Crimes Committed by Hewan Forced Labour Camp in Wuhan City

1. Arrested and Taken to Wuhan City Hewan Forced Labour Camp

In September 2000, I was arrested by police and taken to Hewan Forced Labour Camp's Sixth Ward (the women's ward). They tried to force me to sign the labour camp registration paper, I refused. I was taken into an office where two female guards around 20 years of age sat behind a desk. They asked me to squat, asked for my name, age, employer and home address.

They ordered other inmates to cut my hair. I saw other inmates' hair that had been cut; it was a mess. Some Falun Gong practitioners' hair had been cut half and half, where if their heads were viewed from behind, half of their head would have long hair and the other half would show strips of scalp, it was a complete mess. This was done to humiliate practitioners.

All the things my family sent to me, including blanket, coats, winter shoes and boots, all of them were soaked in water before they were given to me. When I asked the guards why, they said, "These are the rules." I was then taken to the third floor, Second Division, where most of the inmates were drug abusers. Every division had at least one if not several Falun Gong practitioners who did not give up their beliefs. The guards did not let us talk. Each division had one room with over twenty people. The bunk beds were full. There were lots of flies and mosquitoes in the rooms.

The Sixth Ward is an independent building with a fenced yard. There is a sign on the gate with the name of a clothing factory on the it, facing the public street. Another side of the yard has an iron fence separating the administration building and the men's ward.

There is a workshop on every floor. There was a lot of dust in the air and everyone sat on a small stool. We had to sit there for a very long time doing work without any protective equipment. Later some practitioners asked family members to send them facial masks, but that didn't really help. Many practitioners suffered from coughs and fevers. Several elderly practitioners over the age of sixty had high blood pressure, but they were not allowed to rest. One practitioner was diagnosed with pneumonia and his treatment was an intravenous drip administered by a veterinarian.

No matter how old the practitioner, we had to jog to the gathering point and stand in a line within the time limit for any event or activity, including meal time and shower time.

The guards' dining table was in the service hall on the first floor. Every day the guards ate "delicious" food prepared by specially selected inmates in their kitchen.

I often saw those inmates with hair styling abilities ordered to wash, massage, comb and treat the guards' hair.

The guards ordered inmates to babysit, wash their clothes, knit sweaters, take care of the farms and feed the pigs. They also used those inmates to monitor and bully Falun Gong practitioners. One inmate said, "They built this whole building using the inmates' money. During the construction, every inmate's family was ordered to donate money. The guards ransacked their homes, found some adult books (pornography, which is illegal in China), so they took advantage of that to blackmail the families for money."

I refused to attend any activity and requested the camp to release me unconditionally.

2. The persecution of Falun Gong practitioners was done in secret

When I was taken to the labour camp, the first practitioner brought there when the persecution began on July 20th, 1999 was still here. She was a doctor from the Provincial Chinese Medical College. It was said that the documentation about how she gave up Falun Gong was written by the guards of the Sixth Ward. She was forced to read that on stage, but she was not even able to read, as her mental state seemed abnormal. After she was released, a practitioner went to see her. She told that practitioner that she had been severely traumatized by torture, but she didn't give any details about what had happened to her.

Some practitioners who were detained here earlier told me, "When we first came, all the practitioners were resisting the persecution. We practised the exercises together, we recited the Falun Gong teachings together, and sometimes guards and inmates would use electric batons to torture practitioners. They used heavy labour, sleep deprivation and making us work through the night to torture us. At that time the weather was very hot, and there were many mosquitoes biting, so practitioners used plastic bags to cover the whole foot up to the hem of the trousers. After a day of work, their feet were soaked in their own sweat. But they didn't give up their belief."

Every time the practitioners started to exercise together or recite the teachings, the guards would get very nervous and scared.

Later the labour camp introduced a group of people from outside. They claimed they were practitioners but they were trying to deceive practitioners and damage Falun Gong. Some practitioners didn't keep a clear mind and they were "transformed¹" by these people.

The persecution by the labour camp was vigorously covered up. As far as I know, the most serious persecution occurred in the drug rehab centre, which was directly controlled by the labour camp.

3. How the labour camp convinced practitioners to give up Falun Gong

Newcomers and practitioners who did not give up Falun Gong were separated and isolated from others. Guards arranged for conversations with those who had been "transformed." Loudspeakers in the cells continuously played brainwashing information. Most of the practitioners who gave up did so because they were deceived. It was not truly what they wanted, and they didn't mean it.

Later on, the newcomers and those who didn't give up Falun Gong were directly sent to the second floor, the First Division, also called the "Education and Transformation Division." Most of those practitioners had made appeals and protected Falun Gong, and were beaten and arrested. They were exhausted from being persecuted both physically and mentally but they did not renounce their beliefs. Many practitioners knew each other, and they communicated together and all felt that they didn't want to give up Falun Gong.

Afterwards, the guards forced practitioners to give public speeches for "educational purposes," trying to trick practitioners into betraying each other. They would try to force them to give up their Falun Gong books. They threatened practitioners that if they did not cooperate, their sentence would not be decreased. They forced practitioners to be interviewed and taped by newspapers and TV stations. They forced practitioners to attend brainwashing classes and write reports about what they thought. When practitioners finished their sentence, they would be forced to give a public speech in front of all the inmates, guards, family members who came to pick them up, officers from the practitioners' local police station and coworkers. This systematic persecution created very deep wounds in those practitioners who were convinced to give up Falun Gong. Many suffered so much that they couldn't stop crying during their speech. Some even fainted, with pale faces and ice-cold hands and feet. For some of them, no heart beat could be detected. Many others would also have symptoms of serious illness.

At the end of 2000, the labour camp took in a large number of practitioners. Some female practitioners were directly transferred to the drug rehab centre next door. After the 2001 Chinese New Year, the number of practitioners in the Sixth Ward was too great so the labour camp formed a brand new Eighth Ward to lock up more than a hundred people transferred from the Sixth Ward.

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")

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2009/3/31/198119.html