Brutal Persecution Conducted by the Shuanghe Forced Labour Camp in Qiqihar City

On April 21st, 2002 when I was at my mother’s home, I was arrested by Police Chief Liu Changqing, instructor and policeman Yin from the Longsha Police Station, and policeman Yang Li from the Tienan Police Station. I said to them, "I practise Falun Gong, follow the principles of ‘Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance’ and I have become a good person. I have not done anything wrong. Why are you arresting me?" The instructor told me, "The government has issued an order that it doesn’t need a law to arrest Falun Gong practitioners." Just like that, they arrested me and took me to the No. 1 Detention Centre.

I was sentenced to three years of "reeducation through forced labour" in July 2002 and was imprisoned at the Shuanghe Forced Labour Camp. As soon as I arrived, division head Zhang Zhijie and guard Kang Yan started to search me and stripped me from the waist up. I refused to hand over my watch, so Zhang Zhijie pushed me onto an Iron Chair. I told her that this was unreasonable persecution, but she ignored me. I was shackled to the metal chair for fifteen days and nights. Every day, I was unable to fall asleep because it was very cold in the evening and I wore very thin clothes. My hair fell out and my legs became very swollen. After I was released from the chair, I could hardly walk. They put me in a cold and damp cell, where over ten firm practitioners were imprisoned.

On April 4th, 2003, they took me to the brainwashing centre in the camp, where I was brutally persecuted physically and mentally. The guards called this "transformation¹" "The Thunderstorm of Spring." The head of the "Transformation Class" Wang Mei took me into a cold and damp cell on the first floor in a building. The nerves in my legs were damaged from sitting on the metal chair for so long, so I had difficulty walking. There, the practitioners had to sit on the wooden stools for seventeen or eighteen hours every day. The guards arranged for some collaborators² to take turns to verbally abuse the practitioners until midnight. They forced Dafa practitioners to read articles slandering Teacher and Dafa. When practitioners wouldn't read the article, they would torture them. When Zhang Zhijie saw that I was unwilling to "transform", she slapped me in the face several times. The administration section’s head Guo Li ordered me to squat and hold my head down. I couldn’t squat too long due to the nerve damage in my legs, so I fell and lost consciousness several times. The camp’s doctor Yan Huijie pinched my renzhong acupuncture point with her fingers to wake me up and then forced me to continue squatting. After I felt dizzy and started to vomit, I could no longer squat, so Wang Mei handcuffed my hands behind my back to the back of the metal chair. My whole body was stretched out on the metal chair. I felt pain in my shoulders, as if they had been dislocated. The next morning, I couldn't lift my arms. I was brutally tortured physically and mentally for three months, and my body was very weak. That was also around the time of the SARS outbreak, so there was not as much traffic in and out of the camp. The camp gave practitioners some mouldy steamed buns that smelled very bad. It was very difficult to eat.

Later Fuyu Forced Labour Camp and Shuanghe Forced Labour Camp merged. On February 16th, 2004, the camp’s director Xiao Jindong and political commissar Wang Yufeng, assisted by the Heilongjiang Province Forced Labour Committee and the Harbin Drug Rehabilitation Centre, carried out a new round of persecution against the practitioners. It was called the "ice-breaking." Over thirty practitioners were dragged one by one to the fourth floor . The personnel who worked for the camp couldn’t go home for a month. They relentlessly tortured practitioners day and night. The practitioners’ painful cries and screams, the guards’ curses and clamouring, and the sounds of torture were heard throughout the camp.

At midnight on February 17th, Zhang Zhijie suddenly woke me up and dragged me to the fourth floor. Slogans slandering Teacher and Dafa were hung everywhere. The guards walked back and forth to monitor the practitioners in the corridor. I saw that the practitioners were blindfolded, handcuffed from behind and hung upside down on chairs in every cell. I was unable to recognise them. The guards loudly knocked the metal chairs and threatened them.

To achieve "transformation," section head Xu lifted me up and heavily threw me to the floor. Xu then kicked and stomped on me with his heavy leather boots. After that, he dragged me by the hair and beat me. My scalp was in such pain, as if the skin had been torn away and a lot of my hair had been pulled out at the root. The bruises were all over my body. He beat me until he was tired. Later, he brought a long strip of cloth and tied my hands behind my back and then, hung me up from a metal pipe. With an electric baton in his hand, he said, "I will not stop shocking you until you soil your trousers!" The sounds of the electric baton were very loud. Painful screaming and crying also came out from other cells. Several days later, I was carried down to my cell by an inmate who shared the same cell. Practitioners’ screaming and crying were often heard from downstairs. The practitioners were still suffering brutal torture. I felt that my heart was being cut into pieces. The persecution lasted for over a month. Practitioner Ms. Wang Guofang was beaten to death during this campaign of "ice breaking." Someone told me that Ms. Wang had died very miserably. Her blood splattered all over the place where she was brutally tortured and the camp only paid a few thousand yuan to her family to settle her case.

My legs became disabled due to the extensive torture, and I was too weak to work. Head Fu Chengjuan, who was in charge of camp production, continually verbally abused me. They never allowed me to rest in my cell, instead they forced me to sit in a workshop fifteen or sixteen hours per day. Zhang Zhijie and Wang Mei saw they were unable to shake our righteous thoughts, so they lengthened our terms. I was not released even when my legs became disabled. They added three extra months to my term. During the periods of "transformation", my family had mailed me some packages and letters, which the camp secretly opened and kept. I didn’t find this out until I returned home. I wrote a letter to my husband and asked guard Wang Ying from the No. 1 Division to help me to mail it. However, she forged a letter and mailed it to my husband, which totally deceived my family. The camp deprived us of our visiting rights with our families on one hand, while at the same time saying that practitioners don’t care about their families. I was imprisoned at the Shuanghe Forced Labour Camp in Qiqihar City for three years and three months.

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. "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://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/7/10/132565.html