Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners at the No. 3 Prison in Anhui Province -- Part 1

Since Suzhou was chosen in 2000 as the "Base to "Reform¹" Falun Gong practitioners" for the labour camp system of Anhui Province, all recently sentenced Falun Gong practitioners have been imprisoned there, with male practitioners held at the Number 3 Prison (a.k.a. Suzhou Prison) and female practitioners held right next door at the Anhui Province Prison for Women. The strictest supervisory methods are applied to Falun Gong practitioners. The "unreformed" and "not-yet-thoroughly reformed" Falun Gong practitioners are separated from each other.

This being the case, although Falun Gong practitioners suffer persecution and inhuman torture, outsiders know little about their anguish, because they aren't allowed to see their families, make phone calls, or mention the persecution in their letters. In this article we present what little information we've been able to obtain to illustrate the evilness of the Chinese Communist Party.

Ruthlessly Persecuting Practitioners Who Hunger Strike

Mr. Fang Yingzhou from Zongyang, Anqing is a 35-year-old med-school graduate. He was detained in Suzhou Prison from late October to early November in 2005. While he was there he was held in solitary confinement. Because he refused to wear a prison uniform he was severely beaten by corrections officers and criminals, and they shocked him with an electric baton. Several inmates used force to put the uniform on him by order of the guards. Then they tied him up and handcuffed him in a small, solitary cell. In order to uphold Falun Dafa's dignity and oppose the persecution he felt it necessary to employ the most tragic method, a hunger strike, in the cruel environment of the jail.

Not only did the evildoers have no sympathy or compassion at all in light of his sacrifice, but they instead considered his actions "anti-government" and "anti-law," and said he was "resisting being reformed." The corrections officers have a policy that if the criminals successfully terminate a Falun Gong practitioner's hunger strike they receive a "reward" (according to confidential prison "trading regulations," it usually costs an inmate 1,000 yuan² to buy a reward; with three rewards a convict's sentence can be reduced.) Driven by this policy, and encouraged by the party's guidelines, which guarantee, "no one shall be held responsible for beating Falun Gong practitioners to death," the inmates madly and recklessly persecuted the practitioners with inhuman methods, caring nothing for the consequences.

In less than one week Fang Yingzhou's body became deformed. Every morning and afternoon he could be seen on his way to the prison hospital to be force-fed. He painfully walked in very small steps with great effort, his heavy handcuffs and leg-irons dragging noisily on the ground. People who haven't personally suffered the persecution can hardly imagine the cruelty of the prison hospital. When he came back he always held his chest with both arms; there was always blood at the corner of his mouth and purple bruises on the backs of his ears. His expression was always one of extreme pain. Seeing him like this, everyone knew that he had again gone through a deadly test. Apart from being force-fed porridge twice a day, he was also subjected to torture by the other inmates. He nearly choked to death every time he was force-fed.

Other Falun Dafa practitioners who've been tortured in Suzhou Prison while on hunger strike include Dai Zhifeng from Suixi County in North An'hui, Wangjian from Hefei City, Cao Xiongbin from An'qing City, Li Che from Fuyang City and Ji Guangjie from Hefei City. The first three have been released and the last two are still detained.

One Hundred Days of Torture

In 2004 prison officials launched a so-called "hundred-day hard strike" campaign, torturing practitioners to force them to give up Falun Gong. The persecutors shocked them with electric batons, hung them up for long periods of time, put them in solitary confinement, subjected them to extended periods of sleep deprivation, threatened them with death, etc., but their faith in Falun Dafa proved unshakable. During the campaign, the persecutors hung Xu Chun by his wrists from an iron gate, with only his toes touching the floor and his ankles fettered with an iron chain. Except for limited time to use the toilet, he was hung like this 24 hours a day. During mealtimes only one of his hands was freed to allow him to eat. He spent between three and four months hung like this. In their attempts to force him to give up his belief quicker, the police dragged him to the "strict control" team every day after 6 p.m. and shocked him with several batons simultaneously. The criminals called this "charging electricity." An ordinary person would either be frightened or shocked into unconsciousness, but Xuchun's righteous thoughts were so strong that he had no fear at all. After torturing him with electric batons one guard said to the criminals, "This guy really has a way of resisting the torture. Why doesn't he feel the pain?" They shocked him for more than a week without achieving anything, and had to give up this torture, but bloodstains could be seen at the corner of his mouth and on his neck and shoes. Handcuffed and dragging a pair of iron fetters weighing dozens of kilograms, Xu Chun could be seen moving slowly up and down the fifth floor with great difficulty, being helped by the inmates before and after he was subjected to the electric shocks. Seeing this one could imagine that he must have suffered severe torture.

After mid-October Xu Chun was transferred to the "strict control" cell. He was given only a small bun weighing as little as 50g (less than 2 ounces) for each meal. During the day the persecutors forced him to run around and shout slogans. Sometimes they forced him to sit in the sun for hours. They kept trying to figure out new ways to wear him down. They forced him to stand outside from 6 a.m.to 10 p.m., almost sixteen hours a day. Since there wasn't any shade during the sunny days, he couldn't open his eyes in the strong light. Sweat poured from his body, his legs shaking. If the weather changed, he had to stand in strong winds or heavy rain, shivering in the cold. He used to be strong and tall, but he was tortured so severely that he became as "thin as a bamboo pole." He blacked out several times, falling to the ground, and was taken to the Emergency Room at the hospital for treatment. Finally the persecutors had to return him to the regular team.

(To be continued)

Note

1. "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")

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

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/6/19/130828.html