Doctor Ms. Zhang Hui's Plight in Guangdong Women's Forced Labour Camp

Name: Zhang Hui
Gender: Female
Age: 60s
Address: Anshun City, Guizhou Province
Occupation: Retired physician

Date of Most Recent Arrest: September 2007
Most recent place of detention: Guangdong Sanshui Forced Labour Camp
City: Foshan
Province: Guangdong
Persecution Suffered: Sleep deprivation, forced labor, beatings, torture, sexual assault, physical restraint

Ms. Zhang Hui is a retired doctor from the Yunma Airplane Company in Anshun City, Guizhou Province, and a Falun Gong practitioner. In September 2007, after she put up some Falun Gong flyers in a public area, she was arrested. One month later, she was sent to the Sanshui Forced Labour Camp in Guangdong Province. During her labour camp term, the 60-year-old woman was subjected to a variety of tortures. She also heard the stories of other practitioners. In this article, Dr. Zhang describes her experience while in the labour camp.

Arrested for Distributing Leaflets Exposing the Persecution of Falun Gong in Shunde

In September 2007, I went to the Shunde area to post flyers to let people know about the persecution of Falun Gong. The posters explained why Falun Gong is great and dispelled the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lies. A local police officer saw me and called a police car over. They took me to the First Detention Centre in Shunde.

At the detention centre, I insisted on practising the Falun Gong exercises. Criminal inmates, instigated by guards, assaulted me with punches and insults. I was not allowed to sleep until after midnight each day. I had no blankets and had to lay on pieces of cardboard on the floor. One day after I did the Falun Gong exercises, a criminal inmate kicked my back so hard that my spine was injured. Suddenly, I could not move. The guards refused to allow an examination of my injury. To protest the ill treatment, I held a four-day hunger strike. One guard secretly told me to go ahead and do the exercises, and soon after I resumed them, my back injury was healed.

One month later, the police sent me to Sanshui Women's Forced Labour Camp in Guangdong to serve two years of hard labour.

Suffering in Sanshui Forced Labour Camp

In Sanshui, I was assigned to the Third Division. All practitioners there were isolated in separated rooms and watched by two to four criminal inmates. We were forced to watch video programmes that slandered Falun Gong.

A drug offender directed by the guards once tied me to the headboard of a bed with a rope, which was so tight that I could hardly breathe. They put a TV set just one foot in front of me and forced me to watch slanderous videos. This brainwashing continued for more than a year.

Criminal inmates often tortured me. One day drug offender Zhang Hua grabbed my arms and bent them behind my back with all her strength. The pain was unbearable. After a while, I lost feeling in my arms, and my elbows swelled up and turned purple. I was later sent to Sanshui Hospital, where a CT scan revealed a head injury and a broken bone at my lower back.

Since I refused to stop practising Falun Gong, the inmates often beat me, because they received monetary rewards for doing so. The labour camp authorities encouraged these criminals to assault practitioners by awarding them merit points. As a result, the criminals were extra harsh with their torture. After drug offender Ye Qiaozhen once violently beat a practitioner, she said that if the practitioner died, she would report it as a death due to haemorrhage.

On another occasion, drug offender Guan Fengming lifted me up and dropped me to the ground while yelling out profanities. After I hit the ground, a bloody bump appeared on my head, and I had intense pain in my back. I didn't have enough strength to stand up. Showing no sympathy, Guan Fengming yelled at me for "faking it" and invited drug offender Hu Aizhen to pull my trousers off. When I was naked, they dipped a pair of sleepers in a urine bucket and hit my private parts with them. When I tried to protect myself, they violently hit my hands and arms. Instead of stopping them, a female guard encouraged the pair. Hu Aichun said, "I will beat whoever practises the (Falun Gong) exercises. Even if my mother practised, I would beat her to death."

Even toilet breaks were used as a persecution technique. We often heard people yelling, "Close the doors and windows." That meant it was time for bathroom breaks. Everyone had to close all doors and windows, including curtains, so practitioners could not see each other. Two criminals were assigned to escort each practitioner to the toilet. If someone needed to have a bowel movement, she had to apply in advance. Some practitioners refused to apply, and they were denied a chance to use the toilet when needed. When they held hunger strikes to protest, the labor camp personnel resorted to forced feedings after three meals, and they even charged the family members a few hundred yuan¹ for the effort of force feeding the practitioner.

Other Incidents of Persecution

When I was detained in the Shunde First Detention Centre, a practitioner in her 20s was beaten because she did the exercises. The authorities even restrained her with handcuffs and shackles for more than a month. Practitioners were isolated in their own cells. Sometimes, I could hear "Falun Gong is good," and immediately people rushed to that room. Then, the volume on the TV in every room was immediately turned up to cover the sound of the beatings and cursing in that room.

One day, a practitioner ran out of her room and shouted "Falun Gong is good" repeatedly. Criminal inmates inserted something into her mouth and threw her into a solitary cell. An inmate who used to follow this practitioner around later said that the practitioner's hands and feet were tied up with a prison uniform even during her sleep. During the day, whenever she stood up, two inmates immediately pulled her hands in case she wanted to practise the exercises. I later learned that she was Peng Chunxian from Shenzhen, and was in her late 20s.

Another inmate told me that when an older practitioner refused to wear a prison uniform, she was stripped naked and left outdoors in the cold. Another drug offender told me that she witnessed an older lady being beaten by the guards with electric batons.

My two years of imprisonment taught me about the Communist Party's cruelty and dark nature. I sincerely hope people will not listen to its lies, and instead choose a bright future for themselves.

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/2010/1/9/215961.html