Brutal Torture and Atrocities Committed Against Dafa Practitioners at the Shayang, Forced Labor Camp, Hubei Province (Part I)

By Dafa practitioners

(Clearwisdom.net) In the twinkling of an eye, two years has gone by since Dafa practitioners were illegally detained in Shayang's Forced Labor Camp. This is no a place for cultivators. The place abounds with filthy words. The physical environment is unbearably dirty and chaotic. In the past two, extremely unusual years, Dafa practitioners withstood escalating persecution by the evil forces. They fearlessly traversed a difficult portion of their steadfast cultivation path and showed that Dafa practitioners' faith is as solid as a rock. They didn't complain or show resentment, but brought the evil under control with compassion, spread Dafa and clarified the truth. They are worthy of the name "Dafa practitioners."

On May 17, 2001, authorities from the Shayang Forced Labor Camp put Dafa practitioners together under a coercive "Strict Control Team." This is a team specifically directed against Falun Gong practitioners, to carry out Jiang Zemin's persecution against Falun Dafa.

The Strict Control Team is organized in the following way. Through special selection, regular police officers and specially trained police forces from all major teams and various departments formed the management of the Strict Control Team. However, the quality of staff on the management team is very low, and these people have a very strong tendency toward violence. Criminal prisoners with poor conduct were selected from each team and formed an assistant monitor and control group called the "guarantee detaining staff."

• Team Chief Zhang Xiuming, a native of Honghu, Hubei Province, 48 years old, has an irritable temper. During the period that he was leading the Sixth team, he organized the prisoners who had weapons and got into a fight with the local residents. This caused many local residents to become injured and disabled. This incident created a very bad influence, and Zhang was transferred. When the Strict Control Team was formed, he was appointed to be the person in charge.

• Deputy Team Chief Wang Gang is a native Shayang resident, about 44 years old. He was general manager of a company at the forced labor camp but was fired because of financial issues. After the Strict Control Team formed, he was called in as part of the team.

• Political instructor Huang Dongtao is around thirty years old. He brutally beats people. He was the chief guard of the Sixth Team. While he was on the sixth team, he often beat people and caused them injury. He had beaten a drug addict from Yichang City. The addict became disabled. He also used ropes to tightly tie the arms of a Dafa practitioner. This cut off the practitioner's circulation and he became paralyzed.

• The Chief of the specially trained police team, Guo Lei, in his twenties, was transferred to civilian status from a special frontier guard unit in Guangxi Province. After he came to the labor camp he was sent to Shaolin Temple for two years of training. He was the hatchet man of the forced labor camp.

• Section chief of the third sub-team, Shen Yanming, is around thirty-five years old. He is a native of Shayang. He was transferred from the army to civilian work. He is extremely brutal in persecuting Dafa practitioners. During his time of duty at the Strict Control Team, he physically punished and violently beat Dafa practitioner Zheng Jinzhang (35 years old, junior high school education, and a farmer). Zheng was saved later after emergency treatment.

Above is the names and qualifications of people who form the"management body" of the Strict Control Team. In addition, there are several other police units and specially trained police officers. Under the instigation of Commissar Zhou and section chief Wu of the forced labor camp, the "management body" persecutes Dafa practitioners recklessly and without restraint.

The so-called "guarantee detaining" personnel are indeed a group of hatchet men and vicious people selected from the criminal inmates in each team. Their main duty is to assist the guards to monitor Dafa practitioners 24 hours, on a one-on-one basis. In order to further escalate the persecution against practitioners, these people always stayed with the practitioners all day long. Whoever was cruelest or beat practitioners the most viciously, or tortured them most severely would get released early, with a big reduction in his term. Otherwise, they would be punished by having their terms extended. The officials of the forced labor camp called a meeting every evening and put more pressure on the prisoners. Driven by their personal interest and evilness, these people can do anything. On top of that, there were monitoring sentries for practitioners. They are three to five steps apart, 24 hours in rotation. They deprived practitioners of all personal freedoms, including the right to talk and use the toilet at night. The process of everything practitioners did, every moment of everyday, and every one of their expressions, motions and eye movements were all recoded in detail and kept as a reference. Sometimes the monitoring sentries also directly took part in the brutal beatings. The "guarantee detaining" team and the monitoring sentries need only make one call and the regular police officers and the specially trained police officers would arrive right away.

Dafa practitioners are kind, honest, and good people. They are people from all walks of life. They fulfill their duty to society. They are from varying social statuses, professions and education levels. In the Strict Control Team, about half of them had a formal education or college education. Their average age was only about thirty-five years old. There were fathers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters grouped together. Practitioners in the Strict Control Team are like sheep that were sent to a den of wolves. The Strict Control Team is a dark den of evil forces that carry out the most brutal and inhuman persecution against practitioners. Here, they have enforced a "military control," which is fully isolated and separated from the outside world. They did not perform labor work. Instead, the amount of physical training, direct and indirect physical punishment and mental pressure all reached the extreme. It was far beyond the endurance required of the farming team. To use the words of Team Chief Zhang, "The purpose of establishing the Strict Control Team was to carry out 'Forced control' and 'Forced education' of practitioners. Para-military types, specially trained police and the 'guarantee detaining staff' forcibly carried out the abuse.

The forced labor camp used these so-called military training methods to abuse practitioner's bodies. For example, one day it was 38 degrees Celsius [a hot summer day]. All practitioners had to wear a thick cotton uniform, called a "school uniform," and run at medium high speed in the morning. At the same time they were forced to shout slogans or sing revolutionary songs, this lasted about one hour. The special team carried out this "training." In the morning, three-hours of bootcamp style training was carried out. This physical training was also called "exercising to the limit". If an old-age or physically weak person couldn't keep up, the police officers would torture them or drag them into the torture room and beat them brutally. At noon they ate lunch under the burning sun. They had to sit or stand in military posture to read or recite rules and regulations. The specially trained police and other police monitored and controlled the process. Three hours of forced brainwashing was carried out in the afternoon. In the evening, practitioners were subject to further abuse, physical punishments, and brutal beatings. In fact, during the day's activities practitioners could experience violence at any moment. The specially trained officers and regular police carried these out until very late at night. These kinds of control measures went on for more than 15 hours a day. Practitioners went through this kind of difficulty on a daily basis. In addition, all the activities were done in unison and there was no single moment to relax. Even when sitting, the body muscles were not allowed to relax. It was all meant to torture and abuse practitioners. For instance, it was not allowed to use the toilet for more than three minutes. If someone ate slower, he would not be permitted to eat anymore. They kept every practitioner at the limit of their endurance. It's indeed aimed to break down and completely destroy practitioners, physically and mentally. Many practitioners were tortured nearly to death many times. They were marched into the torture room, but were carried out and left lying in the hospital. How many practitioners were beaten and became disabled in the so-called "Strict Control Team?" They endured the evil force's so-called "test" and persecution to the limit of their capability.

Forced "Education" and forced brainwashing mainly included explaining or reciting the legal articles rules, and regulations. They were forced to read material that slandered Falun Gong, promoted atheism, denounced capitalism and promoted communist revolutionary heroes. The scoundrels never allowed practitioners to talk. If they did talk, they would be brutally beaten. They also forced practitioners to sit in a military posture for a long time. They didn't dare to take Zhuan Falun or a whole chapter out from the book. Instead, they quoted out of context and recklessly concocted stories in order to mislead people. They fabricated absurd "logical" reasoning, slandered and libeled Dafa and Teacher and heaped groundless accusations on Teacher and Dafa. However, they could not offer any convincing evidence.

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