Persecution at the Yuanbaoshan District Detention Centre in Chifeng City

Since July 20th, 1999, under the orders of then Director Zhang Haiqing and then Deputy Director Bai Jie, guards in the Yuanbaoshan District Detention Centre relentlessly tortured practitioners. The officers would tell practitioners, “You want to practise Falun Gong? Then you first need to pass the gates of hell, which is Yuanbaoshan Detention Centre.”

Guard Du Xuewu was in his 20s in 2000. Most practitioners who were held in the detention centre were brutally persecuted by this guard. Once, he beat a female practitioner who was nearly 60 years old. He slapped, kicked and hit the practitioner. When he got sweaty, he took off his shirt and continued to beat her. When he was exhausted, he ordered the old lady to squat and mimic a duck walking. When she didn't do it to his liking, he kicked her again. Then he forced her to kneel down for a long time with dry pickles placed underneath her knees. He also loaded heavy bags of cornmeal on her back, and forced her to crawl on the ground. If a bag fell from her back, he would beat her. He abused this lady who was older than his mother.

Guard Zhang Shikong used to serve in the army. He said that he had learned more than 20 martial arts forms in the army, and would give a “taste of each” to the detained practitioners. He was infamous in the detention centre. When he was on duty, the prisoners would be very quiet because they were all afraid of being beaten by him. When he slapped people, he would do it several dozen times each round. Many practitioners were slapped by him and left with bloody, swollen faces.

Guards Du Xuewu, Zhang Shikong, Zhang Haiqing, Bai Jie, and others most frequently use the “break the skin” or “kick and step on the head” methods to torture people. A guard forced a female practitioner to kneel down, and then fiercely kicked her in the face. The practitioner's mouth immediately started to bleed and her front teeth were loose.

Once, Zhang Haiqing told guards to “break the skin” of practitioners. They lifted the victims' clothes to expose the back. Then they used hard plastic tubes or leather belts to whip their backs, starting from the neck, all the way down, wounding every inch of flesh. Then they stepped on and kicked the faces of every practitioner.

Practitioner Zhang Xiuxia is an older lady. She refused to give up her belief in Falun Gong. Guard Zhang Haiqing dragged her to the hallway, where he kicked and hit her. After knocking her down to the ground and while wearing leather shoes, he kicked her in the head, stepped on her head and ground her face on the floor. Ms. Zhang's face and head immediately became badly cut and swollen. He then dragged her by the hair and pulled her around the hallway until she passed out.

Force-feeding is another kind of torture that the guards use on practitioners, and they use this to coerce practitioners into giving up their belief.

During force-feeding, guards usually order several male prisoners to move practitioners from a bed to the ground. They then restrain the limbs of practitioners (sometimes they step on the heads of the practitioners) and force-feed them. Once, guard Bai Jie force-fed a female practitioner. He fed her highly concentrated salt water, placing her life in grave danger.

Once, Bai Jie beat a female practitioner and kicked her very hard. The practitioner's face hit a window frame, which caused a four-centimetre-long gash. Then he tortured the practitioner for two days with the “stretching bed.”

In the summer, guards forced practitioners to work in the heat in the fields for long periods of time without any water. When practitioners used the toilet, they were not given any toilet paper.

At night, they whipped, kicked, and slapped practitioners. They also shocked practitioners with electric batons. Then they forced practitioners into a one-meter-deep pond in the yard and had them sit in the water until all of their clothes were soaked. After they came out of the water, they were left there to be bitten by mosquitoes. The torture lasted until late at night. The next morning, they forced practitioners to work in the fields again.

In the frigid winter, guards forced practitioners to get up at 3:00 a.m. and run around the yard of the detention centre in the freezing cold wind, with only pyjamas and no jacket. When practitioners were exhausted, guards poured water on the ground. The water soon turned to ice. Then they forced practitioners to stand on the ice in their bare feet for long stretches.

A practitioner refused to give up her belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, so the guards placed foot shackles on her. They made her squat and hold her left leg with both of her hands, and then they cuffed her hands together. She was forced to walk with great difficulty in the cold wind in the yard of the detention centre, with her back bent and heavy shackles on her feet. Guard Wang Lei was stomping his feet on the ground to keep himself warm, even though he wore a thick coat. However, he still forced the female practitioner to walk faster. After she finished two rounds of walking and returned to the cell, she was not able to get into her bed. A witness said that her heels were injured by the foot shackles. She was bleeding from where the shackles had cut her feet to the bone.

On January 1st, 2001, guard Zhang Haiqing shouted, “I will kill you. Next year, January 1st will an anniversary that you'll remember. I will make you live worse than dogs!” He forced practitioners to run outside in bare feet. The practitioners' feet were badly injured and frostbitten. The guards also forced practitioners to crawl along the wall. Their hands and heels were injured, and their hands were frozen, causing their fingernails to fall off. A female practitioner who was tortured by Zhang Haiqing recalled, “On January 1st, 2001, it was the coldest day of the year. Right after a snow storm, Zhang Haiqing, the director of the Yuanbaoshan Detention Centre, called more than ten practitioners outside, and forced us to crawl like dogs. The oldest among the practitioners was 62 years old, and the youngest was in her 20s. They crawled nearly three times around the yard. Four prisoners with thick coats and cotton shoes watched us crawling. It was so cold that they stomped on the ground to keep warm. I was only allowed to wear thin pyjamas. My fingers were frozen and I could hear the sound when they touched the ground. Soon all my fingers were frozen. A few minutes after I went back to the cell, my fingernails separated from the flesh. Three days later, the skin on my fingers started to flake off little by little. Some skin fell piece by piece, and some fell off the entire finger at once. Pus continued to ooze out and my fingernails gradually fell off. My feet also bled and a thick layer of skin and flesh stuck to my pants, making it impossible to take off my pants. Even with our hands like this, on the second day, the guards brought dirty clothes and forced us to hand-wash them.”

It has been nearly 12 years since Falun Gong was first persecuted in China. Each heinous crime committed by the guards is also recorded in history. No matter where they go, these criminals will not be able to escape justice.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2011/1/8/234647.html