Do Chinese Labor Camps Treat People "Humanely," As in the Show Put On at Masanjia?

I am a (female) Falun Gong practitioner. Since China began persecuting Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, I have been abducted and detained by the Chinese public security officers on numerous occasions and have also experienced many types of tortures, simply for appealing in Beijing. Since escaping from the detention center, I have been homeless until now.

Public Security Officers in Beijing force feed practitioners even if they are not on a hunger strike -- their intention was to torture us

On May 13, 2000, I was brutally beaten by officers from the Tiananmen Police Branch. Seven or eight officers encircled me, then kicked and punched me. I was deprived of using the toilet for 12 hours, and was detained in Beijing for that evening. In the 13^th Segment of Changping County Public Security Bureau, four policewomen stripped off all of my clothes. They beat me, dragged me by my hair and banged my head against the floor, then repeatedly struck my face and chest with leather boots until I lost consciousnessness.

They often chose to torture Falun Gong practitioners after 10 o'clock in the evening. They brought practitioners, who had gone to appeal, to a sealed "solitary" cell and tortured them one at a time. Many times, I heard fellow practitioners next door screaming from pain. For the entire ten days that I was detained in the 13^th Segment, they did not give me any necessities. I had to use my own toothbrush, toilet tissue, underwear, etc. They didn't even give me any blankets. They routinely tortured us every two to three days. One time, they tied me to a bed and inserted a plastic tube through one of my nostrils, all the way into my stomach. Then they stirred the tube continuously. On another occasion, they escorted me to a mental hospital for this tube-inserting treatment. Although I was not on a hunger strike at that time, they still used this method, which is usually reserved for hunger strikers, just to torture me.

Southern Detention Center: Police force inmates to commit violence in order to reduce their prison terms. Practitioners forced to make toys for export in sweatshops

In June 2000, I was transferred to a detention center in Southern China. At this detention center, the police ordered a drug-trafficker who was facing a possible death sentence to beat me. The inmate was forced to carry out the police order and beat me violently because he was desperate to reduce his sentence. I banged on the iron door and screamed loudly to appeal to the warden. Upon seeing the wounds on my face and body, the warden said that the wounds must have been caused by self-abuse, or by attempting to commit suicide.

In the workshop of this detention center, I was forced to do handicraft assembly work for more than ten hours a day. The work included making toys for export, assembling light bulbs for holiday celebrations (the final package had Korean characters on it), etc.

Before any inspection by superiors, they reorganize the visiting site to create a false impression

In that Southern Detention Center, we normally ate food that was usually rotten or contained rat droppings and flies, etc. Whenever there was a visitor, they would transfer us out of the center. When they were informed that a superior would be coming to investigate, they would clean up the place, remove the sweatshop, and transfer the sweatshop workers beforehand, in order to create a false impression and satisfy the propaganda needs of the government.

Brainwashing and Mental Torture

In July, I was abducted to join a "Reform and Reeducation Class." Several groups of staff members were assigned to brainwash me each day. Each group had five to six people. This "Reformation Task Force" was drawn from the Legislative Department, Public Security Office, Political Legislative Association, [party name omitted] Party Academy, and other government organizations. For 24 hours a day, they threatened me, cursed me, and forced me to watch videos defaming Falun Dafa. There were only five minutes each day when I was allowed to take a walk in the lobby, under the surveillance of security guards. Such continuous "brainwashing" reformation took place in a totally isolated environment. It lasted for 15 days, during which I was forced to watch the videos nonstop for several days and nights in a row, and was forbidden from sleeping. It was a total mental torture.

Masanjia would not be an exception

Upon reading the media report on Chinese officials admitting foreign reporters to visit Masanjia Labor Camp, I concluded that the officials were lying again. All the media had seen was an illusion of life in the labor camp, specially fabricated by the Jiang Zemin government. It is completely opposite from the actual experience of detained Falun Gong practitioners like me. They performed a magician's hat trick; and no truth was revealed.

Media interviews should be free from interference, and spontaneously conducted under any circumstances, and visits to specific people, for specific reasons, should be allowed. The media should be able to conduct interviews on any occasion and be able to interview any person for any reason that they choose. For example, if reporters were to request to interview Teng Chunyan or Chen Zixiu's daughter, Zhang Xueling, would Jiang Zemin allow that? Why was the Tiananmen self-immolation video that was taped by foreign reporters confiscated? Why was I not allowed to meet with a lawyer or a reporter when I was abducted or when I was beaten?

Everyone knows that the Jiang Zemin government is always lying. Such prearranged circumstances for the visiting foreign reporters were part of the scheme to utilize the foreign media to cover up the atrocities committed by the Public Security system and to reduce the international condemnation of China's human rights record. Truth cannot be hidden by such flimsy deception. I believe that any reporter with a righteous mind and the freedom to conduct an independent analysis would follow the rule of reporting the news truthfully. They would not be misled by the Chinese Government leadership's propaganda.
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2001/5/24/11415.html

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