Ms. Yuan Shuzhe Barbarically Persecuted in Masanjia Forced Labour Camp

In the afternoon on March 31st, 2005, two unemployed men who had been hired temporarily by the 12th Road Police Station in Tiexi District Shenyang City and several plain clothes policemen took Ms. Yuan Shuzhe, a Falun Gong practitioner who had been detained in the Shenyang City Detention City for forty days, to Masanjia Forced Labour Camp. The police instigated one of the unemployed men into pushing Ms. Yuan to the ground. She shouted, "Falun Gong is good!" and "Stop the persecution of Falun Gong!" He stuffed a dirty sock into her mouth and stomped on her head.

The loud noise startled the police upstairs. Three big, strong plain clothes officers rushed out and, without any hesitation, dragged Ms. Yuan upstairs. They lifted her up and let her fall to the ground as they walked. Going up the stairs, they intentionally caused her body to hit the stairs all the way from the first floor to the fourth floor. Then they locked her in a small room.

In the small room Ms. Yuan saw a woman with her hands stretched wide apart and handcuffed in that position. The woman was Ms. Shi Jinling, a Falun Gong practitioner from Fushun. The place was a solitary confinement compartment that the forced labour camp had set up on the fourth floor. When Ms. Shi saw Ms. Yuan, she saw that her back was completely discoloured from bruising. Ms. Yuan lay in bed for two weeks before she started to get better.

Solitary Confinement

In the solitary confinement cell, loud noises were played 24 hours a day. When the guards force-fed practitioners, they played high-pitched noises to obscure the practitioners' shouts.

There was a monitor in each solitary confinement cell. If practitioners started to practise the Falun Gong exercises, they would be handcuffed or shackled in an iron chair¹.

Ms. Yuan was held in solitary confinement for 85 days. She was then taken down to a room on the third floor and held there for several days because the guards wanted to try to "transform²" her. When they saw there was no hope of "transforming" Ms. Yuan, they took her back to solitary confinement. Whenever other practitioners were force-fed, Ms. Yuan would step forward and give them her support. As a result, she was often handcuffed.

When it got warm, the guards in the solitary confinement area gave each person a single basin that had to be used for both washing and as a toilet. Everyone protested. The guards said, "If you think it is not good here, you should admit that you are wrong [to practise Falun Gong]. If you stay here, this is how things are."

Due to the extremely hot weather, they closed the solitary confinement cells. On the morning of June 23rd, 2005, Ms Yuan Shuzhe was taken to the Sixth Team of the First Division.

Dragged, Kicked, and Hung Up

On the morning of August 1st, male guard Gao Yuntian, in his fifties, came into the room to verbally abuse the practitioners. He grabbed Ms. Yuan and shoved her out of the room. She hit her head on the door of the toilet across the hall. Then the guard dragged her into his office, lifted her upside down, and dropped her head first on the ground. He then kicked her and beat her. When Ms. Yuan stood up, she felt a big lump on her head. Gao Yuntian handcuffed her to a radiator. He murmured to himself, "I don't believe you can't be 'fixed.'"

One day when practitioners were reciting the Falun Gong articles, guards broke in. Yuan Shuzhe, Chen Guilan from Chaoyan District, and Sun Shuxiang from Dalian City didn't stop reciting. The guards took them to a sealed warehouse. Guard Xie Chengdong kept hitting them in their faces until he was exhausted. The guards hung the practitioners up and handcuffed them for three days and nights. Them forced them to listen to recordings that slandered Falun Gong.

Rampant Persecution

On February 24th, 2006, officials from the Forced Labour Department started to come to the forced labour camp to severely persecute practitioners. They made practitioners sit on small stools for long periods of time and forced them to do hard labour. When Xie Dewen from Dalian refused to sit on the small stool, guard Liu Yong struck her face until her mouth bled. They forced practitioners to wear labour camp uniforms. Many practitioners were beaten because of their refusal to wear the uniforms [Note: Because Falun Gong practitioners are not criminals and should not be incarcerated, they sometimes protest their illegal detention by refusing to wear the labour camp uniform].

Guard Fan Yakui beat Ms. Yuan so brutally that she felt dizzy and could not stand up. The next day Liu Yong struck her face more than twenty times. The guards put uniforms on practitioners by force and shackled their arms behind their backs. They didn't remove the shackles even when the practitioners slept. When no one resisted wearing the labour camp uniforms, the guards allowed them to go to the dining room to have meals.

On the morning of March 26th, 2006, on the way to the dining room, Ms. Yuan came across a practitioner detained in the Second Division (it was very hard for practitioners to meet). She stepped out of the queue and ripped off the labour camp uniform. She told the practitioner that she shouldn't wear it because they hadn't committed any crimes. The guard on duty, Chen Jingmin, dragged Yuan Shuzhe upstairs, handcuffed her, and then struck her in the face. The next day officer Li Mingyu said triumphantly, "Yuan Shuzhe might have torn off the uniform, but her sister handed in 300 yuan³ in compensation for it. Whoever imitates Yuan will be fined."

In April the guards forced practitioners to wear name badges. Ms. Yuan refused to wear one, so they beat her. On April 10th, they locked her in solitary confinement and hung her up. On May 16th, they stretched out her arms and handcuffed them to a bed side. The guard on duty, Fan Yakui, was unable to release her because he couldn't insert the key into the lock. Fan Yakui then beat Ms.Yuan until her mouth and nose bled. He kicked her lower back until she fell down. She shouted, "Help me!" Only then did Fan Yakui stop. Yuan Shuzhe couldn't take care of herself for two weeks due to injuries from the beating.

This time Ms. Yuan was handcuffed for 60 days, from April 10th to June 9th. They handcuffed one hand to the upper bunk and the other to the lower bunk. Her arms were stretched as far apart as they could go, and her head was stuck between the two bunks. She couldn't stand up or squat down. Fan Yakui once said that if a person was subjected to this kind of torture for a long time, his back would be injured.

The First Section of Masanjia

In June 2006, the Second Section of Masanjia sent "unmanageable" Falun Gong practitioners to the First Section, which normally detained criminals. Because Ms. Yuan Shuzhe refused to do hard labour, a policewoman from the Forced Labour Department, Zheng Xiaofeng, called her into her office and struck her face and kicked her head. Because her office wall had windows, Zheng Xiaofeng was afraid others might see what was going on, so she hit Ms. Yuan until she fell down and then kicked her in the head. However, the whole workshop still saw what took place.

Even after Ms. Li Meihua, a practitioner from Dandong, completed her sentence, the forced labour camp didn't release her. She went on a hunger strike to protest. Ms. Yuan came to support her. Guards went to the First Section and force-fed both of them. They were tied to a death bed⁴ and their mouths were pried open with metal mouth openers. Their mouths were injured and festered. A criminal was sent to clean the death beds and said, "It was so horrifying to see them."

Note

1. Iron Chair: The "Iron chair" is made of iron pipes. Victims are restrained on the iron chairs with both arms and legs tied for a long period of time, see illustration at http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/1/9/17577.html

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")

3. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

4. "Death Bed" torture: A practitioner is tied to a bed with his hands handcuffed above his head to the bed rails, and his legs tied with thin nylon ropes. The rope is then tightly wrapped around the practitioner's body and the bed, from his legs to his chest. The rope is wrapped so tightly that the practitioner has difficulty breathing and eventually loses consciousness.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/8/5/205918.html