Witnessing Atrocities in Heizuizi Women's Forced Labour Camp in Changchun City, Jilin Province

I want to report what I witnessed in Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp in Changchun City while I was imprisoned there so that all Chinese and people worldwide can see how brutal the Communist Party thugs really are.

It was the summer of 2002. We were having lunch in the dinning hall when I saw two people carrying a Falun Gong practitioner whose legs and arms were dangling. Seeing that the scene had caught people's attention, the guards made up a quick lie, alleging that she had become this way from practising Falun Gong. In reality, it was because they had shocked her with electric batons, injuring her nervous system.

Sometime in 2002, a practitioner in Team Four, Division 1 walked out of the discipline room with a face pale and bloody nose. She was very weak and both her hands were trembling. She was also having trouble breathing. This was caused by shocks from electric batons. Actually, she was only shocked for ten minutes.

Practitioner Li Xueying, about 28 years old, was detained Team Four, Division 1. She was shocked by Division 1 guards because she refused to renounce Falun Dafa. She had a heart attack as a result. They extended her original one-year term to a year and a half, the maximum permitted extension. However, she never wavered. The police could not "transform¹" her and had to let her go eventually. The labour camp did not want to let people know the truth and told everyone that she was sent to a prison.

The captain of Division I was Yan Lifeng, in her 30s. The captain in charge of morale was Li Ying, in her 40s. The person in charge of production was Chen Ping, also in her 40s. The guard in charge of morale, Ye Ying, was the most hypocritical. The guard for Team Four was Wang Xiuli, in her 30s.

Yan Lifeng announced in public that if anyone did not renounce Falun Gong, she would make them truly miserable, whether walking, sitting, or lying down. The labour camp used all sorts of dirty tricks to torture practitioners, but tried not to leave any visible scars or bruises. They would shock the nipples or inside the vagina to cause maximum pain with little or no visible injuries. If the electric shocks resulted in any scarring, the guard would claim that it was due to a skin infection caused by practising Falun Gong.

From 2001 through 2004, the periods of forced labour in the camp were especially long and the work was especially intensive. Wake-up time was 5 a.m. We were given 15 minutes to brush our teeth, wash our faces, and go to the toilet. We were allowed two 10-minute toilet visits the rest of the day, one before lunch and another after dinner. The rest of the time was spent working until midnight. The work environment was very bad, too.

Once we worked with dyed bird feathers. To keep the feathers from flying about, they had us close all the windows in the middle of summer. The temperature in the room was so high that it was like being in an oven. The feathers flew everywhere, staining people's noses, mouths, and skin with the dye. Even peoples' saliva was coloured. The dye from the feathers was toxic and irritated people's throats and harmed their health. We used the feathers to make handcrafted birds for export. On the boxes were American logos and dollar signs. The guards stayed next door and watched us work. They did not care how unbearable it was. Sometimes we had to do outdoor labour, such as digging trenches and chopping roots.

Heizuizi is a women's forced labour camp. Most practitioners detained there were middle-aged or older women. It was very cruel to make these elderly women do such heavy labour.

The guards would lock practitioners in a dark storage room to carry out so-called "education." Most often it was in the small area for storing bathroom cleaning equipment. They would turn off the light to keep people from finding out about it. We discovered it by accident. The room was dark, damp, and very depressing. The "coach" would tell the practitioners all sorts of things defaming Dafa, and would abuse them verbally or physically at times. The so-called "coaches" were all criminal offenders. Those in charge assigned at least two "coaches" to each practitioner. Within such a small space, people were very cramped. The "coaches" themselves were uncomfortable, too, and would vent their anger on practitioners and persecute them cruelly. They would even stab needles into practitioners' hands.

When the guards failed to "reform" practitioners with brainwashing tactics, they would punish them by ordering them to stand against a wall. Usually they would tell the practitioners they were not to sleep until they admitted their mistakes. Some practitioners were carried away after they passed out from standing for too long. Many people were eventually forced to renounce Falun Gong when they could not stand the prolonged loss of sleep. Later the guards found that some practitioners could not withstand the electric shocks, so they worked hard to shock the newcomers and those who refused to renounce Falun Gong.

In 2001, the electric baton was essentially not used. They only did so-called "education" (brainwashing). They let the practitioners work for 18 hours during the day and "educated" them at night. That is, not letting them sleep. They made us read books defaming Falun Gong and let us sleep for only one hour a night. After three consecutive days, most people could not stand it. Later the news of this torture was leaked and the labour camp was forced to change its policies on "education": no later than midnight.

In spring 2006, around March or April, the electric shocks that Heizuizi Forced Labour Camp guards applied to the practitioners were all as high as ten thousand volts. They shocked people's necks, because the neck has the highest concentration of blood vessels. After they shocked the practitioners the police would try to cover it up and not let others see the practitioner. Once during lunch people saw from a distance that practitioner Wei Fengju had a big scar on her neck resulting from electric shocks. The scars on her neck look terrible for a very long time after being shocked. The police tortured Ms. Wei in many different ways. The electric shocks alone were applied many times. Once they even put the electric baton in her mouth.

Division 2 female guard Wei Dan, 37 years old, used inmates that had been drug addicts, prostitutes, con-artists, and thieves to persecute practitioners. To incite the viciousness in these people, she promised them term reductions. She was often employed by other divisions to help them torture practitioners. She shocked Wei Fengju many times with electric batons. She murdered a practitioner who refused to renounce Dafa by torturing her, and had the inmates testify that it was not her fault. She also kicked Ms. Xu Guorong, who was over 50 years old, and injured her leg. She then told inmates and other collaborators to testify that it was caused by Ms. Xu's own illness. She let inmate He Huanping stab practitioner Ms. Zheng Xiaomin's nipple when Ms. Zheng refused to renounce Falun Gong. She also hung up practitioners and beat them, trying to force them to slander the founder of Falun Dafa.

Practitioner Li Zhiling in Team Four, Division 1 was repeatedly shocked by female guard Ye Ying (also known as Ye Jiong) because she refused to renounce Falun Gong. One day Ye was on duty. She used two electric batons to shock Li continuously for a day and a night.

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")

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/8/12/160686.html