My Dear Fellow Practitioners
How are you?
I have asked someone to pass a letter to you, but I don' know if or when you will receive it. You know that sending a letter out of here is prohibited. So I am taking this opportunity to tell you the true situation in this female labour camp.
Right now, all practitioners in the Newcomer Brigade who are steadfast in Falun Dafa are actually locked up and are being treated inhumanly. Several practitioners have been cursed and beaten severely.
Among practitioners sent to the camp in the last half year, some have been forced to give in by their persecutors. These practitioners are being held on the second floor and are considered to be "achievements" by their persecutors. On the other side, all of our practitioners who are steadfast in Falun Dafa have been locked up on the third floor. Over the past several months, we have not been allowed to leave our cells, to go downstairs to the dining room, or go to the bathroom to wash our hands, take a shower, or wash our clothes. We are not even allowed to use the toilets freely. We live among dozens of drug-addicted inmates in our cells. Each day, other inmates give us one bucket of water for both drinking and washing, all done in our cells. We also have to urinate in our cells, in front of the other inmates. The urine and dirty water are taken out by inmates. If we need to empty our bowels, we have to ask other inmates to report to the officers and get a pass for us. Only one practitioner is allowed to use the toilet at a time. Under such miserable conditions, many practitioners have tried to eat and drink less or have skipped some meals, not to mention our inability to wash our clothes or take showers normally. Obviously, all of our human rights are being seriously violated. The persecutors isolate us to prevent us from running into those practitioners who yielded to them and who may be affected by us to resume their cultivation, which would ruin the persecutors' "achievements."
The Captain of the Newcomer Brigade, Gu Xinying, is the main persecutor. She has cursed and beaten practitioners many times. As a law-enforcement officer, she knows the law but has broken it by violating our human rights, beating us and insulting our dignity. She beat a practitioner brutally to force her to take military training and she beat another practitioner to force her to practice a physical exercise. She also cursed and tortured another practitioner and ordered her to face a wall for three days. Gu often uses various means to persecute practitioners. Over the last several years, no matter whether she was in the No. 2 Brigade or in the Newcomer Brigade, she also routinely mistreated drug-addicted inmates by slapping, punching, and kicking them at any time. Those inmates call her "Tyrant," but no one dared to report her from fear that this would only cause an extension of their terms.
In order to obstruct Gu' persecution and rebuke her for her evil attacks, some practitioners reported her infringements to the director of the labour camp and wrote a letter to the Labour-Education Bureau of Guizhou Province. Later, the letter was forwarded to the camp with an order for an investigation. That day, the camp director, Ms. Wu, came to the Newcomer Brigade, and did a so-called investigation. She said that both the Bureau officers and she personally would look into the reported situations closely. She recognized the fact that Gu had beaten inmates and also admitted that Falun Gong practitioners were improperly treated. So she promised that, later, they would conduct a serious investigation, charge Gu Xinying by law, and hold discussions with other camp leaders in order to figure out some "reasonable" procedures for the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners. But she never did what she said she would. She just tried to protect Gu. She came to talk with practitioners in order to convince them that Gu' problem came about because she was still young and lacked experience and that Gu should be criticized rather than being charged by law. In response to the practitioners' insistent demands, she promised to investigate Gu' problem again this year. But Gu is still doing everything she used to do, and it appears that the problem will never be solved. Therefore, we have been trying our best to protest the persecution here and also trying to reveal the illegal activities to the public.
In the labour camp, all of society' perversions and forms of human selfishness are clearly visible. This labour camp is legally classified as a school, with half the time designated for work and half for study. The half time for working is not supposed to be longer than eight hours per day. However, no inmates have time for studying, only for working. This place is in fact a money-earning machine. We are forced to work 16-17 hours, even up to 20 hours, per day. In order to complete our assigned production quotas, we worked until 2-3 AM every day for a long period of time. Many people were totally exhausted and developed various illnesses. Inmates in the No. 1 section of Brigade 2 had to work until 11PM-12 AM. Those who could not complete their assigned duties were not allowed to sleep. They were physically punished by being forced to stand upright facing a wall until the sun rose. Then they continued to work, but by lunch or suppertime, they were ordered to stand facing the wall again.
This female labour camp is engaged in grinding artificial diamonds that are so small they can easily be lost or damaged. Therefore, there is a range of allowances for losing or breaking the raw diamonds. Although the state stipulates that inmates should not cover the damage, we have been asked to pay for the loss, up to several hundred Yuan per month. Some practitioners have been charged several thousand Yuan. If no one sends us money to cover the loss, we have to work longer every day. In cases like this, even though we work every day for up to 20 hours, we still cannot earn a couple of Yuan to buy toothpaste. Some of us don' even have the money to buy sanitary pads. We have been working day after day, with no weekends or holidays off. Where does the money we earn go?
Each officer is paid hundreds of Yuan in extra money monthly, and, at the end of the year, they take up to 10,000 Yuan per person as a "stipend" in addition to their salaries. In contrast, our salary is unbelievably low, 4 Yuan (48 cents) per month, and even that little amount of money can be reduced by the officers! The state allocates 90 Yuan per inmate per month to the labour camp, including 85 for food, 4 for salary, and 1 for water and electricity [Note: The lower end of living costs in cities is about 200-300/ month per person in China now]. Even that 85 Yuan is also reduced by the officers. There used to be meals with meat twice a week, but now we get meat only once a week or even not at all. Instead we only get vegetables cooked with very little oil [Note: In China, vegetables cost only about a tenth as much as cooking oil and meat]. Rice is also given in limited amounts, so we are always hungry, although we have to work so many hours. Therefore, life here is hard for a person to bear.
This female labour camp prohibits Falun Gong practitioners from reporting problems or telling the true situations to their families. If they try, they will be punished with extensions to their terms. Several practitioners had their sentences extended 2-3 months just because they told or wrote about the real situations to their families. In addition to the term extensions, they were also beaten brutally by officers and by drug-addicted inmates as instructed by the officers. In this filthy environment, some previously not-so-bad inmates have been "educated" by officers to become more and more corrupt.
There are two sets of administration and management regulations in this camp. One set is used to show inspectors how the camp is well managed and how all things are done here in accordance with the law' requirements. The other set, however, includes all of their actual methods for forcing inmates to make more money for them.
Now, the female labour camp has about 200 Falun Gong practitioners under lock and key, including more than 100 in the Newcomer Brigade. Practitioners who persist in cultivation are being treated terribly here. We hope our fellow practitioners can publicize our true situation and expose the foul officers to many people.
Heshi, [press hands together, a sign of respect in the Buddha school]
A Dafa Practitioner
Source: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/3/19/20008.html
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