Huaihua City Mental Hospital Imprisons and Persecutes Practitioners

Huaihua City No. 4 People's Hospital (in Hunan Province), also known as the Huaihua City Mental Hospital imprisons and persecutes Falun Gong practitioners. Practitioner Ms. Chen Chujun died as a result of persecution in the Huaihua City No. 4 People's Hospital.

The following is what I experienced and witnessed at the Huaihua City Mental Hospital. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the brutal persecution perpetrated in that facility.

Practitioners are detained among mental patients and tortured. Torture methods include shackling of practitioners, forced feeding, force administration of unknown drugs, and torture with an electric baton. The doctors claim that they use electric batons to find out if the patients "truly have mental problems."

1. "Isolation Area"

One night, staff from the 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) took me to the Huaihua City No. 4 People's Hospital Office. I noticed several cells with special locks and found out that when the door was closed from the inside or outside, it could only be opened with a key. This area was called the "isolation area." Anyone who did not follow rules, whether they were actual mental patients or not, were locked up in the "isolation area."

The isolation area had two small cells that measured less than four square metres. There was an iron door, one window and one bed. The detainee was tied to the bed, tortured, injected with unknown drugs and force-fed in that cell. Then there was another cell with no bed, where mental patients were held. Several beds were outside the isolation cells. Those were for patients that did as they were told. There is a nurse's duty room and opposite it was the doctor's on-call office. The mental hospital was filled with mental patients, as well as with people without mental illness. These others included those who had committed crimes but pretended to have a mental illness, and people who are being persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This latter group consists mainly of Falun Gong practitioners.

2. Force Feeding Foods and Drugs

Practitioners refused to co-operate with the persecution in the Huaihua City Mental Hospital. They did not take the drugs, ignored unreasonable requests, and some went on a hunger strike to protest the detention. The doctors and nurses detained such practitioners in the isolation cell. They used bandages that were about 2-3 metres long and 2 fingers wide to tie up practitioners so they couldn't move when they were injected with drugs or force-fed.

After arriving at the mental hospital, I was searched, and my personal items, including money, leather belt and watch were confiscated. I was locked up in the isolation room for several days, except for when I went to the toilet. I explained the facts about Falun Gong to the doctors and nurses, told them that I was being persecuted and demanded my release. Doctor Yu Hua'an first said that my family could pick me up, but then he claimed that the release of practitioners had to be approved by the 610 Office. Additionally, the hospital had to report practitioners' "behaviour" to the 610 Office regularly.

Every afternoon, doctors took patients to the activity room on the ground floor. They were allowed to play ping pong, chess, cards or watch TV, with the exception of Falun Gong practitioners. At the end of the wards there was a canteen with a TV. At meal times, everyone had to take drugs. There were differently coloured small pills. The doctors and nurses pressed those who refused to take the drugs to the ground, opened their mouths with their hands or chopsticks, pressed their nostrils together and forcibly administered the drugs. Some of the drugs affected the person negatively, such that their responses were slowed, they drooled, or could not see clearly. The majority of people negatively affected by the pills were Falun Gong practitioners, an indication that such pills were not given to regular patients.

Soon after arriving at the hospital I went on a hunger strike to protest. I demanded to be released, but the 610 Office did not grant permission. The doctors feared going against the 610 Office, so they force-fed me. I was tied to an iron bed for the entire day. Nurses and doctors inserted a tube through my nose into my stomach, and then poured milk into the tube. Sometimes they could not insert the tube, so they gave me an infusion, or forcefully opened my mouth with chopsticks, holding my nose so that I couldn't breathe, and then they force-fed me salt water. At times, I almost suffocated. Doctor Wang tied my hands for five to six hours and my hands turned blue, and became painful, numb and I lost all feeling in them. I repeatedly asked them to untie me. When they finally untied me, my hands were swollen.

3. Restricting Freedom

Practitioners were not allowed to do the Falun Gong exercises and were forced to take unknown drugs. Monitoring devices were installed in the corridors.

Snacks and instant noodles could be bought, but the prices were much higher than in the outside world.

Hospitalisation expenses were very high: between 4,000 and 5,000 yuan¹ a month. This was another aspect of the financial persecution of practitioners.

Contact information:
Huaihua Prison warden: 86-745-2353868,
Political commissar: 86-745-2351377, 86-745-2350980 (Office)

No. 4 People's Hospital:
Tang Wujun, principal medical officer: 86-137-87559755 (Mobile)
Yu Hua'an, chief medical officer Yu Hua'an.
Yu Lianying, nurse; was involved in force feeding.
Tang Changgeng, an orderly; treated practitioners brutally.

Wu Chuanrong, male, chief, deputy chief physician. Originally vice-president of the mental hospital. Actively involved in the persecution of practitioners, for which he was rewarded by promotion to party committee secretary.
Chen Shengcai, male, service vice-president
Wu Xianyu, female, deputy chief physician
Ma Zongshu, female, deputy chief physician
Xing Xieqiang, male, deputy chief physician
Jiang Gaisu, female, physician-in-charge
Tong Zijin, male, about 40 years old, physician-in-charge.

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://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2010/3/9/219492.html