200 Practitioners Still Being Held in Shandong Province Second Women's Forced Labour Camp

The Shandong Province Second Women's Forced Labour Camp is located in Wangcun Town in the Zichuan District, Zibo City. More than 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been incarcerated there over the past 12 years. As of October 2011, there are 400 inmates, half of them Falun Gong practitioners. Below are accounts of brutal mistreatment that practitioners in the camp are subjected to.

Solitary Confinement and Extreme Mental Pressure

The most commonly used means of torture inflicted on practitioners is solitary confinement. Several prisoners are assigned to closely monitor one practitioner. No one else is allowed to contact the practitioner or talk to her, especially another practitioner. Practitioners are not allowed to make eye contact or smile, are not allowed to pass along scriptures, are not allowed to practise the Falun Gong exercises, are not allowed to talk to anyone about the facts of the persecution, and are not allowed to shout “Falun Gong is good.” Any violation of these rules results in points being deducted, which means extended terms. Guards threatened the monitors, saying that if they fail to watch the practitioners closely, they will also have points deducted. Those prisoners live under a lot of pressure.

“Transformation”/ Brainwashing

Guards instruct collaborators¹ to slander Falun Gong in front of practitioners as a way to “transform” [forcibly renounce Falun Gong] them. They force practitioners to watch videos and read books that slander Falun Gong. They badmouth practitioners' righteous behaviour absolutely, and word by word, sentence by sentence slander Falun Gong's teaching. They used some practitioners' fear to persuade them to cultivate in Buddhism. If practitioners refuse any of the above, the collaborators beat and curse them. Brainwashing starts once a practitioner enters the labour camp and is carried on non-stop except when people are sleeping.

Mental Control

Guards pressure practitioners to write the Four Statements to renounce practising Falun Gong – a statement of regret, a confession statement, a criticising statement, and a guarantee statement. They also require practitioners to write weekly “confessions” and monthly summaries to report on their thoughts. Practitioners are also forced to learn the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) curriculum (about 10 subjects), sing CCP propaganda songs, and, during holidays, the entire labour camp must praise the CCP before they can eat dumplings.

For those who firmly deny the brainwashing, the guards intensify the mental and physical pressure. I personally witnessed the following:

1. 24-hour-a-day sleep deprivation, until the practitioner suffers a nervous breakdown

2. Having to stand or sit in one position and not allowed to move

3. Having someone write Teacher's [Teacher Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong] name on her arms or body and having someone hold her hand to write curse words

4. Solitary confinement. Guards go in to tempt or threaten the practitioner, trying to make her think they will shock her with electric batons. Or, they try to convince her she will be locked in there forever and be tortured to death. Ms. Ma Yujuan lost 25 pounds in a month in solitary confinement. The guards left her meals in the hallway and starved her. If anyone goes on hunger strike, guards will take her to be force-fed in the hospital.

5. Each practitioner is placed in a group of about 12 prisoners. Guards forbid any inmate from talking to practitioners and order the other inmates not to allow practitioners to leave the cell or use the washroom. Wherever a practitioner goes, she is closely followed.

Drug Abuse

Some elderly practitioners showed signs of physical illness after being tortured. The guards forcibly injected them unknown drugs. Ms. Li Shumei is an elderly practitioner. She had a headache, and in order to reduce the pain, she shouted “Falun Gong is great!” The guards forced her to consume pills and submit to intravenous injections. They locked her in solitary confinement and extended her term an additional month

Forced Labour

Old or young, one must work on producing a kind of small machine that requires a very poisonous tape. People are naturally allergic to this tape, and small red bumps appear on the body. Eventually the whole face and body are completely covered in red bumps. The work quota is very high. Labour camps make money off of detainees' slave labour.

Above is only the tip of the iceberg of the severe persecution that takes place in the Shandong Province Second Women's Forced Labour Camp.

Note

1. "Collaborators" (former practitioners, brainwashed against Falun Gong, made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners)

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2011/11/15/249308.html