Atrocities at the Wanjia Forced Labour Camp in Harbin

In 2001, Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Ma Bingjuan was detained at Wanjia Forced Labour Camp in Harbin. She both witnessed and experienced the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) shockingly brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Ma Bingyuan stated that at that time, 800 detained Falun Gong practitioners had scabies on their bodies as a result of the persecution conditions. Prison doctors would take off practitioners' clothes and use a dull knife to scrap the scabies sores. That tragic condition and the pain from it is hard to describe using words.

Below is what Ma Bingjuan revealed from what she suffered at Wanjia Forced Labour Camp in 2001.

I was arrested by police in December 2000 while I was distributing leaflets exposing the persecution and telling people the facts about Falun Gong. The police sent me to Wanjia Forced Labour Camp and I was persecuted there for one year.

In March 2001, I was first detained in the No. 7 Team in the forced labour camp. At that time, due to the conditions of the persecution, I had scabies all over my body. My whole body was itching and felt very miserable. The weather in March in the north was still pretty cold, but each morning we were forced to go out to do some drills. After the wind blew on my body, my whole body was painful – it felt like needles poking me. I did not want to eat or go to sleep. Sometimes I could not even take care of myself on a daily basis. At that time, there were hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners detained there in the No. 7 Team. I was assigned to a room in the No. 2 dorm building. There were over a dozen fellow practitioners in the room. One day in April, a female team leader whose last name was Jin asked me and fellow practitioner Yang to come to the team leader's office. I refused to go there. Jin said this meant that I was afraid. At that time I thought to myself: why should I be afraid of you? Then I went to the team leader's office with fellow practitioner Yang. Jin asked whether or not we both still continued with our practice of Falun Gong. We both replied “yes”. At that moment, police locked both of us in an isolated cell room.

A group of male police tied other fellow practitioners in our cell room onto the head of bed or onto the pipe of the heater. Then they stuffed a towel in their mouth and tried to force them to give up their practice.

Along with both of us, two other fellow practitioners were detained in a small cell only about the size of a single bed. Police used some rope to tie us and hung us on the frame of the door and did not put us down until noon the next day.

I was locked in the isolated cell room for one month. Sometimes, because we wanted to do the Falun Gong exercises or recite the Falun Gong teachings, we were tied up and verbally abused by police. Because I did the exercises, the forced labour camp extended my term for another half year. Thus during a meeting, I was put in handcuffs and made to walk in the row of those whose terms were extended; and then we were brought to the front stage. After the meeting was over, police asked us to go back to our cells On the way back to the cell, one senior fellow practitioner shouted, “Falun Gong is good.” A male police officer kicked and beat that practitioner up. She was kicked downstairs from the 2nd floor and her nose and face were beaten black and blue.

During this time of being detained in the isolated cell, one day after 3 in the afternoon, the police said that someone would come to visit our place and asked fellow practitioners to cooperate with them. They would not allow us to sit down and we had to stand up and listen to their arrangements. Practitioner A did not listen to their orders and kept sitting in the cell room. Police then tied up all fellow practitioners and hung them onto the door with their feet not touching the floor. They would not allow practitioners to eat, sleep or use the toilet. At that time, I wanted to use the toilet, but they would not allow me to and as result I defecated in my trousers. The police did not let us down until midnight. The next day, we were sent back to our cell.

On the 3rd day, the police asked each person to fill out and sign a form on which there was an item saying that we were not allowed to do the exercises. The fellow practitioners would not sign that form. Police asked me and another fellow practitioner to come to the office and then asked us whether we would sign the form. I said “No”. They then locked me and the other fellow practitioner in the isolation cell room again. The police threatened to tie me up so tight that it would make my arm dislocated. We were hung up on the door frame again from 4 in the afternoon till sometime after 6 pm. My arms were sore and numb and felt like they were broken.

Due to the conditions at the forced labour camp, at that time 800 of the fellow practitioners had scabies. Some were dry scabies and some were abscessed scabies which were dirty and itchy, like 100 claws scratching hard, and it was unbearable. Once, a prison doctor used the excuse of giving me some treatment and asked me to come in. A female doctor saw those abscesses, and she directly used a pair of scissors to cut those abscess on my hand. Pus and blood dripped out. It caused terrible pain and made me nauseated. Other fellow practitioners had some abscesses covering their bodies. The jail doctor took off their clothes and then used a knife to directly scrape those abscess. It was like a blunt knife cutting the flesh. The pain was terrible and hard to express in words. After scraping, the person looked bloody all over. Their whole body was covered with blood, with blood and flesh mixed together. It was really terrible. After that, they would pour on cold water from the head down. Those fellow practitioners endured such inhuman persecution, but could only grind their teeth.

The above is what I experienced and saw regarding how the CCP's police were persecuting Falun Gong practitioners while I was detained at the forced labour camp.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2011/6/27/243083.html