The Persecution in Guan County, Shandong Province

There were approximately 10,000 people practising Falun Gong in Guan County, Shandong Province before the persecution started in July 1999. However, since then the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been brutally persecuting practitioners.

CCP officials in Guan released an order to terminate 29 practitioners' wages on October 14th, 2000. This notice was distributed to various government agencies, and was also broadcast on the county-wide television network for three consecutive days.

Six brainwashing centres have been set up by the Guan 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) since the persecution started, detaining thousands of practitioners over the years. The head of one of the brainwashing centres, Ma Wenchang, forced practitioners to pay for their meals.

When Ren Guangmin became the head of Guan 610 Office, he notified all government agencies in the area to arrest practitioners and take them to the brainwashing centre whenever sensitive dates were approaching. Ren gave the instruction that starting from October 2000 all practitioners held in the brainwashing centres had to pay for their meals. Ren and an officer from Guan Police Department, with the last name of Li, also forced a large number of practitioners to do forced labour in the autumn of 2002. The work included paving roads, working at a welding plant and a printing factory. All payments for the completed work went to straight to Ren and other 610 Office agents.

Officials in Guan set up a fund to reward people who report practitioners to the police, or who help the authorities to persecute practitioners.

Officials try to justify the persecution

The Political and Judicial Committee Party Secretary of Guan, Li Bailin, issued several policies urging the County 610 Offices to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Officers were told to confiscate practitioners’ ID cards and to closely monitor them. They were to force practitioners’ relatives to guarantee that the practitioners would not appeal for Falun Gong in the future, and to ensure officials at practitioners’ workplaces closely monitor their movements.

Government agencies in Guan instructed all employers on July 26th, 2001 to closely monitor practitioners. If a practitioner went to the provincial capital or Beijing to appeal, their workplace would be fined 30,000 yuan¹. Any employer who omitted a practitioner's name from their list of practitioners working at their premises would be fined 10,000 yuan. More than 200 practitioners were arrested and detained between July 2001 to July 2002.

An announcement was issued on March 8th, 2005, which was widely broadcast on local TV, claiming to reward anyone who reported practitioners to the police. A list of 11 practitioners' details were given, with a reward ranging from 500 to 5,000 yuan. Political and Judicial Committee Party Secretary, Xu Lanling, signed the document on March 9th, 2005.

After becoming the head of Guan Police Department in August 2005, Diao Peichang actively participated in the arrest and detention of practitioners, by sending them to labour camps or sentencing them to other places for further persecution. Within one month of him taking his post, more than 100 practitioners were arrested and several dozen were sent to forced labour camps.

The Guan Party Committee honored more than 50 individuals from 13 government agencies on April 18th, 2006, for persecuting practitioners.

Police began to arrest many practitioners and their family members as of July 1, 2007:

At the beginning of 2008, officials from the Guan 610 Office intensified the persecution prior to the Beijing Olympics. Many plainclothes agents were ordered to put strict surveillance on practitioners. The heads of Guan government agencies held a meeting in the police department on the morning of January 3rd, where Guan Party secretary Liu Qiang gave a speech. He stressed the importance of the persecution and required each government agency to provide daily updates of their progress to the county 610 Office.

Guan Political and Judicial Committee Party secretary, Han Jinfang, chaired a meeting on March 4th, 2008, in which officials from many government agencies attended, including police department head Diao Peichang, head of the court Zhang Xiaohui, and Procuratorate chief Li Chunguang. This meeting was broadcast several times on the Guan County news on March 6th, 2008, on three local channels.

The head of Guan County, Hong Yuzhen, held a meeting with high level officials from the Political and Judicial Committee, 610 Office and other government agencies on April 25th, 2008. Hong stated that practitioners should be treated as enemies of the state and be suppressed by any means. He stressed the importance of stepping up security for the Olympics and said that bonuses would be awarded to each agency's key officials for the persecution of practitioners.

Document No. 2008-015 was issued on June 6th, 2008 to further accelerate the persecution, and a task force was launched by Han Jinfang. Liu Qiang and Hong Yuzhen held a meeting on the same day with the political and judicial officials, where they explicitly declared Falun Gong an enemy of the state and defamed it on TV.

Two agents from the provincial 610 Office were sent to the Beihuanlu Brainwashing Centre to inspect the premises on June 12th. It was said that officials from the provincial 610 Office did not consider the persecution in Guan severe enough, and urged local officials to learn from other areas that had been persecuting practitioners more severely.

Following direct orders from Zhou Yongkang, a senior leader of the CCP, senior officials of the Guan 610 Office devised a strategy to intensify the persecution. Officials at Guan 610 Office held another meeting on June 25th, in which they planned to arrest a large number of practitioners prior to July 20th, the anniversary of the start of the persecution of Falun Gong, and detain them for at least one month.

Additional funding was provided on July 10th to 18 police stations throughout the county, totalling more than 4 million yuan. All of the heads of the police stations were promoted, ten patrol vehicles were added to the fleet, 2,430 closed circuit cameras were installed in the county, and many plainclothes agents were dispatched. Persecuting Falun Gong practitioners was put at the highest priority. As of July 23rd, anyone wishing to travel out of Guan needed to show their ID card to purchase travel tickets. Checkpoint procedures at the railway and bus stations were also intensified.

Practitioners arrested and detained

Mr. Zhang Guangbao was arrested by officer Li Hanqing when he went to appeal for Falun Gong in 2000. He was detained and tortured by officer Ma Guoqiang. On October 29th, 2000, Mr. Zhang was taken to the 9th Division of Wangcun Forced Labour Camp. During the three years he was held there, camp guards tied him up tightly while he was sitting in a meditation position and left him like that for up to five hours a day. They also rammed a sock into his mouth to prevent him from screaming. He was also forced to sit or stand sometimes while gripping a piece of paper with his legs. If the paper dropped, he would be severely beaten. He was deprived of sleep or use of the toilet for long periods of time. If he was seen dozing off, they would pour cold water on his head, rub spices into his eyes, or insert small twigs up his nostrils. Wang Yong and Zhao Wei once used a wooden stick to constantly beat his legs. Mr. Zhang was soon unable to walk.

When Mr. Feng Xuehui and Mr. Zhang Guangbao were arrested one time, officer Kong Weiping tortured Mr. Feng. His mother was even taken to the police station, and was forced to watch her son being tortured.

Mr. Zhang Guangbao was taken to a forced labour camp in August 2005, and was held in the 6th Division. He started a hunger strike in September 2005 to protest his mistreatment, and became emaciated after several months. On March 9th, 2006, he shouted, “Falun Gong is good” in the hallway, and was immediately handcuffed to a bed. After enduring the long-term torture he became disabled. He was released in the summer of 2008, and his family had to take care of him. Mr. Zhang's story can be found in the article “Family of Dentists Subjected to Persecution”: http://www.clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/2/18/123313.html

In the evening of May 11th, 2001, officers from Chengguan Police Station were dispatched to practitioners' homes to arrest them and anyone else that was there. Even a person who had arrived to collect the water and electricity fees was arrested. Tian Zeng and other officers tortured practitioners and their family members that evening.

When Ms. He Dian was taken to the Chengguan Police Station, her handbag was confiscated and she was interrogated overnight. Officer Chen Yuezhi strip-searched her at 11 p.m., but did not find anything. Ms. He was taken to the third floor of the police station, where her head was covered and she was handcuffed to two chair legs. Tian Zenghai swore at her and beat her with a baton. Other officers repeatedly shocked her face, head and other parts of her body with electric batons. This lasted for nearly two hours. The officers only left when they were tired. Ms. He was kept handcuffed with other detainees until the next morning.

The head of the police station, Han Hongguang, and officer Chen Yuezhi ordered five officers to search Ms. He's home. They confiscated many of her personal belongings. When she was interrogated again, her hands were cuffed behind her back and she was forced to bend down. After the interrogation Ms. He and a few other practitioners were taken to Guan Detention Centre. Ms. He's family were forced to pay several thousand yuan for her release. Officers Xue Lianchun and Ma Benxiang interrogated her again a few days later.

More than 10 practitioners were arrested in the early morning of January 16th, 2002 and were taken to Wangcun Brainwashing Centre in Zibo City. Each of them was forced to pay over 3,000 yuan for their release. Wang Dongxing was sentenced to three years in a forced labour camp in late 2000 because he could not pay the money. Several dozen other practitioners were also taken to Wangcun Brainwashing Centre.

The head of Xinji Town Police Station, Wang Baozhuang, was responsible for the persecution of the couple Mr. Li Fengjun and Ms. Shi Dongmin. He had Mr. Li sentenced to a forced labour camp for three years. He ransacked Mr. Li's family's home, confiscated their farm's crops and extorted 8,000 yuan from him. He also sent Ms. Shi to a forced labour camp for one year. Their 17-year-old daughter had to leave school and find a job to support her younger brother and pay for his school expenses.

Ms. Wan Yufen, a nurse at Guan Hospital, and her 20-year-old daughter Ms. Zhao Linian were under surveillance for a long time. Agents from the 610 Office arrested Ms. Zhao and kept her in solitary confinement in Xin County. She was sent to Wangcun Forced Labour Camp three weeks later.

Ms. Zhang Qiaohua was arrested and detained when she went to Beijing to appeal in late September 2000. When she was released, she overheard Political and Judicial Committee Party Secretary Li Bailin slandering Falun Gong. She said to him, “Defaming Falun Gong is not good for you.” Li was furious and had her sent to Wangcun Forced Labour Camp for three years.

Ms. Song Fenglan from Xuxin Village in Jia Town has been detained and tortured in a police station, detention centre and brainwashing centre many times. Her family was forced to pay large amounts of money for her release on numerous occasions, leaving them in an extremely difficult financial situation. Officials from the Guan 610 Office took Ms. Song to Jinan Women’s Forced Labour Camp on October 29th, 2008, after being detained in a brainwashing centre for more than three months.

Officials in Guan held a meeting in the Guanzhou Hotel in June 2009, to reward individuals that persecuted Falun Gong and those who organized signature collections from 10,000 students to defame the practice. This meeting was broadcast to the entire county on the evening of June 19th, 2009.

Guan County authorities shut down all the Internet cafes in the area in October 2009 to prevent people from reaching Clearwisdom.net (a Falun Gong website) and exposing the persecution.

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/2011/7/22/244193.html