Degenerate Methods Used to Torture Women at Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp

By a Dafa Practitioner

The female team of the fifth division in Gaoyang City Forced Labour Camp, Hebei Province was founded in October 2000. It was established as a holding and brainwashing facility for Dafa [Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance] practitioners. Since its establishment, the guards have unleashed a broad repertoire of tortures to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. In this article I expose to the world the crimes I witnessed and experienced in Gaoyang Labour Camp.

For firm, unyielding Dafa practitioners, the guards used such treatments as sleep deprivation (only 1-4 hours per day), brutal beatings (sometimes with angle iron), electric shock torture (often using several electric batons at the same time after splashing water on the body), forcing them to squat "in a horse shape position." (Squatting with hands cuffed to metal rings on the ground for not less than ten hours, often for several days and nights. During that time, they were not allowed to sit on the ground or to sleep. When their eyes were about to close, another round of brutal beating would be given. From time to time, they would be given the opportunity to end the torture by agreeing to renounce Falun Gong.)

One Dafa practitioner was the vice chief of a city government finance bureau. She refused to write a guarantee letter, so she was handcuffed in a squatting position in a large warehouse for more than 60 hours. She was brutally beaten and shocked with an electric baton repeatedly. She was beaten so severely that she could hardly be recognized. In the early morning, around 4 o'clock, on April 11, 2001, several male and female team leaders came for her. They treated her with another round of electric shock torture. They threatened that if she did not "transform" they would shock her every half hour until she did "transform." When she heard this, she felt that it would be too hard to bear, yet she did not want to give up cultivation and be "transformed" against her will. At this time, an iron ball, which the team leader was playing with, rolled right up to her feet. She picked it up and swallowed it. Because the ball was so big, it stuck between her pharynx and larynx. She went into a coma several minutes later. The team leaders were startled and tried to dislodge the ball from her throat but failed. In the meantime, this Dafa practitioners' mouth was covered with blood and wounds, a horrible sight. She couldn't breathe and was taken away. At this point the situation of her life or death is not clear and her whereabouts are unclear. Of course, what this practitioner did does not comply with my understanding of the principles of Dafa. I do not believe that a Dafa practitioner should take action to hurt oneself. This should be distinguished from peaceful and rational actions like hunger strikes. However, I must point out that what she did was entirely the result of the bloody violence of the evil guards. Her spirit would rather die than surrender, which terrified the evil and won respect from the people. Practitioners are deeply concerned with the situation of this practitioner.

Last April, a female practitioner from Baoding City felt extremely sad after she was forced to compromise her heart at the brainwashing class held by the labour camp. Twenty days later she rescinded the "four guarantee letters" that she had signed under coercion. After several days the guards took her and handcuffed her outside the compound. They shocked her with four electric batons simultaneously. Seeing she still refused to compromise, the evil police took out a hammer and nails and were about to nail her feet to the ground. Under such inhuman pressure, she compromised against her will again. I heard from practitioners who had arrived in the camp before me that the evil guards had actually hammered nails into one practitioner's feet. These guards are cruel and vicious. Their evil deeds are so numerous that it would be impossible to fully expose all of them to the public. They would first handcuff and then push the practitioner down to the ground, removing her socks, splashing water onto her feet and then shocking them with four or five electric batons simultaneously. Sometimes they felt that was not enough so they would charge the electrical baton with alternating current and continue shocking her until she became unconscious. Every practitioner who was taken out at midnight left the cell walking but had to be dragged back in by two or more people. Their feet were full of bloody blisters; large areas were burnt. The odour of burnt flesh filled the whole cell.

On April 8, 2001, more than 20 female practitioners were transferred from Shijiazhuang City Forced Labour Camp. They had suffered all kinds of tortures in Gaoyang Labour Camp but they were faithful and firm. The violence did not change their rock-solid faith in Dafa. Among them, six practitioners were brutally beaten for more than 60 hours. However, they still did not give up their cultivation and resisted the persecution with a hunger strike. To people's surprise, the evil guards have so totally lost their humanity that they heartlessly force-fed human excrement to the practitioners. After two days, all six practitioners had fevers up to 40 degrees C [about 104 degree F] and dysentery. When they were taken to the hospital, the doctors were quite confused. After an inquiry, the doctor discovered that they had been fed human excrement. The doctors were shocked and angrily criticized the evil guards, "Feeding excrement can make people go into a coma. How inhuman you are!" However, the evil guards were not restrained and kept on feeding excrement to two more practitioners.

One 50-year old female practitioner was shocked with four electrical batons simultaneously after a brutal beating. She went into a coma, yet a male team leader scolded her for pretending to be dead and continued shocking her. No matter how they shocked her, she did not give any response. They only stopped after they felt she had indeed become unconsciousness. For refusing to write the "guarantees," she was tortured into a coma twice. When she woke up, she was disoriented for more than one month. Her eyes were motionless and she could not talk or recognize people.

Li Yufang (pseudonym) was taken outside the compound by two guards one night after Teacher Li's [founder of Falun Gong] articles were found hidden in her bed. They handcuffed her hands. Several vicious guards held her still and shocked her with several electric batons simultaneously. She was shocked into unconsciousness twice, but they still could not find the source of the articles.

The fifth division also holds male practitioners. The male practitioners have suffered even more than the female practitioners. Brutal beatings became a part of their daily lives. In the chilly winter, they were hung up in the piercing cold wind with no coat, sometimes splashed with water to lower their body temperatures even more quickly. In the intense summer heat of 40 degrees C, the guards handcuffed the practitioners' hands and chained their feet forcing them to lie face down on the concrete to suffer heat up to 60 degrees C [about 140 degree F]. They use all kinds of torture methods, including sawing a person's toe. What I know is only the tip of the iceberg since the male and female teams are strictly isolated. When the guards did bad things, no matter if they were male or female, they were all afraid of other people seeing them. They tried to always conduct the torture secretly in quiet places outside the compound after midnight. The TV propaganda of the "ideological education" of Falun Gong practitioners and the so-called "like the spring breeze transforming the rain" is all fake. What is true is the secret torture of the practitioners being hidden from the public, trying to force the practitioners to give up their faith.

Among several hundred practitioners in Gaoyang Labour Camp, more than 90% have suffered brutal tortures. The victims were severely hurt physically and mentally. Some practitioners had the symptoms of vision blurring and being in a trance etc. One elderly lady from Chengde City was fit and healthy when she came to the labour camp. After a half-year of torture, her arms and legs were paralyzed. Only then did the labour camp tell her family to take her home.

Jiang's regime doesn't care about the huge costs it incurs to persecute Falun Gong. Jiang dedicated 4.2 billion Yuan of the people's hard-earned money to build jails and labour camps all over the country. How many evil dens are there like Gaoyang Labour Camp in Hebei? How many are there in the whole country? The current ruler and the people who help him to do evil things will eventually be judged by the righteous people and punished by the heavenly law! I hereby advise guards who still have human nature to abandon evil and return to goodness.

Source: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/4/12/20904.html

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/4/4/27712.html