Heinous Means of Torture Used in the Chaoyanggou Labour Camp of Changchun City

In Spring of this year, the head of the "610 Office," (<1>an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems) Luo Gan, travelled to Changchun City to check the status of the city's brainwashing classes. (Brainwashing classes are government run attempts to force Falun Dafa practitioners to give up their belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance by means of coercion, abuse, and torture). Upon inspection, he was unsatisfied with the effectiveness of the classes and ordered that harsher measures be taken. In compliance, on April 5, 2002, Governor Hong Hu ordered the Changchun City Chaoyanggou Labour Camp to "intensify its brainwashing efforts." Brutal means of torture were carried out against Falun Dafa practitioners in the labour camp shortly after. The practitioners in the 2nd Brigade were tortured worst of all. Special instruments of torture were brought in and used against them because they were the most determined practitioners in the labour camp.

On the morning of April 6, the practitioners from the 2nd Brigade were taken to an interrogation room and asked whether or not they were going to renounce their beliefs. None of them answered. The police then began to torture them with extremely heinous means using pick-handles, iron-bars, leather-belts, steel-wire-locks, rattans, bamboo-sticks, and bamboo clappers. Their four limbs were chained with iron cuffs and pulled in four directions while they were questioned "Renounce or not?" Those who refused to renounce their beliefs faced even harsher torture.

The policemen poured salt water onto the practitioners' open and bleeding sores and shocked them with electric batons. The room was filled with the smell of blood, burning flesh, and agonizing cries. The policemen swore at the practitioners all throughout the torture. Their bodies became extremely disfigured.

After the torture was over, the policemen put signs on all of the practitioners who refused to renounce their beliefs and took them around to the inmates' cells, where they ordered the inmates to follow them, shouting slogans to humiliate the practitioners. The police would beat up anyone who refused to shout the slogans.