Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners at Qiqihar Forced Labour Camp in Heilongjiang Province

I was arrested by officers from my local police station in the end of 2004 and was sent to the Qiqihar Forced Labour Camp. Officials at the labour camp started to persecute me from the first day I arrived. Team leader Wang Mei only allowed me to sleep for two hours over the first two days.

On the third day, Chief Zhang Zhijie restrained me in an iron chair. While I was the "iron chair"¹, he only gave me one steamed bun and split it in two for me to eat half each day. He only gave me cold water to drink and did not give me any gruel or soup to eat. He did not allow me to wash my face, clean my teeth, or change clothes. The way the police locked me to the iron chair was more and more brutal every day and the pain was more and more intense. Officer Yang Fenghua handcuffed my wrists very tightly and caused them to bleed. I protested the torture, but she did not loosen the handcuffs, she made them even tighter. I asked team leader Fu Chengjuan not to cuff my arms so that they were twisted. But she twisted my arm even more and said it was the standard posture. My arm was so painful that I could not lift it in the night.

Team leader Liu Shurong locked me onto the back of the iron chair. I could not sit, squat, or kneel down. I was locked in this posture for a whole day. The muscles of my lower limbs were injured. My legs, ankles, wrists, and arms all swelled. Zhang Zhijie and Liu Shurong tried to force me to give up my belief and said if I gave up they would release me from the iron chair. I refused. They discussed how to torture me more brutally. Then they extended my arms behind the back of the chair and cuffed my wrists together. They immediately started to bleed. I could not sit on the iron chair or stand up. My back was rubbed raw and bleeding.

That night, officer Liu Shurong did not allow me to have a blanket. It was January 4th, 2005. The winters in northeast China are very cold. I was frozen and could not stop shaking. On the sixth day I was sent to the forced labour camp. I could not even eat a steamed bun and I started to vomit. I had asked them to release me from the iron chair, but they only used a more brutal method to torture me. Finally I compromised. I wrote the so-called "Four Statements²". I was extremely sad and regretful after I wrote the statements. Every day I thought of writing a solemn declaration to nullify what I had done. Finally I had the courage to write the solemn declaration. Because I refused to be "transformed³," the labour camp officials did not release me after my term was finished. They added one and a half months to my term.

The practitioners who refused to be "transformed" were all forced to do the dirtiest and heaviest work. The labour camp forced me to package pesticide in the agricultural chemical factory. The strong pesticide smell in the air made it hard to breathe and caused my abdomen to swell. The work the labour camp assigned to us was hard to finish. The guards did not allow practitioners to go to the toilet. Once practitioner Qi Dawei asked to go to the toilet. Zhang Zhijie not only did not allow him to go, he also verbally abused him. Wang Lijun and Guo Jingjun were responsible for the quality check. They arbitrarily increased our workload and they inspected the practitioners' work very strictly. The labour camp also forced us to work in the corn-processing factory where the work was even more intense. Our hands were all swollen from the work in the corn-processing factory. No matter what work we did in the labour camp, we could not stop. If we stopped to rest for a while, the officials yelled at us.

I saw practitioner Wang Yongfang in the labour camp. She persisted in her belief firmly. The very intensive and overtime labour work made her incapable of walking. She continuously coughed 24 hours every day. The officials in the labour camp told her family to pay a few thousand yuan⁴ to have her released, but her family could not afford it. The labour camp refused to release her. Practitioner Xu Hongmei was brutally tortured and she had great difficulty moving her lower limbs. Both her feet were numb and she could not take care of herself. Practitioner Zhu Lihua was tortured to the point of mental disorder. She went unconscious for three days. Guard Fu Chengjuan said that Zhu Lihua was pretending to be sick and did not want to work, so she locked her onto the iron chair. Since Zhu Lihua's condition was very critical, the chief of the labour camp, Zhang Zhijie, was afraid that she would die. She had to tell the guards to take Zhu Lihua to the Qiqihar Hospital. Practitioner Liu Lixia was beaten three times and was locked onto the iron chair three times. The first time, she held onto Xu Hongmei for a while because she found it hard to walk. Officer Fu Chengjuan told her to go to the office and close the door. Then she slapped Liu Lixia in the face and kicked her a couple of times. The second time, guard Wang Mei found Falun Dafa articles on Liu Lixia. She slapped Liu Lixia's face. The third time Liu Lixia helped Gao Yanping to do some work and was reported by collaborator Zhang Xiwen. Guard Zhang Zhijie slapped her on her face again.

On September 9th, 2005, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official Luo Gan visited the Qiqihar Forced Labour Camp. The guards locked the practitioners and those that were appealing for justice in the hallway on the fourth floor of the north building. Appeal person, Ms. Fu Yulan, over 60 years old, had high blood pressure. Guard Wang Mei pushed and beat her from the second floor of the south building to the fourth floor of the north building. Ms. Wang Yunqin was tortured on the iron chair. She sued the labour camp after she was released, but the labour camp officials denied what they did to her and asked collaborator⁵ Zhu Binglan to give false testimony. Zhu Binglan was released before the end of her term. The labour camp did not allow practitioner Wang Chunyu to sleep for five days in order to "transform" her, but the tactic failed. They also locked practitioner Li Shunying to a radiator pipe for eight days and nights and did not allow her to sleep in order to try to "transform" her. Guard Zhang Zhijie grabbed Li Shunying's hand and forced her to make a fingerprint. Ms. Zou Minghua had her hands disabled by the guards and she could not work. She had high blood pressure after being beaten by Zhang Li.

In spring 2006, the government published rules that did not allow forced labour personnel to work overtime and did not allow the forced labour factory to turn on the lights at night. But the labour camp officials ordered the people who did not finish their jobs in the daytime to work in the hallway during the night. Some of them were forced to work until 2 a.m. Some were forced to work the whole night such as Zhu Lihua and Li Shunying. Guard Zhang Zhijie deceived us, saying that if we finished work faster we could rest earlier. She also said she would not increase our workload if we finished earlier. In the beginning, we did not believe her. She said it a few times. But when we really finished the work faster and earlier, she still increased our workload. The heavy workload exhausted us. The people who worked slower usually had to work until late at night.

The labour camp's cafeteria clearly wrote on the meal list that everyone's monthly meal standard was 126 yuan. But they only gave us the worst food to eat, which caused many people to have diarrhoea.

During my detention at the labour camp for more than two years, I truly experienced wickedness in the CCP's forced labour camp. The Chinese Communist Party truly is the most evil in the world. It is only a matter of time before the CCP will pay for its crimes.

Note

1. Iron Chair: The "Iron chair" is made of iron pipes. Victims are restrained on the iron chairs with both arms and legs tied for a long period of time, see illustration at http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/1/9/17577.html

2. "Four Statements": Practitioners are coerced under brainwashing and torture to write the "four statements" as proof that they have given up their belief. Created by the 610 Office, they consist of "a letter of repentance," "a guarantee" to never again practise Falun Gong, a "Dissociation Statement" to declare a dissociation with Falun Gong and promise not go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and a list of names and addresses of all family members, friends and acquaintances who are practitioners.

3. "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")

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

5. "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/2007/7/9/158505.html