Practitioners Forced to Undergo Brainwashing and Monitoring in Guigang District, Guangxi Province

After July 20, 1999, all the practitioners in Guigang District, Guangxi Province, were blacklisted. They were forced to hand in their Falun Gong books and related materials and write a Guarantee Statement renouncing Falun Gong. Book shops were searched. Terror filled the air in the city.

In 2000, some practitioners wrote letters of appeal to each level of government officials to explain the actual situation, but they were arrested and detained. Then some of the practitioners went to Beijing to appeal. Some of them had no more money left after buying train tickets, and some brought cooked rice with them, which was their only food on the way to Beijing. Once in Beijing, however, when they got off the train, they were arrested, while others were arrested on the train. They were sentenced to one or two years of imprisonment. Some of them were arrested before they even arrived in Beijing.

All of the Guigang District practitioners were persecuted under the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) unlawful ban on Falun Gong. Some of their homes were searched. Some practitioners were harassed when the police checked to see if they were home in the middle of the night, and some of them received threatening telephone calls from the authorities late at night. On January 17th, 2001, the police arrested all practitioners that refused to renounce Falun Gong and detained them in Guijiang Auditorium. Each practitioner that had been to Beijing was dragged out and insulted in front of everyone. When the practitioners returned to their jobs, they were required to write statements to denounce Falun Gong and to have their photos and fingerprints taken. Their family members also had to write statements denouncing Falun Gong and promising to comply with the authorities' demands.

In 2001, the CCP staged the "Self-Immolation¹" incident in Tiananmen Square. On February 14th, 2001, Guigang District officials implemented plans to try to brainwash Falun Gong practitioners. The CCP ordered the practitioners' workplaces to follow and monitor certain practitioners. The CCP also arranged second and third rounds of brainwashing sessions, during which the communication between detained practitioners and the outside world was completely cut off. In those several years, many practitioners were arrested and sentenced to jails. Sometimes whole families were sentenced to jail, or married couples were jailed, leaving their children alone without any care. Practitioners were monitored by phone and in person. Every holiday, the CCP personnel would knock on their doors to check if practitioners were at home, disturbing their families. Some of the practitioners' family members were so traumatized by the relentless harassment that they they fell ill and died.

The fourth round of the brainwashing session was particularly brutal. Those responsible for it were Zhang, Chengjun, and Yuan. Zhang was deputy director of the guard office in Guigang City. He is the main director of the 610 Office² in the Nanping Dapo district. Also, he was a teacher who used to write poems and slogans to defame Falun Gong. Yuan was a director and policeman. They thought that the brainwashing centre had not been successful enough, so they came up with crueller methods to attempt to brainwash every practitioner. Zhang Chengjun promoted his methods of persecution to all of Guangxi Province. Most of the local officers followed his method to persecute practitioners.

This brainwashing centre was located in a deserted old military camp near the mountain. It had been a storage and service supply base of the Tantang Military sub-section in Guigang. It is a secretive place because of its location. The general public has not even heard of it. In January 2005, the Guigang District CCP officials arrested practitioners and used brutal method to "transform³" them. Then these people became collaborators and were used to "transform" other practitioners. They also brought in more manpower from the Nanning, Guilin, and Litang areas. These people tortured Guigang practitioners and then went elsewhere to torture more practitioners.

The CCP used lies and threats to get practitioners to the brainwashing centre. Their method is to use a single room that they called an "operation room." A practitioner is locked inside and forced to sit on a stool and the collaborators try to brainwash the victim. The practitioner is not allowed to sleep or bathe, but is tortured and subjected to loud noises and audio recordings of the CCP's slanderous propaganda. If this method didn't work, Zhang Chengjun would invite others from Nanning Prison to torture and threaten practitioners, telling them that if they didn't give up Falun Gong, they would be sent to an even more terrible place for "transformation." They said that if the practitioners refused to be "transformed," the authorities would use other methods to "transform" them, implying that they would torture them until they gave in or died. Some female practitioners who had their periods were so brutally tortured that they collapsed on the floor. The perpetrators hauled them up and pushed them down on the stools. Since the practitioners were kept in the same position for a prolonged time, their hands and feet swelled. They would only be allowed out of this room if they wrote the three statements⁴.

As a result, some practitioners suffered a mental collapse and wrote the three statements. A pretty, young female practitioner was tortured until she became mentally disoriented and would eat glass and nails. Zhang Chengjun was proud of his "efficient" method. He boasted that he kept practitioners awake for ten days straight. His brutal method was introduced to all of Guangxi. Other local prison officers, forced labour camp officials, and 610 Office agents learned this technique.

Practitioners who were out of the "operation room" were forced to view videos that slandered Falun Gong. There were over 100 such videos and a book written by Wang Zhigang that defamed Falun Gong. The police also searched practitioners' homes for Falun Gong books, materials and their sources, destinations where the materials were sent, those who taught Falun Gong, whom they practised with, and those who still practised Falun Gong. Each practitioner was monitored by two people. Practitioners' places of employment had to provide money and people to watch these practitioners. It is said that the cost of monitoring one person is ten thousand yuan⁵. If the workplace could not provide people, the 610 Office would do it. They recorded every detail of practitioners' daily lives. They went wherever the practitioners went. Practitioners were not allowed to contact anyone outside of this military camp. Additionally, there were other undercover policemen watching them. Whenever they thought someone had "transformed" and met the so called "five standards" to be let out of the brainwashing centre, they would take a photo, video, or fingerprint the practitioner and deliver the results to the provincial Public Security Office. Also, they forced the practitioners to read articles that slandered Falun Gong. All those who were "transformed" and about to be released had to write on a piece of red fabric to thank the CCP for detaining and brainwashing them. Zhang Chenjun forced people that got out of the brainwashing centre to bring this "appreciation flag" with them. They also put the practitioner's picture or articles the "transformed" practitioners wrote to slander Falun Gong on the blackboard in order to show off their "success." Family members who picked up the "transformed" practitioners had to first sign a "guarantee statement" before they could leave.

This brainwashing centre was opened in January 2005 and closed on July 25th, 2005. Almost all practitioners from Quangang (which includes three districts and two cities) were detained there, including the ones released from jails and forced labour camps. This brainwashing centre demanded money from practitioners' places of employment. The perpetrators' evil deeds made people hate it. Finally, it closed. Later, the perpetrators tried to open other brainwashing centres in Guigang, Guiping, and Pingnan. They tried to detain everyone who learned Falun Gong, but they failed because of practitioners' strong resistance.

Currently in Guigang, practitioners are still being arrested and detained, including a young female practitioner from Nanping Normal University who was arrested in 2007.

Note

1. The "Tiananmen Self-Immolation" [an incident on Tiananmen Square in January 2001 whereby four people set themselves alight and the Chinese Communist claimed they were Falun Gong practitioners, yet there was video evidence to strongly disprove this claim]

2. "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.

3. "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")

4. "Three Statements": Practitioners are coerced under brainwashing and torture to write "Repentance Statement," "Guarantee Statement" or 'Dissociation Statement" as proof that they have given up their belief. In the statement, the practitioner is forced to admit remorse for practising Falun Gong, promise to give up Falun Gong, and never again associate with other practitioners or go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.

5. "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://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/3/1/173374.html