Women's Team Guards at the Mudanjiang City Forced Labour Camp in Heilongjiang Province Torture Falun Dafa Practitioners

Officials in the women's team at Mudanjiang City Forced Labour Camp started to detain local women practitioners in June 2000. At the beginning of the persecution of Falun Gong, the city 610 Office¹ head Li Changqing, labour camp head Sun Shutian, and deputy head Zhao Guanying attempted to turn the women's team into a trial base to torture women practitioners. The team members included team head Zhang Xuefeng, team political head Ma Li, and 12 women guards. Wang Li (a policeman) was in charge and bought 20 metal chairs, wide tape, and rope to torture practitioners. In 2000, about 20 women practitioners were held in this brigade.

The guards often locked the cells so that they could beat and torture practitioners individually. Guards Liu Xiufen and Zhang Xiaoguang slapped practitioners, bashed their heads onto metal beds and against walls and metal rails. Sometimes they sat on the practitioners to beat them. They often poured a big bucket of water over the practitioner and her bed, and dipped a mop into the water and dragged it over practitioners' heads, faces and bodies.

The guards turned their cassette players to the maximum volume, and they ate, drank, and jumped around as they played the cassettes. They forced practitioners to watch video programmes slandering Dafa. They shocked practitioners with electric batons. Zhang Xiaoguang and Liu Xiufen used electric batons to shock those practitioners who refused to recite the prison rules and who persevered in reciting the Falun Dafa teachings and practising the exercises. They shocked the practitioners over their entire bodies, in particular their private areas. All of the practitioners were electrically shocked. A smell of scorched flesh filled the whole cell after the torture sessions.

The guards tortured practitioners day and night. They sometimes tortured practitioners for a whole night. They searched practitioners' bedding and belongings every few days and stripped practitioners naked to conduct body searches. Once, the guards bound eight practitioners onto a metal bed, gagged them with rope, and taped over their entire faces. The guards then verbally abused Dafa and played video programmes slandering Dafa. Some practitioners persevered in practising the exercises and then the guards refused to let them eat.

Persecution Incidents

1. The labour camp head beat practitioner Zhang Fenrong. Practitioner Zhu Yan was injected with unknown drugs.

The guards often bound practitioners to a metal chair with both their hands and legs tied tightly and wide tape covering their mouths. Then the guards beat and verbally abused practitioners. Once when Ms. Zhang Fenrong, a native of Xinlong Township in Mudanjiang City, 39 years old, was bound to a metal chair, former deputy camp head Zhao Guanying slapped her with his business portfolio. Zhang's mouth started bleeding profusely, and she could not eat anything for many days.

On another occasion, Zhang Fenrong and Hou Lihua were bound hand and foot to two metal chairs and their mouths were sealed. The guards took turns beating them and then called in others to beat them viciously. Practitioner Zhu Yan could not tolerate it any more and tried to stop them. The guards locked her in a solitary cell and injected her with unknown drugs, resulting in long-term numbness in her left arm.

2. Practitioners Shang Xiufang and Cheng Yuhuan's mouths were sealed with tape. The guards poured water onto them until they almost couldn't breathe.

The guards often abused practitioners in the hallway. They taped practitioners' mouths shut and beat and kicked them. Guard Zhang Xiaoguang used a plastic bottle to spray water into the practitioner's nose and mouth. Because the practitioner's mouth was taped shut, she could only breathe through her nose. When Zhang poured water into her victim's nose, the victim almost choked to death.

3. The guards took practitioners' trousers off to humiliate them

Guards Zhang Xiaoguang and Liu Xiufen often beat and kicked those practitioners who persevered in practising the Falun Gong exercises. Liu even forcibly stripped off Hou Lihua and Shen Jing's trousers and dragged them toward the windowsill, facing the male cells.

Practitioner Shen Jinge's cell was directly facing the male inmates' cells. When she practised the standing exercises, the guards attempted to stop her. When she persevered, the guards forcibly took off her trousers. When she practised the sitting mediation on the bed, the guards poured cold water onto her. They even pulled away her collar to pour cold water directly onto her skin. It was common practice to beat, verbally abuse, and humiliate her and other practitioners.

Ms. Shen went on a protest hunger strike two months later. The labour camp had no choice but to release her.

After suffering three and a half years of torture, Ms. Shen went back to her hometown in May 2005. She was extremely weak and could only eat a little every day. The physical tortures and mental anguish greatly damaged her health. In addition, the government refused to pay her pension, and she constantly lived in terror. She passed away on November 5th, 2006, at the age of 45.

Hou Lihua's Dafa books were confiscated and she demanded that the guards return them. Because the guards turned down her requests many times, she went on a hunger strike. Several guards held her down on a bed and pinched her tongue using a pair of pliers while force-feeding her. Her tongue was numb for a long time afterward.

4. Practitioner Pan Yanhua experienced a torture-induced mental collapse.

Guards Zhang Xiaoguang and Liu Xiufen often pinched practitioners' inner thighs and their mouths. Practitioner Pan Yanhua frequently suffered such tortures and her oral cavity and thighs were often blue and purple.

Once the guards confined Ms. Pan in a solitary confinement cell. Other practitioners staged a persecution protest hunger strike. The guards did not stop the torture; moreover, they dragged Ms. Pan to the male camp and ordered a male guard to beat her fiercely. Ms. Pan became muddleheaded from the torture and started to talk nonsense, and was eventually sent to a mental hospital.

5. Practitioners Zhang Yanqin and Jin Fengying were injected with unknown drugs.

Practitioners Ms. Zhang Yanqin and Ms. Jin Fengying were separately locked in a solitary confinement cell, where the guards beat and otherwise tortured them. Guard Zhang Xiaoguang asked if Ms. Zhang would continue to practise Falun Gong, and she answered, "Yes." Zhang Xiaoguang then beat and kicked her brutally. She got a huge black swelling on her mouth that remained for quite a while.

The guards also tied Zhang Yanqin and Jin Fengying to a metal bed and injected them with unknown drugs. Camp head Zhao Guanying, camp doctor Liu, and guards Zhang Xiaoguang, Liu Xiufen and several others were involved.

Guard Liu Min once slapped Jin Fengying dozens of times. The slaps could be heard all the way down the hallway.

Guard Liu Xiufeng grabbed practitioner Ms. Song's nipple and made obscene comments to humiliate her. Ms. Song was over 60 years old. Guard Zhang Xiaoguang locked practitioner Wu Xiuyan in the toilet to beat her. She also bound practitioner Jiang Yumei to the water tank in the toilet and poured water into her trousers.

When practitioners staged a protest group hunger strike, the guards separated the practitioners and force-fed them in different rooms.

Those Involved in Torturing Practitioners

Mudanjiang City 610 Office Head Li Changqing
Mudanjiang City Labour Camp Head Sun Shutian
Deputy Camp Head Zhao Guanying (in charge of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners)
Political Head Ma Li (female), head Sun Shutian's sister-in-law (After the women's team was dismantled, she was reassigned to the hygiene section)
Guard Zhang Xiaoguang (She was promoted to the Education Section for torturing Falun Gong practitioners; her other job is as a broadcaster at the internal TV station. She often compiled materials to slander Dafa, together with guard Xu Zonghai, who worked as an editor for internal journals.)
Guard Wang Li, now the head of the fourth division

Note

1. "The 610 office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/7/25/159413.html