Account of the Persecution of Wang Jinfang at the Wangcun Forced Labour Camp in Shandong Province

On May 23rd, 2003, Wang Jinfang was detained and sentenced to two years of forced labour. At the Wangcun Forced Labour Camp in Zibo City, she was subjected to two years of imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). When she was released from the labour camp on March 15th, 2005, the CCP members sent her to the Weifang Brainwashing Centre for further persecution as they thought that she had not been fully "transformed¹." There were about twenty Dafa practitioners imprisoned in the Weifang Brainwashing Centre at that time, including a male university student. Due to his refusal to give up his beliefs, the CCP members tortured him using a variety of methods. All sorts of cruel methods were used to torture Dafa practitioners, and each is forced to pay a fee of 30,000 yuan². A couple from Cangyi City was disabled from the torture. The husband's private part was shocked with electric batons until it was terribly swollen and injured, and his wife was injured so badly that she could not tend to her daily activities.

The following is Wang Jinfang's account:

I learned Falun Dafa in September 1995. It made me feel as though I was the most fortunate person on Earth. Before learning the practice I quarrelled with my mother-in-law almost daily because I was discontent with my marriage. Even my own child became a vent for my anger. My entire family could not live in peace. Through studying the teachings, practising the exercises and cultivating my heart, my problems at home disappeared and our family lived in harmony. All of our relationships were very good. Many people in the village said that I had changed into a new person. I shouldered a heavy responsibility at home, having planted more than an acre of vegetables, and I tended to it carefully. During the flood in 1998, I donated part of my hard-earned income to the disaster areas. I also helped repair roads in the village that were hard to travel on when it rained. Many people told me that I had become a good person through practising Falun Gong.

The Jiang Zemin [former leader of China and instigator of the persecution] regime began persecuting Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. In order to appeal and also for my own freedom to practise, I travelled to Beijing in March, 2000, but I was intercepted by police along the way. The police confiscated my money, and I was searched from head to toe, including my underwear and socks. From then on, I lost my freedom. The village Party division began monitoring me. While selling vegetables, working at home, etc., there were people spying on me all the time. However, no matter how bad the circumstances became, I always told people, who had been misled by the government propaganda, the facts about Falun Dafa and exposed the persecution.

On May 23rd, 2003, I was reported to the authorities while distributing Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution at a supermarket and then detained. A few days later, police officers handcuffed my hands and legs and took me to a brainwashing centre. They then transferred me to a police station. At the police station, I was brutally beaten by policemen. One of them, who was surnamed Wang, beat me so badly that I was bleeding from my mouth, and my chin was left purple and swollen for two weeks. After a month of detention at the police station, I was taken to the Zhi'an Detention Centre. Thirteen days later, due to my refusal to give up my beliefs and my refusal to submit to them, I was taken to the Wangcun Forced Labour Camp in Zibo City around July 2nd, 2003, and sentenced to two years of forced labour.

Life in the labour camp is even more cruel. Guards came one after another in two-hour shifts. Their seemingly kind words were in fact lies. I was transferred from one room to another until I could not tell where I was, and I was tortured for three entire days and nights without being allowed any sleep. I was subjected to immense torture both physically and spiritually, and was forced to submit to their demands.

I was forced to perform a lot of extremely strenuous physical labour during the day. Many practitioners could not bear it and fell down. Yet, the guards said that this was a pretense and that we had a problem in our thinking. At night we were forced to watch videos propagandizing lies, and one of the guards named Wang Yonghong even brought pornography tapes and forced practitioners to watch them.

In 2004, many imprisoned practitioners declared that they would cultivate Falun Gong steadfastly. The authorities then escalated the persecution. Wang Lingling from Weihai City, who was only eighteen years old then, went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. The police handcuffed her several times, force-fed her, and tortured her until her wrists were scarred and her entire body was covered with injuries. She became emaciated and was very thin. Zhang Shuying from Jimo City was hung from a window frame by guards Wang Yonghong, Song Min, Cui Hongwen, Li Aiwen, and others. She was tortured again and again until she finally submitted to their demands. Yang Wenjie from Zhaoyuan City was imprisoned in a small cell³. Her limbs were tied up on a dead-man's bed⁴. She was prohibited from using the bathroom and subjected to long-term torture. Her hair turned white from the torture. Yang would always reason with the guards whenever she heard cries or screams from other practitioners to try to protect them. For this, she was brutally beaten many times. She was often beaten by six or seven male guards. On the day I left the labour camp, six or seven large male guards were still torturing her. Even though the guards turned up the television volume to try to drown out the sounds, I could still hear her cries and shouts.

There were two female university students there: Zhang Li from Qingdao City and Liu Aiping from Cangyi City. They were humiliated with foul words by the guards and forced to perform extremely strenuous labour. The Third Team, where they were imprisoned, brought in a lot of sewing materials in a towel delivery truck. Sometimes they were forced to work until midnight or 1:00 a.m. If they did not finish the work on time, they were not allowed to sleep. The physical and spiritual torture was unbearable and caused some inmates to suffered a mental collapse.

Dafa disciple Tang Xiumei was badly beaten by the guards. Many other practitioners saw the scars on her body while they were showering. Zhang Hong from Qingdao City was brutally tortured after she refused to give up her beliefs. Her eyes turned purplish-green from the torture and she was subjected to many forms of torture. The guards also used slippers to slap her face. Once, the guards instigated criminal Liu Aiqin to pour a bucket of ice-cold water on her after seeing her sit on the ground. She was tortured for three years.

I was also forced to perform large amounts of slave labour. My health deteriorated as I quickly contracted lung and heart diseases. I had to pay a lot of money at the hospital for X-rays, but I was still not told exactly what was wrong with me. Even when I was suffering from very bad back-aches and could not breathe properly, I was forced to perform strenuous labour. During meetings I submitted material exposing the truth of the persecution that I had written, and the guards refused to let me sleep. I went on a hunger strike, and they drew a circle on the ground, forcing me to stand in the tiny area. Guard Han Xinke handcuffed me to a chair with my legs around the chair's legs, and he kicked my legs violently. The pain was unbearable. I bit my tongue and the police began using metal tools to strike me in the teeth. Two of my teeth were cracked as a result.

At the police hospital, they switched to many other methods of torture. After a lot of torture, when they could not force a tube down my throat, they sealed up my mouth using tape. It was hard to breathe and I almost suffocated. At night I was cuffed to the bed and was not allowed to sleep. I continued to be given corn paste and vegetable soup. After twelve days, my esophagus was infected, I had bad breath, urinated blood, and my body was so swollen that I could not wear shoes. My weight dropped from one hundred and fifty pounds to less than a hundred pounds. I was isolated from the other practitioners at that point.

After I was sentenced to forced labour, my family was in a very bad situation. At that time, my son was only seventeen years old, and it was not easy for him to make a trip to visit me, but the guards did not allow us to meet when he did. Guard Cui Hongwen was force-feeding me when I broke the tube with my teeth, and I was made to pay 20 yuan as compensation. Every time they force fed me, they would first draw my blood. Every day I had to pay more than 70 yuan, and the expenses kept on rising.

In order to bring me home, my husband went everywhere. Han Yonglu, from the Political Protection Section in the Zhucheng Public Security Bureau, asked my husband to buy him a gift worth 3,000 yuan and promised that I would be released. However, after my husband spent the money, Han refused to fulfill his promise. In the two years that I've been imprisoned, my husband was cheated out of a total of 30,000 yuan. He became very depressed and drank a lot, as a result. My entire family has been put through so much suffering by the CCP's persecution.

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.

3. Small cell - The detainee is locked up alone in a very small cell. The guards handcuff the practitioner's hands behind his back in a fixed position, in which the practitioner can neither move nor lie down. The small cell is very damp and no sunshine comes in. Detainees have to urinate and defecate in the cell. Only half of a regular meal is served to detainees locked up in a small cell during the daytime. During the night rats run about. The stench in the small cell is so bad that it is difficult to breathe.

4. Dead man's bed - All four of the practitioner's limbs are stretched out and tied to the four corners of a cold metal bed frame. The practitioner cannot move at all. He is not allowed to get up to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. This treatment usually lasts from several hours to more than a ten days. As one can imagine, this type of cruel torture causes severe damage to the practitioner's mind and body. See the illustration of this form of torture at http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/12/15/55600.html .

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/10/2/163720.html