Additional Information on the Persecution of Yu Ming at Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Beijing

Mr. Yu Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner, is currently detained at Masanjia Labour Camp in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. In 2006, he was tortured at Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Beijing. This article contains additional information about the persecution Mr. Yu was subjected to, including being tied to a chair for three months, resulting in muscular atrophy all over his body and other severe physical damage.

Special agents with the Ministry of State Security arrested Yu Ming on March 3rd, 2006 in Beijing. He was then sent to the Beijing Labour Re-Education Personnel Dispatch Centre, where he went on a hunger strike to resist the persecution. The police took him to Tuanhe Hospital for mental torture. The Dispatch Centre officials then tried to send him to Xinjiang, Hebei, and Henan provinces, but none of the labour camps there wanted to accept him. On September 14th, 2006, Yu was transferred from Tuanhe Hospital to Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp.

At Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp, the guards tried everything to get him to give up Falun Gong. They made him wear a detainee uniform. Yu immediately took it off. He went on a hunger strike to protest and shouted, "I am a Falun Dafa practitioner, not a labour camp detainee. I was abducted. I won't wear your uniform or eat your labour camp food."

On the fourth day, the guards force-fed him, and he refused to cooperate. Guards Guo Jinhe, Gong Wei, and Liu Guoxi led a group of patrol officers (17-18 people) to drag him from the second floor of a building to a small clinic that was on the first floor approximately 50 metres away. During this process, Yu tried to resist and shouted loudly, "Falun Dafa is great! I was abducted!" The guards stomped on Yu's feet. Since he was dragged along the ground, his shirt, trousers, and socks were tattered. His feet were severely injured. A few days later, the toenail on his big toe fell off.

In order to try to force Yu to change his mind, guards tied his neck, chest, waist, hands, and feet to a chair and kept him that way day and night. Even when he had to urinate or defecate, he was not untied. Yu refused to cooperate with the force feeding and did not cooperate with any of the guards' demands. Everyday, as long as he was conscious, he shouted, "Falun Dafa is great! I've been abducted here." The guards spent over 40,000 yuan¹ to soundproof the room with special boards and foam. A thick layer of vinyl was put on the floor. The room was put under audio and video surveillance. However, Yu used the morning exercise time and lunch time to shout, "Falun Dafa is great! I was abducted! The Communist Party persecutes people based on faith and destroys human rights!"

In response, the guards ordered 12 inmates to form four groups of three to watch him 24 hours a day. The three people surrounded Yu to prevent him from shouting. As soon as he began shouting, they immediately started playing loud music while stuffing his mouth with a towel. The guards also asked the inmates to hold Yu's head still during force-feeding sessions. Due to the repeated, brutal force-feeding, Yu had no strength left to to move. He was tied to a chair from mid-September until the end of 2006.

Because Yu's heart twice stopped beating suddenly, the guards called several doctors from Tuanhe Hospital for a diagnosis. The doctors thought that Yu's life was in danger, and one of the doctors insisted that the guards remove Yu from the chair. The guards took him down from the chair and put him on a mattress. By then, Yu was no longer able to raise his arms. His weight had dropped from 180 pounds to approximately 100 pounds. He also could not stand up straight.

After a little bit of rest, Yu started to shout, "Falun Dafa is great! Falun Dafa is upright! Immediately terminate our detention and stop the persecution!" When the inmates in charge of watching him tried to block his mouth so that he couldn't speak, Yu told them solemnly, "I have been illegally abducted."

By then the inmates had been watching him for quite a while. They told him quietly, "We are being forced to do this. The guards are watching through the video camera. If we don't do this, our term here will be extended. In the future, as a compromise, we will put a towel on your mouth just for show. You can still shout as loudly as you want."

Since the guards could not change Yu's mind, they came up with a new idea. They used the New Year holiday to vacate the Old West Building at Tuanhe Labour Camp. They moved the inmates working in the cafeteria to the first floor. The second floor was vacant. On the third floor, they spent tens of thousands of yuan to soundproof the area and install surveillance equipment. The walls were covered with soundproof boards, and the windows were blocked. The doors were wrapped in foam, too. They moved Yu from the East Building to this building for solitary confinement. At this time, Yu was suffering from muscular atrophy all over his body, and he was extremely thin and weak.

The guards in Beijing were unable to shake Yu's strong belief. They transferred Yu to Masanjia Labour Camp in Liaoning Province on May 21st, 2007. Because Yu's health was so severely damaged at Tuanhe Labour Camp he was transferred to the Masanjia Labour Camp Hospital after just a few days. He remains there today.

Related article:

http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/200611/36567.html
http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/200612/36927.html

Note

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

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/11/11/166347.html