Crimes Committed by Chuotou Brainwashing Centre Personnel in Guangzhou

The brainwashing centre in Chuotou that is specifically for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners is close to Chuotou Forced Labour Camp of Guangzhou, and has an euphemistic name for the outside world: Guangzhou Legal Education School. This brainwashing centre was officially established on April 3rd, 2001. The following are my personal experiences there.

From the outside, the brainwashing centre looks like a legal education school, but the front door is shut tight all day long, except for police vehicles that enter and exit. Music is broadcast through a loudspeaker early each morning, and a bystander would not notice anything abnormal. Even if someone were to really enter the centre, they wouldn't be able to find the anything wrong. This is because all the security personnel hired from the outside, the so-called "teaching assistants," already know what they should and should not say. [Translator's note: These security officers are hired outside of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) police system to monitor practitioners and are different from the trained guards employed at the centre.]

When I was arrested, I was locked up in a dark room. The single-person toilet has transparent walls for the convenience of the supervisor's observation. It has air conditioning, a study table, television, single-person bunk bed, and chamber pot. Installed on the roof are pinhole video recorders. Guards on duty may turn them on and watch the practitioners' movements in each room at will. This equipment is configured according to the "attitude" of the practitioner being brainwashed. Those deemed to have been thoroughly brainwashed may turn on the air conditioning, watch television, be assigned to a more ventilated room, and so on. That very evening the principal guard told me to "reform¹" sooner and confess on my own initiative. He suggested that if I missed the opportunity to act out of my own initiative, I would be in big trouble. Afterwards, guards in charge came to me to implement so-called "change thoughts work." Each guard was assigned to monitor three to five practitioners.

Some steadfast practitioners have been locked up in the dark rooms for more than a year. In this way, their imprisonment is extended in a disguised form. There was one female practitioner, a graduate of Beijing University, who did not reform at Sanshui Forced Labour Camp, and remained very steadfast after being transferred to this brainwashing centre. She was imprisoned on the third floor for a long time. Practitioners were imprisoned separately. There were triangular observation holes in their doors, and the security personnel patrolled and observed from their offices through monitoring televisions. The practitioners on hunger strike were tied up on a stool or chair and force-fed or given intravenous injections. During the long solitary confinement, the guards would use the in-room television to force the practitioners to listen to and watch the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party. They attempted to wear down practitioners' will in this manner and force them to give up cultivation practice.

I once asked a security officer, "How would you behave if you were locked inside?" The officer said that he would certainly go insane. Some security officers said that they would leave the centre as soon as they found another job, and that they would look after practitioners but not do so in an obvious way.

One female guard named Li Wanxia has been working at this brainwashing centre for about six years. She was the leader of the security personnel and coordinated with the guards to torture practitioners. She frequently made trouble for practitioners. Security personnel here generally do not work for a long time except when compelled to by life circumstances, because when conversing in private with the practitioners, the security officers have sympathy for practitioners. However, some of the security officers were pushed to commit crimes against the practitioners.

The main building of the brainwashing centre has three floors. Male practitioners are imprisoned on the first floor, female practitioners are imprisoned on the second floor, and the third floor are the offices. The kitchen is in another, one-story house, and the food is prepared by special workers. Usually the food for the guards, security officers, and practitioners is all distributed from the kitchen. The front door is shut tightly all year long, and a security specialist is on duty. Only when vehicles drive in and out will the door be opened.

The most evil ones are the collaborators². In 2007, the Guangzhou 610 Office³ invited a "brainwashing group" from Beijing composed of three women and one man. The man, 50 years old, had the last name Xu and was from Beijing. One of the women was named Tian Bin, approximately in her 40s, and there was one woman I had never met before. These collaborators were extremely active in brainwashing people. They regularly wrote "thoughts reports" to the relevant department, because they said themselves that the Chinese Communist Party could not trust them in any way.

In this brainwashing centre, no matter how calm an atmosphere is shown on the surface, it is all for one goal: to force practitioners to give up their belief in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance." After I left the brainwashing centre, the pain of the experience lasted a very long time, and I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night.

I was once imprisoned and tortured at the Guangzhou Chini Forced Labour Camp. The guards tied up my hands, feet, and head into a "spherical" shape with rope; my mouth was stuffed with cloth; and I was hung up until I almost fainted. Such torture was simply to try to force me to give up Falun Gong. The political instructor at the time was Li Guoming, and he was extremely cruel. Under his direction numerous Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured.

Guangzhou Legal Education Administration Centre (Guangzhou Legal Education School) address: 48 Xizhou North Road, Chuotou, Xinshi District, Guangzhou City, P.R.C. 510000.

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.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/4/7/175966.html