Crimes Committed During Hubei Province's Fourth Brainwashing Session of 2005

This year, the fourth wave of brainwashing activities in Hubei Province was conducted by the "Hubei Provincial Legal Education Centre." The officials and staff there resorted to all sorts of cruel and brutal methods to mentally torture the Falun Gong practitioners, in an attempt to force them to give up their belief in Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. The practitioners were illegally arrested in various regions. This brainwashing session started on September 5th, 2005 and ended in October, lasting 38 days. The persecutors included Secretary Jiang, Section Leader Gong, Director Liu and collaborators¹ Yang Huizhen and Gao Yan.

What the staff of the brainwashing centre feared most, including Communist Party members and the so-called "experts and professors," were the phone calls made by overseas Falun Gong practitioners. What they were most concerned with was whether or not they were listed as persecutors on the Clearwisdom website or similar lists. Usually, such phone calls made their heart jump with fear. This shows the importance of practitioners from around the globe working together.

The officials divided the brainwashing into two sections. The "intensive assault" period and the "consolidating" period.

During the intensive assault period, collaborators or so-called "teaching assistants" conducted all the brainwashing attempts. Several people took turns brainwashing individual practitioners, as well as reducing their sleep time to fatigue them. Practitioners were also individually locked in rooms and were not allowed to leave the rooms. These assistants threatened the practitioners, deceived them with fake articles, and talked nonsense, saying they were "using the (fake) Falun Dafa teachings to defeat the (real) Falun Dafa teachings." These guards also verbally abused the practitioners, forcing them to sit in very specific postures. When the practitioners were extremely tired, the persecutors grabbed the practitioners' hands, and forced them to sign a repentance statement² or forced their fingerprints onto ready-made statements. The guards also beat the practitioners.

Every practitioner was forced to pay 3,000 yuan³ in "tuition" upon arriving at the centre. The money was paid by the practitioners' workplace. If the practitioner had no workplace, then the practitioner's local county or township government would have to pay. There were two "assistants" in each room, and the practitioner had to sleep between them. On the headboard of the practitioners' beds was the national flag. Each "first teaching assistant" was from either the workplace, local police station, neighbourhood committee or the village committee of the practitioner he or she was guarding. Every morning at 9:00 a.m., there was a meeting with all the first teaching assistants. At the meetings, the first teaching assistant would report on the practitioner's words, actions, appetite, health, mental status, whether he or she was practising the exercises or not, and if the practitioner was going on a hunger strike to protest their illegal detention. Each assistant would then be instructed with specific propaganda, creating an atmosphere of hostility toward Falun Gong and Falun Gong practitioners.

During the day, the first teaching assistants forced each practitioner to wear a "student name card," and prevented them from stepping outside to practise the exercises. The first teaching assistants were on duty until 1:30 a.m. There is an inspection at midnight. Ironically, the first teaching assistants were also often unable to leave the brainwashing centre. Their freedom was closely linked with the degree of "transformation⁴" of the practitioners. Therefore, they were very hostile toward the practitioners.

The practitioners who refused to compromise their beliefs had to eat in an area on the second floor. The first teaching assistants were responsible for giving out meals there. However, everyone else would have their meals on the first floor, so practitioners suspected that the meals provided on the second floor were mixed with psychotropic drugs.

The "second teaching assistants" were less directly involved. They mainly came from the Shayang Forced Labour Camp and the Denglin Forced Labour Camp in Zongran City. Their main task was to keep an eye on the practitioners and the first teaching assistants. Their on-duty time was from 1:30 a.m. to dawn. Usually, no one would perform inspections at night, therefore the second teaching assistant were able to sleep soundly. However, inside the brainwashing centre, there probably were surveillance cameras and listening devices.

The collaborators were mainly comprised of former practitioners who had been detained at the Shayang Forced Labour Camp. These people had practised Falun Gong in the past and were forced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to renounce cultivation practice. While they were persecuted, their human nature and consciences were distorted. Therefore, they became the worst people in the brainwashing centre. They had been brainwashed and had walked a deviated path for a long time during their detention at the Shayang Forced Labour Camp. They always expended a lot of effort talking about how diligent they were and how much they had done to win over the trust and respect of other Falun Gong practitioners. This was to pave the way for instilling practitioners with anti-Falun Gong propaganda.

The typical brainwashing campaign can be divided into two categories: One is to promote the collaborators own "enlightenment" (brainwashing), while distorting the teachings of Falun Dafa. They did this while practitioners had no access to Falun Dafa books. This was what the collaborators described as "using (fake) Falun Dafa Teachings to defeat the (real) Falun Dafa Teachings." The second category is to fabricate and shout lies to confuse right and wrong, taking advantage of practitioners who were not familiar with scientific theory or other factors.

The collaborators greatly feared those practitioners who did not give in or did not argue with them. Instead, those practitioners wholeheartedly recited the Falun Dafa teachings. The collaborators purposely urged the practitioners to argue with them. To prepare further brainwashing attempts, the collaborators also watched the practitioners, trying to find their weak points, which they might have disclosed quite unconsciously.

If a practitioner started to believe the brainwashing propaganda, the collaborator would ask the practitioners to write a repentance statement. If a practitioner did not compromise, the collaborator would force him or her to copy a co-called "steadfast statement," which contained phrases that could be used against the writer. Once the practitioner was deceived into copying the statement, it became evidence for sentencing the practitioner to forced labour, even though the collaborators and guards could not obtain any real evidence.

If a practitioner wrote a repentance statement, the collaborators, the "transformed" practitioner and the staff of the brainwashing centre would all go to the practitioner's room to sing songs that had warped lyrics. The practitioner would then enter what they called the "consolidation period."

During the "consolidation period," the practitioners were ordered out of the bed at 6:00 a.m. and were forced to "take a walk" with the collaborators in a small courtyard. During the walk, the collaborators forced more propaganda onto the practitioners. At 8:00 a.m., the collaborators gathered together to discuss brainwashing methods and how to prevent the practitioners who were already being "transformed" from becoming sober-minded again.

At 9:00 a.m., those practitioners who had been deceived and "transformed" were forced to go to a "classroom" on the third floor for further brainwashing. At 9:30, the first teaching assistants went to a meeting to report on the conditions of the practitioners and to receive further instructions. At the same time, practitioners were forced to watch videos that slandered Falun Gong's Teacher and Falun Gong. The video programmes were mostly episodes from CCTV's current affairs programme, "Talks On Focus Points," which were full of fabrications.

The practitioners were also forced to watch a four-episode series called "Four Long Lives," created by Cai Chaodong. The content of the first three episodes was hypocritical. The last episode severely slandered Falun Dafa. In those video programmes, paid literary and qigong slanderers, including Wang Yusheng, Si Manan and Feng Jinyuan, wilfully slandered Teacher Li and Falun Dafa.

At noon, lunch was served. The practitioners had to have their meals with the collaborators, who would continue instilling them with their propaganda. From 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., practitioners again had to attend brainwashing sessions in the classroom on the third floor. After dinner, practitioners were forced to take another walk in the courtyard with the collaborators. At 7:00 p.m., the practitioners were ordered to watch the "Evening News" and then were forced to do "homework." On the blackboard, there were one to three topics, and the practitioners had to write a one-page answer for each topic. The answers had to contain denouncements of Teacher, Falun Dafa and Minghui (the Chinese Clearwisdom website). Otherwise, they would be considered as not having a profound "understanding" or as failing to have been thoroughly "transformed," and would have to go through the process all over again.

During the next stage, the staff would talk about legal matters and health, during which they fabricated more lies. When a practitioner became muddled-headed, the collaborator forced the practitioner to write articles that betrayed the practitioner's conscience and soul. The practitioner was also forced to disclose things that the practitioner or other people had done, especially regarding who was producing and distributing leaflets exposing the persecution.

The whole process was full of intimidation and deception. Collaborators operated under the policy of "offering leniency to those who confess their crimes and severity to those who refuse." The collaborators convinced some practitioners that exposing others was beneficial not only for themselves, but also for those whom they exposed. Lying, they told practitioners that the police had already learned everything about them, but if they confessed, they would not have any trouble. Some practitioners suffered a mental collapse and even exposed three or four leaflets production sites. In the previous brainwashing sessions, one practitioner confessed that he had handed out 20,000 copies of leaflets exposing the persecution. As a result, the practitioner was immediately sentenced to three years of forced labour.

The "expert and professor lectures" were lead by two male professors from the Huazhong Science and Technology University. They were permanent accomplices. One man named Liu was a typical charlatan, and another one named Liang always used vulgar words. It was said that these two people charged 200 yuan per half hour. Usually, they talked for about two and a half to three hours.

Finally, before they could be released, a "transformed" person had to write an experience paper. The required length was at least 3,000 words. In the papers, the practitioners were required to answer many detailed questions.

One of the collaborators was named Yang Huizhen. She was nearly 40 years old, and her hair was dyed yellow.

The brainwashing session was held in a small courtyard inside the Wuhan Police Academy, located in Jiangxia District of Wuhan City.

It was said that the fifth brainwashing session for 2005 in Hubei Province would begin on October 19, 2005.

On-duty office of the "Hubei Provincial Legal Education Centre" (Brainwashing Centre): 86-27-8792 4870

Secretary Jin of the Hubei Provincial Industrial Committee and Head of the Provincial 610 Office: 86-27-8723 4314 or 86-27-87233 3774

Note

1. "Collaborators": Former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.

2. Repentance Statement: In this statement the practitioner is forced to admit remorse for practising Falun Gong, promise to give up Falun Gong, and never again associate with other practitioners or go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.

3. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

4. "Reform or Transform" Implementation of brainwashing and torture in order to force a practitioner to renounce Falun Gong. (Variations: "reform", "transform", "reformed", "reforming", "transformed", "transforming", and "transformation")

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/10/21/112867.html