Exposing the Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners in Shandong Province No. 1 Women's Forced Labour Camp

The prison guideline, "An Entrance to Education," composed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Ministry of Justice, states that prisoners have both responsibilities and rights, including that guards must not strike or verbally abuse inmates, no corporal punishment, no insults, no forced labour, and that prisoners should have enough time for sleep and relaxation. But all the CCP guards know that those are only hollow statements made to deceive outsiders.

From my own experience, I knew that imprisonment in a forced labour camp was just like entering a demon's den. Besides insolent guards, there were one or two inmates assigned to monitor and torture practitioners. The inmates cooperated with the guards to carry-out brainwashing, involving instilled falsehoods and absurdities, in attempts to force practitioners to "reform¹." If these measures were counter productive, the guards would strike out by themselves. For example, division head Sun Juan would kick the older practitioners' naked calves with her shoes on. If you asked, "Isn't beating people not allowed here?" She would answer flagrantly, "Is this beating you? What I did was to educate you." She often declared openly and shamelessly, "We often denigrate you practitioners or even beat you. Why don't we do the same thing to passers-by on the street or others but only to you? It is because we love you."

Most of the practitioners are middle-aged or older women, who practice to improve their health and moral character. Guards beat them and insult them freely, claiming that they "reform" practitioners softly and gently. Deputy division head Sun Qunli was in charge of the so-called education and "transformation." These tyrannizing, unreasonable, and insufferably arrogant tactics were something unheard of before. For instance, when a practitioner, over 60 years old, didn't renounce her belief, Sun, seething with rage, kicked a stool so it fell on the older lady's leg. She also stabbed the woman's chest with her fingers at full force. She didn't stop until she got tired. In the end, the older lady's left shoulder and chest were black-and-blue, and her leg was also injured.

If you didn't "reform" as expected, they increased the number of monitoring inmates by finding those who were unusually strong, nasty, and ruthless. These inmates would be in charge of fulfilling the persecution orders, such as depriving you of sleep at night, forbidding you from using the toilet and other things. There was an illiterate practitioner in her 60s, whose monthly quota didn't meet the division head's requirement. She was confined to a cold and humid room for airing clothes, to a toilet, or to the team leaders' toilet room for periods of up to a month. At night, roughnecks on duty tortured her. This included treading on her hair, forcing her to kneel down on the humid cement ground, punching and kicking her, depriving her of sleep, and not allowing her to use the toilet. Sometimes she was sent to the guards' duty room, where the team leaders carried out corporal punishment in person. In one of these incidents, she was forced to squat on the ground for four days and nights without toilet use and without food.

Corporal punishment and hitting people were nothing new there. One Sunday we suddenly heard some extremely miserable shouts and someone crying, "They are hitting people." Then the door was shut and guard Li Yu intimated the meow of a cat to cover the crime. Sometimes we couldn't sleep and heard someone crying painfully downstairs. It was too harrowing to listen to. I saw and heard many of the crimes that couldn't be concealed. They kept telling us to be familiar with the six features of a cult. These brutal persecution facts speak for themselves, revealing the evil CCP as a real cult.

Let's see whether "transformation" at a forced labour camp is the same as that in prison. The daily schedule:

Get up at 5:30 a.m.
5:30 a.m.-7:30 a.m.: wash-brush (5 minutes), do cleaning
7:30 a.m.-8:00 a.m.: (breakfast)
8:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m. (work at workshop)
11:30 a.m.-12:00 a.m. (lunch)
12:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m. (work at workshop)
5:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. (supper)
6:00 p.m.-9:30 p.m. (work at workshop)
9:30-11:00 p.m. or mid-night and even sometimes until 1:00 a.m. (work overtime)

You can calculate clearly how many hours we could sleep. Guards had three shifts to monitor and force the older people to work. Sun Jun said again and again, "I don't care how much I earn. I like the job because I can enslave, punish, call people names, and hit them." The CCP mentality likens fighting with people to heaven, so it is not strange for her to talk like that.

We worked like slaves, doing high-intensity labour, for 15-16 hours per day, and we were very short of sleep. A little slacking off might incur being beaten, abused, or taken away by guards Sun Juan, Gen Youmei, Yang Xiaolin, Liyu, or Liang Linling, etc. In the meantime, they also trained two roughnecks, Zhang Yaqing (a collaborator²) and Jin Yuhua (a prisoner), who would assign the daily workload at too high a level for anyone to accomplish. Most of us couldn't reach it. If you could not finish, you would sometimes be marked for punishment and then showered with abuses. You might feel that each day lasted as long as a year, having to do intensive labour, having to work like a slave on the one hand and being reviled on the other. Roughneck Zhang Yaqing, trained by Sun and Gen, considered herself above others and threw her weight around everywhere. If anyone disagreed with her, Sun and Gen would immediately come over and denigrate them or criticize them at every meeting.

"Working like a cow and a horse, eating like a pig and a dog," is a phrase we often said privately. (Actually we ate even worse than pigs or dogs.) For four seasons a year, we ate cabbage or carrots cooked in water and only slept for five hours or so per day. Over-loaded with work and given such deplorable food, some older and weak people could hardly survive. They developed swollen legs and feet, inflamed joints, and cloudy vision due to wearing shop glasses for more than ten hours at a stretch. Sometimes these practitioners were even unable to open their eyes, and often went into spasms. We all felt numb and so tired, and everything was extremely unbearable. The guards took full advantage of prison criminals, including defrauders, thieves, prostitutes, rascals, pornographers, etc., to monitor inmates and to torture middle-aged or older Falun Gong practitioners by any means they could dream up.

At Shandong No. 1 Women's Labour Camp, in efforts to be awarded "Modern State and Civilized Labour Camp," the prison officials made great efforts to falsify documents. We were often forced to sign-off on labour protection articles and check-out lists for borrowing books. When someone said that we worked more than ten hours per day and had no time to read a book, Pan Aihua said arrogantly, "Sign it, whether you want to or not."

The "labour protection articles" dispatched to us since April 2007 included a package of toilet paper, a half bar of soap (or a pack of washing-powder), and a work mask that you had to use for one, two, or three years. They also listed quite a few falsified labour protection articles, which many people signed-off on. In order to deceive the public, they also set-up a recreation room, entertainment room, reading room, industrial arts room, and psychological consultation room, etc., and invited visitors to have a look. When they saw these things, they thought that the labour camp was like a "worldly paradise," where people lived very comfortably. In this so-called "modern state and civilized labour camp," we lived a life very different from the falsifications shown to visitors. Most practitioners imprisoned here, especially in the first and second group, were middle-aged or older ones, who were still subjected to brutal torture by the guards.

Practitioners in the labour camp were usually sentenced to one and a half years, but some were held for up to three years. Regular inmates were usually only sentenced to one year or a year and a half at most. Many of them became assigned inmates to monitor and torture us, and they never went to work at the workshop. For the purpose of making more profit, guards in the labour camp colluded with the 610 Office³ and police at local police departments to arrest more and more practitioners to be sent here to be enslaved as free labourers. It was said that the 610 Office got three thousand yuan⁴ for sending a Falun Gong practitioner to the labour camp.

The nasty and ruthless monitors were hired by the guards to tail practitioners openly or secretly. Their goal was not to allow practitioners to speak or look around, but to work incessantly. An older lady, over 60, slipped in the restroom and broke her leg. During the recovery period, she was beaten and abused by Pan Aihua during the night shift. Pan Aihua covered the old lady's mouth and nose and almost suffocated her. She was weak and found it hard to go up and down stairs, but was nonetheless forced to work in the workshop before she recovered. Jiang Guilian once forced an older practitioner, Li Xiuer, to kneel down on the humid floor of the wash room, grabbing her hair and ordering her to take off her shoes. Ms. Li was told, "Write your Teacher's name on your sole." Yang Jinfeng (from Jinan) often hit practitioners so as to reduce her own prison term. She was set free six months early for persecuting practitioners.

Firm practitioners were often confined in a small room, such as the wash room, toilet, or the team leaders' toilet room, and isolated from the outside world. They were deprived of sleep, not allowed to relieve themselves, and were forced to stand or squat for punishment. They were often brutally beaten and brainwashed around-the-clock.

This is my own experience that I wanted to disclose to the public and help everyone to know the truth.

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. "Collaborators": [former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.]

3. "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.

4. "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/2008/3/24/174931.html