Practitioners Tortured in the Fangqiang Forced Labour Camp in Jiangsu Province

The Fangqiang Forced Labour Camp is located in Fangqiang Town, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province. It was formerly the Dafeng Prison. Since March 2000, Falun Gong practitioners have been sent there and tortured. The following torture methods are used on practitioners incarcerated in this camp.

1. Intensive Labour in Rice Fields

Practitioners have to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and are taken to the rice fields. The have to work all day, eat lunch in the fields and are not taken back until it is completely dark out. These practitioners are sweaty and dirty after a whole day's work, but only a few taps are available for all of them to wash and clean themselves. Then hundreds of them need to wait in line for dinner, but the camp provides very poor food.

In the winter, practitioners have to dig up new channels to replace the old ones, also dig rice seedling beds and drainage ditches. Every year in March, practitioners need to work in the seedling beds. Each one of them has to plant sprouts for as long as a kilometre. They are not allowed to raise their heads or straighten their backs while doing so. In the summer, practitioners have to work under the scorching sun without hats or any type of protection. Countless mosquitoes and leeches torment those that are in the fields.

When it is time to spread fertiliser, each practitioner must carry a bag that weighs over 100 lbs and walk miles to spread the fertiliser. When it is time to spread pesticides, each practitioner has to carry a 90-lb bucket filled with chemicals from morning to dawn, come rain or shine, and they are not allowed to put the bucket down. During harvest time, camp officials will not allow practitioners to use the available vehicles and demand that they carry bags of grain, each weighing over 100 lbs. Practitioners must go back and forth numerous times to bring back tons of wheat and rice. They then have to dry the grain under the sun and spread and flip them without stopping.

After dinner, when other prisoners get to rest, practitioners have to stand against a wall under surveillance. If they talk to each other or try to do the exercises, the guards beat them.

Guards Zhou Hongbiao, Wang Guangshai, Jiang Xinghai, Wang Fei, Zhu Junlin, Chen Jinxiang, Zhang Jinquan, Wei Yun, Wei Honghui, Liu Jiaguo, Zhang Liansheng, Gu Yili, Pan Yuehua, Qiu (first name unknown), Zheng (first name unknown), and Deputy Director Hu (first name unknown) have participated in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in the camp since the year 2000.

2. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Intensified the Persecution of Practitioners

In early 2001, Jiang Zemin budgeted 400 million yuan (~US$57 million) for the camp to purchase new equipment and build a new facility for torturing practitioners. The camp officials forced collaborators¹ and practitioners to carry construction materials, which included hundreds of tons of concrete. When the collaborators got tired at the end of the day, practitioners had to carry them back to the camp.

The new facility has walls 16 ft high, which are installed with infrared detectors. The rooms in which practitioners were incarcerated had a television and fans. The food provided had improved as well and it appeared to be more humane to the people outside. However, the persecution actually intensified.

On June 20th, 2001, a special brigade was built, which was in charge of torturing practitioners. The most aggressive guards were transferred to this brigade. In less than a month, 104 out of several hundred practitioners were forced to renounce Falun Gong, which was the result of being tortured. The guards wrote words that slandered Falun Gong on the ground with chalk and forced practitioners to step on them. The guards also enlarged a picture Falun Gong's founder, Teacher Li Hongzhi, and forced practitioners to sit on it or put an "X" on it. If a practitioner refused to do so, the guards used over eight electric batons to shock the practitioners and burned their hair, moustache, pubic hair, eyebrows, nose, lips, backs and groin areas. The collaborators kicked practitioners in their groin areas, whipped their faces with a leather rope and pulled the practitioners' four limbs in four different directions with extreme force. The guards that carried this out are Wang Fei, Zhang Jinquan, Zhang Liansheng, Pan Yuehua, Jiang Xinghai, Liu Jiaguo, Wei Yun, Wei Honghui, Chen Yinglong and Zheng (first name unknown). The collaborators are Sun Changfu, Xu Wenjun, Guo Xilin, Ge (first name unknown), Bao (first name unknown), Zhu Yuqi, Xiao Yueqian, and Su Yan.

After they moved into the new facility, the torture methods became even more cruel. All the practitioners in the Judong Forced Labour Camp were transferred to this new facility. Initially, they were deprived of sleep and subjected to brainwashing. A month later, after realising that these practitioners refused to give up their belief, the guards did not let them use the toilets. Practitioners were forced to stand still for a long time. The camp officials had four collaborators torture a female teacher from Nantong, and everyone could hear her miserable screams. One month later, she was sentenced to four years in prison.

3. Summary of Torture Methods Used on Practitioners in the Fangqiang Forced Labour Camp

a. Sleep deprivation: For those who had just arrived at the camp or refused to give up Falun Gong, three practitioners had to share one bed, and they were only allowed to sleep for a short period of time.

b. Facing the wall: A practitioner must have his nose, abdomen and toes (or back of the head, buttocks, and heels) touch the wall at all times or the collaborators would kick him. The guards or collaborators decided how long the practitioners would stand. Sometimes they had practitioners carry heavy objects in their hands or hold a bucket full of water on their heads.

c. Squatting: A practitioner has to squat single-legged and is not allowed to switch legs for a long time, or a practitioner does it two-legged, but the buttocks are not allowed to touch the ground for a long time.

d. S-stand: The back of a practitioner's head leans against the upper bunk of a double-bunk bed. His abdomen is pushed back by a table, and his legs are put against the lower bunk. This puts extreme strain on the practitioner's neck, back and legs. The practitioner is not allowed to use the toilet and not allowed to change after urinating on himself.

e. Exposed to the sun: Practitioners have to stand under the sun in the afternoons during the hot summer days, where the temperature reaches over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

f. A practitioner is forced to sit on the concrete ground outdoors in his or her underwear in the freezing winter days. The guards also poured cold water on this practitioner, leaving it there to freeze.

g. In 2000, a snowstorm came through and the water froze to an inch thick layer on top. Guard Qiu cracked the ice, stripped practitioners and had them stand in icy water, where the water level was up to their thighs. He then had practitioners dig up the mud with spades and throw the mud onto the shore.

h. The guards whipped practitioners with leather ropes, clamped practitioners' fingers with pincer pliers, and burned them with cigarettes or with a magnifying glass held in the sun. Guards cuffed a practitioner's hands and legs on a wooden board and stomped viciously on the board.

i. Guards cuffed practitioners who went on hunger strike onto a bed and cranked their mouths open with metal tools. They then scooped and poured rice porridge into their mouths. Sometimes, it got stuck in their lungs and practitioners had to be sent to the hospital. The camp officials sent one of them, Mr. Chen Hanchang from Qidong, home to avoid responsibility and Mr. Chen died soon after that. (See http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/3/10/45918.html and http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2007/7/31/88191.html)

j. The guards forced practitioners to copy, memorise and read slanderous materials against Falun Gong. They also forced practitioners to watch and listen to videos and tapes that insulted Falun Gong.

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.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2009/12/15/214455.html