Suffering in the Beijing Women's Labour Camp

I was arrested and held in a labour camp for two years for distributing materials about Falun Gong in 2004. From the time that I was held at a detention centre to when I arrived at the labour camp, I experienced the cruelty of the Communist regime's persecution of Falun Gong.

1. Beijing Labour Camp Dispatch Centre

Between the detention centre and the labour camp, one is held at a place called a "labour camp dispatch centre". I was persecuted there for one month. Here two criminals, usually drug addicts, are assigned to each Falun Gong practitioner in a monitoring role. They forbid practitioners to have any contact with each other whatsoever, not even eye contact. They would make the practitioner walk with eyes looking at the ground and forbid them to look at a guard's face. Practitioners were forbidden to have a pen to write to their families; they could only ask the criminals monitoring them to write it. Practitioners were given no water to drink, but could only go to the washroom in a large group and had to finish within two minutes.

Falun Gong practitioners were forced to sit all day on plastic benches with an uncomfortable concave shape, causing pain in their legs. They could only use cold water to wash, for two minutes at night and one minute in the morning, and were forbidden to wash their socks and underwear. Strip searches were conducted every few days, and even underwear had to be removed. After a month of this mistreatment, practitioners were then sent on to a labour camp.

2. The labour camp - guards have free reign

The Beijing Women's Labour Camp has eight brigades, and seven of them detain practitioners. New detainees are first thoroughly searched, and even their quilts are taken apart. Two criminals and two guards begin efforts to brainwash them.

Most of the inmates here are former practitioners who became collaborators¹, and there are also drug addicts and thieves. They lock practitioners in small cells and force them to sit on a small plastic bench. They read articles and play videos that misinterpret and slander Falun Gong. After they finish they force practitioners to write their understandings. If it doesn't reach the standard they make them re-write it again and again.

Falun Gong practitioners were forced to sit there all day, except for five to six hours of sleeping time, which caused agonizing pain in the buttocks. If the practitioner refused to give up his or her belief, the guards would try different tactics, such as taking turns and using hard and soft methods. If the practitioner still refused, the guards would send them to a training team for further persecution. If practitioners are successfully "transformed²", they are asked to take part in activities with other staff to solidify their new mindset, such as watching slanderous videos, participating in discussions and listening to speeches by other "transformed" practitioners. They are made to attend the Communist regime's course in "rational thinking and healthy principles", which they later have to recite and complete an exam over. Those who aren't able to recite it have to keep practising into the night without sleep.

The camp tries to give the illusion of caring for Falun Gong practitioners, inviting well-known people to give lectures such as "a healthy and scientific life", how to keep healthy and do exercises, and so on. Activities include a psychology test, mentality consultation, and how to have a healthy mentality. The guards' textbooks include slanderous and deceitful words to be spread as rumours and another textbook, very thick, which contains brainwashing methods.

Practitioners detained in this camp are cut off from the outside world. Family members are allowed to visit once a month, after showing their ID, and can only come in a group of three or less. The practitioners are searched before the meeting, and during the meeting the guards watch over them. Practitioners that the guards feel they can't fully control are searched when they go back to their cell. These searches happen a lot, searching cells and clothes, and not allowing practitioners to use quilt covers. Books are overturned and not even a stray piece of paper goes unnoticed. If anything is found to be amiss the practitioner is locked in a dark room.

If the detained practitioner develops a serious illness, she is sent to the nearby Tiantanghe Hospital, and the "transformation" efforts continue in the ward. When her health recovers she is taken straight back to the labour camp.

Practitioners were also forced to do heavy labour, another of many methods used to destroy a practitioner's will.

Note

1. "Collaborators": former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.

2. "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/2009/5/1/200012.html