The Torture and Enslavement of Practitioners in Shandong Province's Second Women's Forced Labour Camp

Shandong Province's Second Women's Forced Labour Camp, formerly known as the fourth division of Wang Village Forced Labour Camp, was established on November 3th, 2000. Within one week, different areas of Shandong Province had sent over 350 Falun Gong practitioners sentenced to forced labour. This number increased to from 9,000-10,000 during the period from March to April 2001 and lasted until spring 2003. By that time, the labour camp's old building with its four floors could not hold so many people, so they built a brainwashing centre somewhere else in March and April 2001. The brainwashing centre was moved to its current address in August 2001. Around 300-400 practitioners are still imprisoned there. This labour camp is equipped with roughly one hundred guards, who financially exploit practitioners, wreck their bodies, and enslave their spirits.

In March and April 2001, the number of practitioners in different areas of Shandong Province who were sentenced to labour camps increased, so they built a brainwashing centre outside the forced labour camp. Initially, each practitioner was charged 3,000-4,000 yuan¹. Each practitioner was also accompanied by someone charged with brainwashing him or her. Later the fee was increased to 6,000 yuan. On October 1st, 2001, the superior department prohibited charging the fee. Only those people who were subjected to brainwashing during October 2001 were exempted from the fee. Immediately after October, they still charged everybody 3,000-5,000 yuan. It is unknown how many people were subjected to brainwashing there or how much money was taken from them. What can be seen is that new multistory buildings have been built, one by one. "610 Offices²" in different areas in turn order the families and workplaces of practitioners subjected to brainwashing to pay the fees.

Meanwhile, the guards from each group use their contacts in society to look for work that is so time- and labour-consuming that nobody wants to do it. They then force practitioners to do the work. The work includes, for example, cutting the ends of thread for clothing (local work from Wang Village), wiring the windings (local work from the electrical winding manufacturing station at Wang Village and a toy factory in Weihai City), and gluing glass vases and coloured glaze handiworks plated with silver (work from a handiwork exporting factory in Qingdao City). The glue used in some of these tasks is made with methanol and formaldehyde. Methanol is toxic to people's eyes, and long-term exposure can cause blindness. They also assign labour quotas. Whoever cannot finish their quota is not allowed to sleep. Practitioners often work 16-20 hours a day.

Many practitioners collapse of illness and only simple routine medicines are used to treat them. If practitioners go to see a doctor outside of the labour camp, they have to pay everything themselves. Nevertheless, the guards live off their share of the income from practitioner's slave labour. Even though all practitioners passed their physical examinations when they were taken into the labour camp, they all left with illnesses.

At the same time, practitioners are also forced to take brainwashing "studies." They are often forced to write what they have learned. No matter what one writes, they do not believe it. They divide practitioners into classes and groups, arrange people with crooked understandings to be secret agents and clandestinely report to them, arrange night patrol and night duty, and incite conflicts among practitioners. The nine inherent traits of the Chinese Communist Party are comprehensively demonstrated: evil, deceit, incitement, unleashing the scum of society, espionage, robbery, fighting, elimination, and control. Many collaborators³go all out for the guards and become evildoers' tool for brainwashing. The guards have delayed the collaborators' releases again and again.

Note

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

2. "The 610 office" is 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.

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

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/11/11/114324.html