Drug Poisoning - A Method of Torture Often Used by the Chinese Communist Party

The article, "Completely Expose and Eliminate the Evildoers' Vicious Persecution," published on the Minghui website [Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net] on December 25th, 2006, revealed more of the brutal persecution that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials have used on Falun Dafa practitioners in the past seven years.

This article focuses mainly on the drug poisoning incidents at the prisons and forced labour camps in Qinghai Province. More crimes of similar nature require investigation and collection of evidence by the World Organisation to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG). We hope more people might provide detailed information to expose the CCP regime’s atrocities in this regard, and that the international community will pay more attention to the regime’s crimes against humanity.

The CCP in Qinghai Province has for a long time brutalised practitioners by feeding them unknown drugs. First, we want to list a brief summary of incidents published on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website over the past few years.

1. Practitioner Ms. Fan Lihong Died as a Result of Torture at the Qinghai Women’s Forced Labour Camp and Mental Hospital

Sometime between May 5th and 6th, 2001, Qinghai Province Women’s Labour Camp officials transported 29-year-old Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Fan Lihong, a single woman, to a mental hospital against her will. The vicious policemen, doctors and other officials force-fed her drugs there. She was taken to a mental hospital on several occasions and was physically and mentally abused. After Ms. Fan left the mental hospital, she suffered from loss of appetite and was often disoriented. Her body was discovered in Qinghai People’s Park in January 2002.

2. Several Practitioners Endure Torture in Solitary Confinement Cells inside Qinghai Province Women’s Labour Camp

The guards at Qinghai Province Women’s Labour Camp tortured determined practitioners. These practitioners refused to give up practising Dafa and were thus locked in solitary confinement cells and shocked with electric batons, and had to endure savage beatings at the hands of inmate drug addicts whom the officials had incited. During the 2002 Chinese New Year, a practitioner was deceived into going to the police station, where she was arrested and then taken to a solitary confinement cell at Qinghai Province Women’s Labour Camp. The person incarcerated in the adjoining cell, No. 2, was practitioner Ms. Li Guixiang. Her body was covered in bruises and wounds after the guards beat her, and she could barely walk. She had to lean against a wall and inch her way to the toilet from the pain of the beating. Practitioner Ms. Li Jing, in her 60s, on a protest hunger strike, was held in cell No. 3. Ms. Li's hunger strike lasted for many days. The guards resorted to administering previously unknown drugs and other despicable means to torture some practitioners, to the point that the practitioners suffered mental breakdowns. They became anxious and delirious, and clawed the wall with their fingers and gnawed at the table.

3. Public Announcement from Qinghai Province Evidence Collection Group to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong

Practitioner Ms. Wang Shujuan refused to wear a prisoner's ID tag. The guards shocked her sensitive body areas, including her head, face, palm and the soles of her feet, with four electric batons for a long time. When the batteries died, they recharged them and resumed electro-shocking her. They put unknown drugs into her soup and brought it to her. She took a sip and felt it tasted strange, thinking it may be poisoned or contain drugs especially made to brutalise practitioners, and didn’t drink anymore. Still, the little bit of soup she had consumed made her tongue numb and her mouth foam. Her hands and feet were cold and numb, and her legs were sometimes numb and painful. She then held a nine-day hunger strike in the solitary confinement cell. In order to force her to give up her belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, the guards made her run for hours every day, even though she was extremely weak from the hunger strike. They tried to destroy her willpower and exhaust her through continuous corporal punishment. The cruel persecution caused permanent physical damage. She still suffers from numbness and pain in her legs.

4. Additional Investigative Information Regarding the Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners at the Qinghai Forced Labour Camp

Practitioner Ms. Zhang Xuefeng refused to give up her belief while being held at the labour camp. That is why the camp officials injected her with nerve-damaging drugs that caused her to lose her mind.

Practitioner Tan Yingchun was tortured to death at the same labour camp.

Practitioner Mr. He Wanzhu, held at Qinghai Province Men’s Labour Camp in Baduo Town, Qinghai Province, smelled something strange in the soup one day. He took a small sip and immediately realised something was wrong—the food had been laced with poison. He dumped the soup but started to feel tightness in his chest and numbness in his mouth.

5. Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners at the Qinghai Province Women’s Drug Rehabilitation Labour Camp

Guard Zhang Wenjing often tried to "reform¹" a young Falun Gong practitioner, a girl named Luo Fang. When Luo Fang firmly refused to give up her belief, Zhang Wenjing would shock her with electric batons and beat and kick her. Luo Fang was traumatised from the torture, yet the guards stated Luo Fang had gone crazy from practising Falun Gong. Sometimes the guards made Luo Fang stand for several days and wouldn’t let her eat anything.

The labour camp detainees didn’t go outside to work in the winter of 2002. The camp authorities made Falun Gong practitioners attend what turned out to be a large brainwashing session during which labour camp head Xiang Jianmei slandered and attacked Dafa. Luo Fang stood up and said, "Ms. Xiang, what you said was wrong! Teacher did not say that." Xiang Jianmei cut her off and screamed, "This is not a place where you can speak your mind. Take her out!"

Guard Duan Hairong told guard Zhang Wenjing and others to drag Luo Fang to the Division 2 office and savagely beat her. They shocked her with electric batons. People heard the sizzling sound of electric batons and the frying of human flesh throughout the entire building. The guards beat Luo Fang until fluid dripped from her ears, and they sent her to a solitary confinement cell. After the beating, the guards coerced her to undergo so-called treatment. Luo Fang knew they were trying to hide their crimes and refused to cooperate with them. The guards ordered five inmates to carry her into the labour camp clinic, where they injected her with what they claimed were high-quality drugs. Xiang Jianmei declared, "One injection costs more than 100 yuan²," but we do not know what drug it was.

Practitioners Fan Lihong and Zhang Xuefeng suffered nervous breakdowns and died after they were injected with similar drugs.

Xiang Jianmei beat a practitioner until she became severely injured and then injected her with nerve-damaging drugs.

Xiang Jianmei was bold enough to claim the guards were so kind toward Falun Gong practitioners that they spared no cost at medical treatment. They hid the truth and deceived the public.

The above incidents expose a sinister persecution pattern: First, beating determined Falun Gong practitioners, then locking them in solitary confinement without a cover or bed sheet, compelling the practitioners to sleep on the concrete floor. The guards take injured practitioners to mental hospitals or the labour camp clinic to inject them with unknown drugs; sometimes they mix the unknown drugs with specific other drugs and order drug addicts assigned to monitor Falun Gong practitioners to force the practitioners to ingest pills several times a day. When the practitioners develop symptoms of being absent-minded or suffer a nervous breakdown from the drugs, they "reform" the practitioners through brutal means or say they developed problems from practising Falun Gong. They separated determined practitioners from other practitioners to weaken their willpower.

In order to quickly "reform" the practitioners, destroy the practitioners’ willpower and justify the persecution, the officials at detention centres, labour camps and prisons where practitioners are held against the law often resort to preposterous tactics. They secretly inject sleeping practitioners with unknown drugs or put poisonous drugs in their food, which results in general malaise, difficulty walking, stunted speech, rapid decline of reaction and memory, and organ damage. Some practitioners suffer from a complete mental breakdown or cannot wake up from comatose sleep and have disordered thinking.

According to our investigation, Falun Gong practitioners Fan Lihong, Zhang Xuefeng and Ping Chunfeng testified they were injected with drugs, or their food was laced with unknown substances at the labour camps. Their symptoms appear to be similar to those described in the article, "Completely Expose and Eliminate the Evildoers' Vicious Persecution," saying, "Although we don’t know the exact name of the drugs that were injected or put in the food [of the practitioners], judging from the symptoms, obviously they are drugs that can severely damage the brain and central nervous system. Most people are extremely sensitive toward these types of drugs, and after intake would quickly experience all kinds of symptoms reflective of mental or nervous damage, making it difficult for people to think, remember and communicate normally. Long-term ingestion of food laced with poisonous drugs without the victim’s awareness would result in cumulative poisoning and irreversible organ damage, sometimes leading to multiple organ failure and death. The nature of symptoms and the length of time it takes for these symptoms to appear depend on the type and amount of drug administered."

The guards had given or injected practitioners Fan Lihong and Zhang Xuefeng with nerve-damaging drugs. The practitioners' mental states became unstable. After Fan Lihong and Zhang Xuefeng recovered, they told many people about their experiences, but others refused to believe them as they found the extent of malice hard to fathom. Even their family members did not pay enough attention and then regretted this after the two practitioners passed away.

Practitioner Ping Chunfeng, a staff member at Qinghai Normal University who later became a section head at the Logistics Department reported that on two separate occasions in 2002 and 2003, he was injected with poisonous drugs and his food was laced with poison. He became delirious and could not describe the situation clearly. People asked him to give an accurate and detailed account of the persecution. Before he could re-write the article, he was arrested for the second time and the officials put him under strict surveillance. He passed away in 2005. Qinghai Normal University blocked information and we still do not know exactly how he died. The government claims he committed suicide by jumping off a building. Regardless of the cause of death, one thing is certain: Ping Chunfeng’s colleagues said he was mentally healthy and normal before the persecution. We surmise that the poisoning at the Qinghai Province Labour Camp led to his nervous breakdown and death. Ping Chunfeng is the seventh persecution-caused verifiable death of a Falun Gong practitioner in Qinghai Province.

Practitioners Fan Lihong and Zhang Xuefeng confirmed to other practitioners before their deaths that they were injected with nerve-damaging drugs.

The aforementioned practitioner Ms. Wang Shujuan comes from Shandong Province. We are worried about Dafa practitioners held in Qinghai Province who came from other provinces. Their names are not known, and they are far from their families. Would the officials use drugs on them even more unscrupulously? We call out to the international community to prevent such atrocities from repeating.

Besides practitioner Mr. He Wanzhu, many other practitioners were able to testify to drug poisoning. Practitioner Ms. Li Yuanping is a healthcare professional. During her detention at Qinghai Province Women’s Drug Rehabilitation Labour Camp she had discovered the labour camp is in fact a torture chamber solely used to detain and persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Drug addicts who were sent to the labour camp had already been detoxified at detention centres and did not receive harsh treatment at the labour camp. According to some addicts, the guards pressured them to watch Falun Gong practitioners with threats and promise of rewards after the labour camp started to hold practitioners. They had to record the words and actions of the practitioners they were monitoring on a piece of paper and turn it in daily. Surveillance cameras were installed in each cell and sometimes guards were assigned to night duty.

Ms. Li Yuanping was shocked with electric batons at the hands of several guards and was severely injured. The guards forced her to undergo "medical treatment." Doctor Chen Qinghua prescribed some drugs but she gave the drugs to the addicts assigned to monitor Ms. Li and repeatedly told them to force her to take the drugs "on time." Ms. Li saw that these round pills had no marking on them like other pills and she started to have nausea and numbness after ingesting them. She was tired, she could barely walk, her speech and movement were stunted, and her reaction time and memory declined. After realising this, she stopped taking the drugs by secretly spitting out the pills when the addicts forced her to take them. She expressed her suspicion in the cell, and the addicts immediately reported to the camp officials. Afterwards, labour camp head Xiang Jianmei, the guards, and doctor Chen Qinghua tried to cover up their crimes.

During the time young practitioner Luo Fang from Gansu Province was held at the same labour camp, many practitioners saw her gnaw at tables and crawl under the bed and table after she was injected with drugs. Practitioner Ms. Li Yuanping confronted doctor Chen Qinghua and asked what drugs she had given Luo Fang. Chen Qinghua answered, "Nothing, just penicillin." Her words contradicted camp head Xiang Jianmei’s statement of each shot costing more than 100 yuan.

We urge the international community to take quick and effective measures to end this evil persecution of Falun Gong.

We call on practitioners all over the world to send forth righteous thoughts on a greater frequency toward brainwashing centres, labour camps, prisons and concentration camps to completely eliminate the evil.

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://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2006/12/30/145775.html