punishment. These criminal inmates said to practitioners, "It was the police guards who forced us to torture you. If we do not torture you then we would be tortured." Policeman Gao Ding praised the criminal inmates as extensions of the eyes and ears as well as the hands of the police guards. He said to the criminals, "You must think of whatever the police guards have thought about and you must expect whatever the police guards have failed to expect."

If the guards showed sympathy toward Dafa practitioners they would be transferred from the No. 7 Division to the division in remote areas or receive some other kind of punishment. Police Guards Yang and Fu of the No. 7 Division were dismissed from the No. 7 Division. However, those police guards who were actively involved in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners would receive promotions in a very short period of time.

On October 7, 1999, units at the bureau level in Chongqing called for emergency meetings of the cadres of the division level or above, to ratify the No. 7 Document of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. The document, classified as top secret, was only read to the cadres at the county and division level. Before passing on the document, the participants were required to take no notes, nor make any recordings, and the document was to be taken back after reading. The key elements of that document were: "Falun Gong is a reactionary political organization," and, "In order to avoid the recurrence of the Polish Trade Union Incident in China, we must protect the Communist leadership and socialist system, and eliminate Falun Gong regardless of cost." [note: Falun Gong has no political involvement and is not against the Chinese government.] After that document was communicated verbally to the guards, the persecution escalated on a large scale. The police guards of the forced labour camp became even more unscrupulous in doing abusing Falun Gong practitioners. When the depraved people failed to suppress the practitioners' spiritual beliefs, they incited the criminal inmates to torture the Falun Gong practitioners in an attempt to destroy them physically.

The No. 7 Document of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the November 23rd meeting of the Legal Minister in Haikou all showed that the root cause of the persecution of the Falun Gong practitioners lies in Beijing. How can we let the most wicked scoundrel gang and its accomplices escape accountability?

The following is a list of the evil deeds committed by the Xishanping police (this is only a partial list, to be continued).

Li Qiwei, a former history teacher, was engaged by the Xishanping Forced Labour Camp, and after he was transferred to the Education Division he began to actively persecute Falun Gong practitioners in order to get promoted.

Chen Jiangping was formerly a doctor of the Xishanping Forced Labour Camp. Because his medical skill was very poor and his attitude towards the patients was very bad, the drug addicts of the forced labour camp all called him a "vet." He was transferred to the Education Division in May 2001. Whenever the Falun Gong practitioners went on hunger strike, he would use forced feeding to torture the practitioners. He never washed or disinfected the rubber tubes used in forced feeding. He always used one tube for several practitioners, and during the process he would purposely pull the tube back and forth to increase the practitioners' suffering. He has totally lost the most basic human conscience and professional ethics.

Gao Ding, from Yaan, often beat up Dafa practitioners during his employment in the Education Division of the Xishanping Forced Labour Camp. Dozens of practitioners have been beaten up. One typical example was Falun Gong practitioner Wang Xing'an. He was handcuffed to the window in freezing weather after he had been badly beaten up in November 2000.

On July 1, 2001, Gao Ding used bamboo sticks to beat Wang Jianguo, Chenmin and Zhang Zhengwei until the three of them had cuts and bruises as well as haematoma all over their backs and limbs. Wang Jianguo's back was hurt the most. His skin was torn and the flesh gaped open. His shirt was soaked with blood. One evening in December 2000, Gao Ding incited drug addicts Deng Xiangchun and Yan Tao to beat up Falun Gong practitioners Chen Jiawu, Jin Tao and Zhang Peijin. Gao Ding carried on loudly, saying that the criminals were extensions of the eyes and ears as well as the hands of the police guards." He repeated to the criminals, "You must think of whatever the police guards have thought about, and you must expect whatever the police guards have failed to expect."

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/6/2/76170.html