Accounts of Persecution at the Zhongba Forced Labour Camp, Guizhou Province

I began Falun Dafa cultivation in 1997. During these past ten years, I have been incarcerated and tortured in a forced labour camp, a prison, and a detention centre, altogether for six years. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now boasting that this is the best era in human rights in its history. I am going to expose the real situation in one of their detention centres and a forced labour camp, based on my personal experiences.

Spiritual persecution

As soon as one is put in the detention centre, no matter what the reason, the first thing one undergoes is a security check. The inmates given that task send you to the detention room in bare feet, wearing only underwear. The guards confiscate and keep everything else. After being put into a cell, you are washed down in cold water. One would freeze in the winter as they did this.

If your family paid out money, then you might be given a used toothbrush. If not, then you had to share a toothbrush with 10-20 prisoners, or you wouldn't even have one. Next, everyone must recite the prison regulations. Those with an education and able to read had to memorize them within a week. Those with no education had to recite them in two weeks. If not, the prison guards would deprive you of sleep and force you to recite them all night long. If you refused to recite, the cell head would beat you brutally and sent you to the guards. The guards would put you into a torture position called "riding a motorcycle" (putting you in shackles and then handcuffing you under the shackles). This bends your back at a right angle, and your are unable to straighten up to walk or to sleep. This would last for three to four days, or sometimes even a week or two.

Guards set up a daily study time and posted a Monday to Friday study list, including "Criminal Law," "Labour Law," "Law of Criminal Procedure," and others. These subjects, though, were never actually studied. Besides having to recite the prison rules daily, we were ordered to recite the answer sheet they had prepared. During inspection time, if you didn't answer the questions on the answer sheet, the cell head and guards would punish you. I recall one incident when the inspection team members asked, "How many times a week are you served meat?" The answer was supposed to be, "Although conditions are difficult, the leadership here is quite considerate about prisoners' welfare, and we have meat twice a week." Actually, meat, or what passed for meat, would be available only once per week. All the "meat" available for more than 20 people in the cell was less than what remains from cleaning the meat grinder in the market.

How the prison makes money

The prison makes quick profits by charging exorbitant prices for items that we buy, like salt or soap. In Guiyang's First Prison, all the prisoners had to make strings of decorative beads or tube lamps. Despite working for over 10 hours per day, anyone not completing the task would be made to stand under the hot sun in the summer, stand in a breezy area while wearing only underwear in the winter, or be forbidden to sleep.

The "three words" policy in the forced labour camp

The "three words" policy is supposedly "education, care, rescue." The officials in Zhongba Forced Labour Camp in Guizhou Province called it "Zhongba Correctional School" and designated each division as a branch school.

When a prisoner first arrived at the labour camp, the first lesson to go through was called "military training." The military training would run seven to eight hours per day, for up to several months. In other cases you would be sent to work at the production workshop the next day. The production workshop is a classroom with added equipment for work.

There is no time allotted in Zhongba Forced Labour Camp to instruct anyone. In November 2006, the Ministry of Justice held a National Labour Camp Legal Knowledge Exam. Two days before the test, every division chief said that to pass the exam, one would have to score 100 per cent. During the exam, the questions and the answer sheets were given to all at the same time.

The camp's definition of "care"

While held at the forced labour camp, one is forbidden to see one's family. Zhongba Forced Labour Camp ignored the policy of no work on Sundays, saying that was the day to "make up the workload." The prison sets a very high work quota. If you couldn't complete your quota, you had to work overtime and couldn't rest. Sometimes there was not a single day's break for several months.

In the past when we were assembling coloured lanterns for the "Zhuhai Shiyu Decorative Lighting Factory," guard Tu Zhongjiu beat the person who completed the fewest lanterns that week ruthlessly. During the summer, the person would be made to wear winter clothes and stand under the hot sun, to stand all night, and be deprived of sleep. The next day, he/she would have to work the same as everyone else. Some prisoners lost consciousness from long-term, insufficient rest. The guards said, "Douse this one with some cold water, and it will be OK." Some prisoners fell down and slept in the toilet.

They prepared a vacant room for the Falun Gong practitioners. Its windows were covered with newspaper. Each practitioner who was sent to this room had to go through at least one month of brainwashing. Practitioners had to stand for over 10 hours straight and sometimes could not use the toilet for two or three days.

Sometimes several people beat a practitioner simultaneously. Sometimes the guards would personally beat practitioners, and at other times just direct inmates to do it. At the end of May 2006, I witnessed the No. 5 Division head and guards Long Weilin and Sun beat practitioner Yang Yuru. They ordered Mr. Yang to kneel while they beat him. When he refused, they tied him up in the "chicken wing" position (both arms tied backwards) and put him in a cell. It was later heard that Yang Yuru developed a serious infection and was released for medical treatment. He was a middle school teacher in Guizhou.

At Zhongba Forced Labour Camp, the guards would give drug addict inmates a free hand to use various methods to torture practitioners. For instance, they would make practitioners clad only in a T-shirt stand in a windy area in the cold of winter for several hours while these inmates wore winter clothes and sat by the fire inside the building, watching.

Inside the No.5 Division, none of the practitioners were allowed to receive information from the outside world through newspapers, radios, etc.

The guards targeted practitioner Peng Yiliu for abuse. They put him into the confinement room and ordered to inmates to beat him. The window was shattered during the process, and many people heard his cries of pain. Several practitioners saw Peng's head bleeding profusely. Practitioner Tian Zhongfu went to talk to team leader Xu Fayuan about the incident. Xu Fayuan grabbed him and said that Tian Zhongfu tried to attack a prison guard. They then immediately placed Tian Zhongfu in the confinement room and gagged him.

What I have related is only a small portion of what goes on in the Zhongba Forced Labour Camp.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/3/11/174101.html