Atrocities Committed in Dalian Forced Labour Camp

The Women's Labour Division of Dalian Labour Camp in Liaoning Province is a place where guards torture steadfast Falun Gong practitioners at will and use all sorts of brutal measures to try to destroy their beliefs. They selected violent inmates to physically abuse practitioners. Below are some of the accounts from the Women's Division of Dalian Labour Camp, which accounts for a small portion of the persecution there.

The torture includes sleep deprivation, electro-shocks, forcing batons and pepper into the practitioners' vagina's, force-feeding with human excrement, forcing the body into awkward positions for prolonged periods of time, and solitary confinement.

The women's division in Dalian Labour Camp comprises of four groups. Practitioners were distributed among the four and mixed with criminal offenders. Under directions from the camp officials, each group uses great cruelty to force practitioners to write "conversion letters." They guards encourage criminal offenders to take part in the beating of practitioners in addition to doing it themselves.

Ms. Yuan, the prison guard who had become the captain of the women's division by savagely torturing practitioners, would torture practitioners at will, constantly scolding them or putting them in solitary confinement while twisting their arms. The most steadfast practitioners have been tortured by her. Many practitioners have been put in solitary confinement several times. They beat Ms. Li Jun from the Dalian Chinese Herb Medical School so severely that they ruptured her spleen.

Guard Yang Jing directed four criminal offenders to beat up practitioner Yang Jun, bruising her whole face, blackening her eyes, and causing her to limp. They also forced her to do hard labour. Yang was put into solitary confinement quite often and forced to remain standing in place for long periods of time. Her memory has become impaired and emaciated due to the abuse she has suffered. Later she was handcuffed to the bed frame, left sitting in her own excrement.

The guard Yang said: "Whoever does not listen to us will be beaten." She encouraged criminal Wang Xin to beat practitioner Wang Lijun. A big patch of Wang Lijun's hair was pulled off, and her face was bruised and swollen. Bystanders tried to pull the Wang Xin away, but they couldn't. Guard Yang stood by and said: "One either gives up Falun Gong and can go upstairs, or she will be treated very harshly."

Guard Yuan got help from Wan Yalin, Yuan Lingyue, and Han Janmin, whose crimes had been exposed previously, to persecute practitioners both mentally and physically. They did not let practitioners sleep and kept fabricating false articles from Teacher, and organised criminals to to brainwash them.

Practitioners were forced to do slave labour for more than ten hours per day. The labour included picking beans, knitting gloves and hats, sewing clothes, packaging chopsticks, tying beads, rolling cotton balls, tying seaweed, and shredding vegetables. Each person was assigned a very heavy workload every day. For example, to separate beans according to their colours, each person needed to finish a quota of 333-667 lbs per day. For tying dried seaweed, everyone was assigned a whole box of about 89-111 lbs. Loading and unloading the heavy boxes are part of the work too. Some older practitioners or some injured practitioners had to work over ten hours a day while limping around. It is extremely hot in the summer. With such a heavy workload and so little sleep, some of them were extremely tired. They couldn't keep their eyes open, with their hands trembling. The guards would then order them to stand up and work.

The schedule of the day was as follows: get up at 4:50 am and begin to work; breakfast at 6:30; continued to work again at 7; lunch at 1:30; and work ends at 10 pm. Quite often, practitioners had to work till 1:30 am in order to finish their quota. Not long after laying down, exhausted, it was time to get up again. Normally the restrooms were locked up. Only during the breaks in the morning, noon, and evening were practitioners allowed to use the restrooms. Whoever did not finish her assigned quota would not be permitted to have meals or use the restroom. On top of that, they would be punished to stand and not allowed to sleep at night. The guards said: "Not finishing the assignment means that you need to be worked on. The work you do does not earn enough for your meals."

The working environment was very bad. The vegetables they shred were saturated with lots of salt water, which wet the entire floor. Practitioners stepped in salt water all day and their shoes and feet were soon damaged. The Women's Division shipped in a bunch of plastic shoes and sold them to practitioners at a price inflated by 2-3 times. The workshop was filled with people, and guards are constantly yelling at the practitioners.

They searched practitioners everyday after work to see if they carried articles from Teacher [referring to the founder of Falun Gong]. Every now and then the Women's Division office would go to each group without notice to do body searches. If an article were found, they would apply very cruel torture or extend their terms. After the manual labour during the day, practitioners were forced to recite the camp rules and regulations. Whoever refused to do so would be deprived of sleep or punished to stand, and continue with their labour the next day as usual.

The labour camp makes money by forcing practitioners to work, and they also extort money from them by selling goods at inflated prices. They would buy daily necessities of cheap quality at low prices and sell them to practitioners at 2-3 times the market value. They forced family members of practitioners to buy moon cakes that the camp made, at a price 5-6 times higher than they were sold outside. The family members that came to visit practitioners were required to buy lunch there at very expensive prices. Money and clothes that the family members sent were often stolen.

The above is only a partial account of what happened in Dalian Labour Camp, seen through my own eyes.

Dalian Labour Camp Telephone numbers:

Office: 86-411-86859072
Switchboard: 86-411-86859961
Director Hao Wenshuai: through switchboard
Assistant director Zhang Baolin: through switchboard
Administration department: through switchboard
Women's Division: through switchboard
Women's Division Team 1: through switchboard
Women's Division Team 2: through switchboard
Women's Division Team 3: through switchboard
Women's Division Team 4: through switchboard

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/7/20/79836.html