What I Know About Jidong Prison in Hebei Province

Jidong Prison is located in Nanbao Development District, locally called "Jiantouzi" in Tanghai County, Tangshan City. Nanbao is nationally known as the number one salt field, second in Asia. Jidong Prison is a part of the Bohai Bay area, which is several miles long and has numerous salt fields piled high with salt hills. People can be seen miles away because there is not a single tree, only utility poles. There are 50,000 inmates in the prison, where dozens of Dafa practitioners are imprisoned in separate platoons.

Since September, Dafa practitioners have been under tight control in the prison, and they have been notified that family members are not allowed to bring in any food and calling home is also severely restricted.

Currently Dafa practitioners Liu Yongwang and Yang Jianbo are being persecuted in the prison and their lives are in great danger because they've been on a hunger strike for quite a while. Fellow practitioners are trying to rescue them through various truth clarifying efforts.

This prison has nine divisions and each division has a few platoons. The number one and number two divisions have more people; each of them has about twenty platoons.

In 2002, in order to better control practitioners, it was said that they would gather all practitioners in division four. However, the reality turned out to be just the opposite. Dafa practitioners were separated into different platoons, with one practitioner per platoon. Division number four, which was said to be a chicken farm, (now a place to "transform¹" practitioners) has more practitioners.

According to information obtained from imprisoned practitioners, some other practitioners who had been released were told that all middle-aged police agents who were graduates from the police academy know how to get on the Minghui website [Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net]. The prison gave every group quotas requiring a 100% rate of "transformation". Their promotions and pay raises are tied to practitioners' rate of "transformation." Since 2004, some collaborators² have been transferred from the Hebei provincial agency to concentrate on doing "transformation" work. They use twisted and vicious theories to try to brainwash the practitioners.

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://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/11/12/142293.html