Tianjin Woman Persecuted in Forced Labour Camp in Tianjin City

Name: Feng Ling
Gender: Female
Address: Tianjin
Date of Most Recent Arrest: October 25th, 2001
Most Recent Place of Detention: Banqiao Women's Forced Labour Camp
Persecution Suffered: Sleep deprivation, forced labour, brainwashing, imprisonment, torture, interrogation, detention

Ms. Feng Ling began practising Falun Gong in late 1997. Since the Chinese Communist Party started persecuting Falun Gong in 1999, she has been arrested, put behind bars in a detention centre, and later tortured in the Banqiao Women's Forced Labour Camp in Dagang District of Tianjin City. The following is her own memorandum.

Tianjin City First Detention Centre

On October 25th, 2001, while passing out Falun Gong leaflets exposing the persecution and the persecution to people in the Dahutong residential district in Tianjin City, I was arrested by two plainclothes police officers, who detained me at the Dahutong Police Station. These two officers claimed to be agents from the National Security Bureau, and interrogated me for twenty-four hours.

After this interrogation, I was taken to Tianjin's First Detention Centre, where I accidentally found out that my husband (a practitioner) was also detained there. Every time I was interrogated by state security officers at this place, they handcuffed me to a horizontal bar. Every meal we were given consisted of a stingy steamed bun along with a little bit of Chinese cabbage with worms.

Nankai District Police Department Detention Centre in Tianjin

After about ten days in the First Detention Centre, I was transferred to the detention centre of Nankai District Police Department. The following day, a couple of officers from the Wangdingti Police Station came and took me to their station for a deposition. There they chained me for 48 hours and deprived me of sleep during their deposition. When they brought me back to Nankai, officer Li ferociously said, “We'll put you in jail for ten years and see if you still practise Falun Gong.”

Many inmates were squeezed together in each small prison cell at the detention centre, after toiling with a heavy workload every day. Naturally, it smelled bad due to a poor ventilation system. Each cell had a “chief inmate” who was appointed by prison guards, and this person was in charge of all the other inmates. Every inmate was only allowed to buy daily necessities from this “chief inmate,” but weren't permitted to use those items that were brought in by their families. The price of those necessities was about six to ten times higher.

After being held for more than a month in this detention centre, I was sentenced to three years of forced labour.

Banqiao Women's Forced Labour Camp

I was escorted to and detained at the First Brigade of the Banqiao Women's Forced Labour Camp in Dagang District of Tianjin. The labour camp included four teams at different locations, where most of the detainees were Falun Gong practitioners. The so-called “instructors” in the camp were those who had been brainwashed and were controlled by the guards. Some individual instructors, after hearing a practitioner's explanation about Falun Gong, understood the truth and treated practitioners better. But once an instructor did that, he was besieged or pushed out.

The following are facts of the persecution, which I either experienced or witnessed personally, or heard about from fellow practitioners.

When a practitioner in the detention centre refused to write a guarantee statement promising to give up Falun Gong cultivation practice, he or she was not permitted to have any family members visit, nor have money to buy daily necessities, which were very expensive within the compound.

These steadfast practitioners were punished with sleep deprivation in order to force a change in their faith. After toiling a heavy workload, I was not permitted to go to sleep until two or three o'clock in the morning for nearly two months.

The guards forced me to do heavy physical work, including carrying 120 pound bags of beans to be exported (I noticed some bags marked with the “U.S.A.”), which were taken off the truck and put on my shoulders. I saw that the dedicated female practitioners (age 55 or younger) were carrying the same as I did. I also witnessed one 55-year-old grey-haired female practitioner being forced to carry these heavy bags of beans. She was not able to do it, but the guards didn't allow others to help her, and said, “She must carry it even if she crawls.”

Because I was too tired, my blood pressure was very low and I suffered from prostration. A doctor told me to eat more sugar and said, “If you still pass out, then let it be.”

Daily work hours started at six o'clock in the morning. Sometimes, in order to catch up with stock delivery, we were forced to work from 4:00 a.m. until 11 or 12 o'clock midnight. One time an outside organisation came to do some kind of investigation, and the guards woke all of us up and had us move all the bags of beans, which were hidden away in another area. On that day, we didn't have to do any work, and sat there listening to their so-called “learning.”

Forced labour included folding description booklets for cosmetics and making handmade car seats. There was also a sewing room for manufacturing shirts, and practitioners were forced to make shirts for export. They were always deprived of sleep, and sometimes given very little time to sleep. Inmates were also forced to get water for the guards to take showers and had to wash their dirty clothes.

Dedicated practitioners, some of whom were much older (age 61-68), were also forced to perform heavy labour, and were deprived of sleep as well.

In order to reduce their prison terms, inmates were assigned to monitor and torture steadfast practitioners around the clock. They were also required to report about us to the guards.

The so-called “instructors” also opened and read private letters at will, and withheld clothing and letters sent by families of Dafa practitioners. One time, I wrote an open letter and disclosed the illegal behaviour of an instructor. After that, she had no alternative but to discontinue the behaviour. Out of revenge, and because I was a solid practitioner, my detention was extended by seven additional days.

Some practitioners disagreed, disobeyed, and launched a reasonable protest against the labour camp rules and regulations. Some went on a hunger strike protesting the persecution. One practitioner shouted “Falun Gong is good,” and was later handcuffed until his hands and legs became swollen. Those on hunger strike were forcibly fed until their throats became swollen.

When practitioner Ms. Mu Xiangjie refused to yield to the persecution in the forced labour camp, the guards handcuffed her hands to a bed frame in the cell. I witnessed this myself.

Fellow practitioner Ms. Zhou told me about being arrested by police when she clarified the truth. She was forcibly taken to a mental hospital, where she was injected with drugs, and later transferred to a forced labour camp for further maltreatment and detention.

A fellow practitioner told me that because she was steadfast in cultivation, she was left in the scorching sun during the summer until she passed out. Another fellow practitioner told me that a guard ordered an inmate to pour cold water on her during a cold winter day. Another practitioner was detained in a small concealed cell, where she was severely beaten by inmates, who took turns under the instruction of guards.

In late 2003, this forced labour camp established a battalion and named it a so-called “Breaking up the solids.” They were used to “transform” [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] dedicated practitioners, and I was transferred there. I was allowed to sleep only two hours per day, and was not allowed to wash my face, brush my teeth, nor use the toilet. I was also forced to stand facing the wall all day long. When I resisted a little, inmates were ordered to hold me tight. I became dizzy after standing for 24 hours, but they kept forcing me to do it.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2011/2/24/236763.html