The Severe Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners in Nanhu Forced Labour Camp in Xuancheng City, Anhui Province

Zhang Youquan is the head and Zhu Qinghua is the associate head of Team 1 of the Yangshan Group, Nanhu Forced Labour Camp in Xuancheng City, Anhui Province. They work hard to persecute Falun Gong practitioners by enforcing a 40-day "Strict Discipline"regime on all practitioners in the camp. Practitioners are forced to get up in the middle of the night or stay up late. Some are forced to stand still until 2 a.m. They are isolated from other inmates, brainwashed and tortured. The purpose of the torture is to destroy practitioners' states of mind and force them to give up their beliefs.

The intensity of work in the camp is hard for outsiders to imagine. Inmates begin work at 6 in the morning and come back at 9 in the evening if they have finished their quotas. Lunch time is supposed to be half an hour, but it usually takes from 15 to 20 minutes to wait in line, roll call, wait in line again in the dining hall, roll call again, sing, get their food in turn, and walk from the dining hall to the "practice building." (The workshop where the inmates work in is called the "practice building.")

The work is hard, and the inmates have to either sit or stand from morning to night. They are not allowed to drink water until they could not be more thirsty. They have to run to the wash room, which is restricted to once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and another time in the evening. "Personal cangues" (Note: Cangue, the name of an instrument of torture, is now used to indicate the person who designated to supervise the behaviour of practitioners.) accompany practitioners in everything: eating, standing in the group, working, or resting. The camp calls this a "self-help group." The cangues threaten and yell at practitioners. They watch the practitioners everywhere. The practitioners have been tortured with shackles, locked up in small cells, shocked with electric batons, beaten, etc. For example, practitioner Liu Hongming was shocked with electronic batons on the right leg until the leg turned green and purple. Practitioners Song Liang, Li Shuwei, Liu Fei, Lu Qinghai, Yang Yulin, and others were forced to stand still to 2 a.m., sometimes even for several days and nights in a row, the longest time for up to five days and nights. By the end, the practitioners' legs and feet were shiny due to swelling and they could not even put slippers on. They were also handcuffed and so were bitten by mosquitoes, which resulted in broken skin all over their bodies.

There used to be a saying: "Group 9 is hell." Now it's changed to: "Team 1 of Yangshang Group is hell." There is also a saying: "The inmates of Team 1 gain bonus points for reducing their sentences instead of losing points." That means the inmates beat practitioners to gain bonus points.

On cold winter days, Zhang Youquan pulled up practitioner Mr. Yang Yulin's top and directed a fan at his stomach. He would take a rest when he was tired, then pick up the fan to continue to torture Mr. Yang.

As he left Team 1, one warden who had had too much to drink said, "I did beat you, but I had no choice. The head of the team had already started beating you, so I had to at least pretend to, otherwise he would think that I wasn't doing my job. You understand that."

Wang Da, a teacher at an elementary school in the Fuyang area, has played a major role in brainwashing practitioners. He defamed Falun Gong and was assigned to be an "Advanced Trainee of Forced Labour Education" of Anhui Province.

Zhang Youquan (Police ID number 3425336)
Zhu Qinghua (Police ID number 3425325)

Chinese version available at http://minghui.cc/mh/articles/2008/7/8/181667.html