Accounts of Persecution Taking Place in Jiutai Forced Labour Camp of Jilin Province

The Jiutai Forced Labour Camp is under the jurisdiction of the Jilin Province Re-education Through Labour system, and known for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. More than 120 practitioners are being held there in three divisions. The strict discipline division has 40 practitioners, and the half-open management division has 40 practitioners. Forty-two practitioners are being detained in the open management division. The practitioners are from different parts of Jilin Province, and about one-third come from Songyuan City.

1. Practitioners are Brutally Persecuted

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Li Wenjun from Jilin City was brutally persecuted in the strict discipline division because she refused to write statements renouncing Falun Gong. She is holding a hunger strike and has been force-fed by guards and inmates.

Mr. Zhang Guozhi, a practitioner from Jiutai City, was tortured on August 29th because he wrote leaflets exposing the persecution of Falun Gong.

Mr. Xie Xue, 60, is a practitioner from Jilin City. He was transfered to the Jiutai Forced Labour Camp on August 29th because he refused to write statements renouncing Falun Gong. He was tortured in the strict discipline division. This practitioner has had a stroke and one side of his body doesn't function well.

Mr. Xie Zhonghe, 65, is from Huadian City. He has been held at the Jiutai Forced Labour Camp since September 12th, and has been subjected to torture in the strict discipline division because he refused to wear the inmate uniform.

Guards have instructed inmates to monitor the practitioners held at the strict discipline division around the clock. The practitioners are not allowed to have meals downstairs. They are followed and watched when they go to the toilet, brush their teeth and wash their faces. They are forced to get up at 4:00 a.m. and sit on the floor facing a wall, with their backs straight and hands behind their backs. They sit in the same position until midnight except when they are in the toilet or having a meal. During the disciplinary period, practitioners are only given half a steamed bun, half of a bowl of rice or vegetable soup for each meal. They are held at the strict discipline division until they write statements renouncing Falun Gong.

Currently, Mr. Xie Xue is still being held at the strict discipline division. Mr. Xie Zhonghe refused to wear the inmate uniform. Several inmates attempted to force him to wear it, but Mr. Xie refuses to give in.

Guards ordered inmates to tie the hands and feet of those practitioners who refused to renounce Falun Gong to the four corners of a bed frame. They stripped off practitioners' clothes in the toilet and poured cold water on their bodies until they agreed to renounce Falun Gong.

New practitioners are threatened and told that they will be hung up by a single finger. They are also told that they will have their bodies stretched fully with their hands tied to bed corners and a basin placed under the body.

2. Practitioners Forced to do Hard Labour at Division 1

Division 1 detains 40 practitioners, and the oldest practitioner is 64 years old. Every day practitioners work to produce hollow concrete bricks. They get up at 5:30 a.m. and wash their faces. At 6:20 a.m. they go downstairs to have breakfast. The breakfast only lasts 5 to 6 minutes. Some of the practitioners who eat slowly have to eat while they are walking outside. They arrive at the brickyard at 7:00 a.m. The practitioners do every job involved in the entire manufacturing process, including putting the raw materials into a crusher, mixing the cement, moulding and pressing. The lightest brick weighs 8 to 9 pounds and the heaviest, 36 pounds. The practitioners who load and unload bricks move one thousand to two thousand bricks every day. They finish their morning work at about 11:30 a.m. After lunch they resume work at 12:20 p.m. and finish at 4:40 p.m. The excessive workloads exhaust each practitioner. The skin on their hands and arms blisters and peels from working in the scorching sun in the summer, and accidents frequently occur. Some have injured their hands or feet. Some practitioners' fingernails and toenails have come off. Even when their fingers or feet are badly swollen, they are expected to work.

At the beginning, every worker was given one fried dough stick. Later the price of a dough stick increased and each person was given a one-yuan¹ bonus per day, if they worked for the entire day. In contrast, the guards are given bonuses of 35 yuan per day. Each worker brings in about 40 to 50 yuan per day, and the vast majority of the money goes to the labour camp. The brickyard has been in operation for four years.

The labour camp rules allow visitation from Monday through Thursday. Because of the work commitments however, Division 1 recently changed visitation to be Tuesday only.

3. Practitioners Suffer Persecution in their Daily Lives

The Jiutai Forced Labour Camp cafeteria for practitioners provides three meals per day. In the winter, there are only two meals on Saturday and Sunday. Breakfast consists of rice soup, two steamed buns, and preserved vegetables. Lunch and dinner consists of eggplant, tomato, seaweed soup, white cabbage soup or cushaw soup, plus two steamed buns which are about 4 ounces each. In the summer there are many mosquitoes and flies in the cafeteria, and the steamed buns have flies all over them. The seaweed and vegetable soup is only available three or four months out of the year, and is full of sand and grit.

There is no hot water to drink, and showers are with cold water. The practitioners' families are not allowed to bring daily necessities or food to give to the practitioners. The practitioners have to buy their daily necessities in the store inside the labour camp, where prices are double that of a regular store.

4. Practitioner Mr. Yang Dehui Suffers Persecution

Since July 4th, 2008, Mr. Yang Dehui has been forced to get up at 4:00 a.m. every morning. He was forced to sit on a board until midnight except when using the toilet or having a meal. Guard Lu Yanhui ordered two inmates to monitor him. Inmate Li Zhentao repeatedly hit Mr. Yang's ribs with a drinking bottle full of water, after which he has been unable to sleep on his side for two weeks. Mr. Yang was forced to sit on a wooden board with a width of less than half a centimetre. In order to force him to write a statement renouncing Falun Gong, Lu Yanhui knocked him down, but Mr. Yang still refused. Lu Yanhui then instructed inmates Yang Xiaoguang and Li Zhentao to tie Mr. Yang's hands and legs to the four corners of a bed and put a steel basin under his back. They threatened Mr. Yang Dehui by telling him that no one would know if he died from the torture. He was told that a false death report would be given to the higher authorities.

Jiutai Forced Labour Camp:

Lei Lifeng, head of the labour camp: 86-431-82515877 (Office)
Surname Sun, political instructor: 86-431-82515355 (Office)
Shi Qiang, deputy head and CCP Party secretary: 86-431-82515838
Surname Sun, deputy head: 86-431-82515922
Surname Liu, deputy head: 86-431-82515358

Note

1. "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/2008/10/14/187697.html