The "Legal Education Centre," a former drug rehabilitation centre at the Weiningying Forced Labour Camp in Benxi City, is notorious for its persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners. Only male practitioners are persecuted there.
When practitioners are first sent to the labour camp, they are held at the Affiliated Division for a while. The guards at the "Legal Education Centre" often communicate with the division guards and observe the detainees. Those who follow the labour camp policies unquestioningly are quickly sent to the "Legal Education Centre," because they are considered more likely to be brainwashed. Those who do not fully cooperate with the guards are sent to the Centre at a later date.
When the practitioners first arrive at the Centre they are given a written "test" containing a few questions involving Falun Gong. They are not forced to answer the test. The guards or collaborators1 with the Administration Committee watch a video with the practitioners. The video consists of reports from soldiers who fought in the Sino-Vietnam War. This war, in which the Communist Party used people as cannon fodder, seems to have no connection to psychological "reform2." Life at the labour camp thus begins.
The practitioners get up at 6:00 a.m. and gather outside to do morning exercises. They are forced to sing propaganda songs such as "Learn from Lei Feng, the Role Model" and "Returning from Target Practice." Liu Shaoshi and other labour camp officials patrol each room as the practitioners eat lunch. The Centre is administered in military style. There is a one-hour military training course in the afternoon that consists of running, goose- stepping and shouting slogans, among other things. There are also at least one or two sports classes each week that mostly consists of basketball practice.
The daily routine at the Centre creates a falsely lax atmosphere for newly arrived practitioners. Officials such as Chen Zhongwei, Zheng Tao and Ding Huibo often chat with the practitioners. They also arrange activities such as Chinese chess, poker, and ping-pong, and contests are held during holidays. The guards also take part. The practitioners are forced to work each day, mostly making diodes by hand. Work hours are long. Sometimes the practitioners work until 9:00 p.m. Some practitioners are deceived by this superficial lax control due to lack of a deep understanding of the persecution. They relax and cooperate with the perpetrators, sometimes not being aware of it.
The most critical brainwashing methods of the Centre are used despite the laxness. For example, the practitioners are forced to watch TV news, write "homework," take tests and recite 36 laws and regulations each day. They are also forced to watch the Dafa-slandering TV series Life is Innocent and sing songs such as Lambs Lost and Mum, I'm Back. Guo Tieying and Zhao Shichun gave "law classes" that mostly slander Dafa. Zheng Tao wrote questions after the lecture for practitioners to take back to their room to discuss among themselves. Each practitioner is forced to give his standpoint, which is recorded by the completely brainwashed group head. The group head gives a summary and answers the questions. The answers must conform to the brainwashing standards the Centre considers to be correct. If the practitioners give their own answers, the group heads and head of the labour camp take turns talking to and threatening the practitioners until they give the slanderous answers. Many practitioners said things against their conscience in this environment. In their own words, they were trying to "slip through." Whenever someone is brainwashed, the guards hold a public attack conference in a classroom on the second floor, where the brainwashed person is called to the podium to read a "criticising statement." The guards and collaborators get together and take videos and pictures. After the conference, the perpetrators discuss how the brainwashed person "walked their reform path firmly."
In order to brainwash the practitioners, the Centre formed a "Reeducation Assistance" Group. This consists of guards and members of the Administration Committee and also includes three hired people. Chen Zhongwei and Liu Shaoshi personally instruct the "Reeducation Assistance Group" and badger the determined practitioners day and night. They use violence, threats and insults to carry out the brainwashing. These people do their all to advocate the Communist Party's devious theories and principles in this atmosphere of violence and threats. They force the practitioners to double-cross their legs. They tie the practitioners up and slap their faces, or they put Teacher Li's pictures underneath the practitioners' seats.
Three hired women often use very base means to torture the practitioners. Many people have been "reformed" against their conscience. If the perpetrators don't achieve their goal, they use even more severe tortures. They first detain the determined practitioners in a solitary confinement cell, a small room in which only one person can fit. There is one dilapidated quilt, made of small pieces of cotton. The practitioner sleeps on the cracked wood floor. One incandescent light is turned off during the day and turned on throughout the night. The room is under 24-hour surveillance. Solitary confinement is located on the first floor of the Affiliated Division, and the inmates are responsible for monitoring the practitioners.
Tortures are administered on the second floor. The abusers stretch the practitioners, use the Death Bed Torture3, the Tiger Bench4, electric shock, and Sitting on a Plane, which is when they tie the practitioner's feet and hang him upside down.
The Centre has a large torture-administering division. They torture the practitioners during the day, lock them in solitary confinement at night, and continue to torture them the following day. Practitioner Jiao Lin was forced to remain in one posture for 20 days around the clock. Practitioner Yan Bo was forced to stay in one posture for 17 days around the clock. They are forbidden to sleep. The inmates take turns watching them. The guards failed to achieve their goal even after exhausting their stock of tortures. The authorities transferred practitioners Jiao Lin and Yan Bo to a forced labour camp in Jinzhou City in the spring of 2005, both to be further persecuted and to avoid their positive impact on others. Two other practitioners who were transferred to the Weiningying Forced Labour Camp from a labour camp in Jinzhou City were brainwashed in less than 15 days. The captors often transfer practitioners to improve the "reform rate." Many practitioners who were determined in Dandong and Panjin were "reformed" at the Weiningying Forced Labour Camp.
The Centre personnel strictly control the practitioners who refuse to give in to brainwashing. They assign one or two people to follow each practitioner at all times, except while they are sleeping. They strictly limit the practitioner's words and actions and forbid him to speak with others. Monitors are installed in each room, including the toilet. The monitors, which are on 24 hours a day, can record sound and capture images. They have also arranged for spies to live with the practitioners. These spies report the practitioner's slightest deed and words to the guards. Practitioner Sun Tiechun from Niuxintai was nicknamed "Iron Man" by the inmates assigned to watch him. He announced many times that he would persist in Dafa practice. He succeeded! He was tortured many times and his hearing was impaired. He also had difficulty moving his arms. He refused to cooperate with his tormentors. He was held the longest of all the practitioners and was in solitary confinement at the Centre. His sentence was illegally extended by a very long time.
The Centre authorities cruelly force-feed practitioners who hold hunger strikes to protest the persecution. They say, "We'll kill you through force-feeding!" If the practitioner vomits, they hold the practitioner up and continue to force-feed him. One practitioner was force-fed continuously for over four months until he vomited the water he was force-fed. The guards called him "mentally ill" and sent him to a mental hospital, where he was tortured until he suffered a nervous breakdown, at which point the authorities told his family to take him home.
Due to long-term mental torment, some determined practitioners have developed various symptoms. Practitioner Jiang Hulin often feels dizzy and vomits; practitioner Zhang Shupeng has liver disease; practitioner Qu Yongsheng has severe high blood pressure; and practitioner Li Yongwen has severe liver disease.
In order to control the practitioners' state of mind, the Centre requires each practitioner to turn in a report of their thoughts at the end of each month. This report is used along with discussion questions, tests, homework and labour as evaluation criteria that determines whether sentence reduction is possible. The authorities pay closest attention to whether there are words such as "completely breaking away from Falun Gong" and words that attack Teacher Li and Dafa.
Some practitioners followed their captors' orders because they wanted to go home as soon as possible. Some even helped the perpetrators. The guards often make up questions taken from TV news topics about politics, the economy, science and other things. Then they demand that the practitioners slander Dafa by incorporating it into the news topic.
In the summer of 2005, Communist Regime followers from various locations where practitioners are persecuted organised observation teams that visited each other and learned from each other's persecution experiences. Liu Shaoshi and others escalated the psychological abuse of practitioners after the team returned to the Weiningying Forced Labour Camp from a visit. They extended work time, forced the practitioners to study in classrooms during their free time, and also used frequent tests and discussions to achieve their goal. They were unscrupulous. In June 2005, they devised a new policy made up of 16 items. They strictly control the whole group. As a result, practitioners held at the Center suffer tremendous physical torture and mental torment at each and every moment.
The following individuals are the chief culprits who persecute, torment and abuse practitioners at the Centre: Chen Zhongwei, the camp's political Party secretary; Liu Shaoshi, head of the Legal Education Centre; Zhao Shichun, the political head; Zheng Tao, deputy head of the Mental Correction Office; Guo Tieying, deputy head of labour camp in charge of legal education; and group heads Ding Huibo and Han Liang.
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. "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")
3."Death Bed" torture: A practitioner is tied to a bed with his hands handcuffed above his head to the bed rails, and his legs tied with thin nylon ropes. The rope is then tightly wrapped around the practitioner's body and the bed, from his legs to his chest. The rope is wrapped so tightly that the practitioner has difficulty breathing and eventually loses consciousness.
4. "Tiger Bench": Prisoners are forced to sit on a small iron bench that is approximately 20 cm (6 inches) tall with their knees tied together. With their hands tied behind their backs or sometimes placed on their knees, they are forced to sit straight up and look straight ahead without movement for long periods of time.
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/1/4/117998.html
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