Shanghai Apartment Buildings Turned into Virtual Prisons in Order to Block the Distribution of Falun Dafa Informational Materials

As part of their effort to persecute Falun Dafa practitioners, officials in Shanghai are turning residential apartment buildings into "prisons" in order to block the distribution of materials that clarify truth about Falun Dafa. Following the policy of suppressing Dafa practitioners even more deviously while trying to hide the facts of the persecution to the outside world, these officials make accomplices out of innocent people such as gatekeepers, retired communist party members, lift operators, janitors and maintenance staff.

These officials ordered the lift operators [lift operator: a unique job in China as residents are not allowed to operate lifts by themselves] in residential apartment buildings to function as gatekeepers since they are most familiar with people living in the building, especially practitioners. The operators know what floors and which rooms practitioners live in, and they recognize frequent visitors and strangers. They are ordered to enquire about all strangers.

Some officials also requested that the glass doors at the entrance of some apartment buildings be changed to iron bar doors and be locked at night. The glass doors can block out bone-chilling winds during the wintertime. It's winter now. With the iron bar doors, the wind blows right into the building, which makes the hallway very cold. All residents are affected. Indoor temperatures drop too because of this.

In the daytime, Shanghai's residential areas are peppered with uniformed guards, gatekeepers at the entrance of apartment buildings, retired workers patrolling the community, and video cameras installed inside the buildings and at major entrances. At nighttime, if you want to enter an apartment building, you have to go through the gatekeeper since only the gatekeeper has the key to the locked entrance door. It makes these residential buildings feel like prisons.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/12/3/90570.html