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A Survivor's Testimony: Another Vicious Scene in the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp By a Practitioner from China (Clear wisdom.net) In October 1999, I was in one of the first groups of
practitioners to be sent to the Second Brigade of the Second Women's Division of
the Masanjia Forced Labour Camp. The term for the so-called labour education was
one year. Because I practiced the exercises in the camp, the guards intensified
their persecution. I was forced to do very heavy manual labour (working on an
assembly line sewing cotton padded clothes for the army), and I was not allowed
to have proper rest. At the time, the weather was very cold and I was not given
enough to eat. Worse still, I could not read the Dafa books for a long time, so
I was under very severe pressure. However, with "Truthfulness, Compassion,
Forbearance" in my heart, I managed to survive this unexpected difficult period
in my life. One evening, an auntie [a form of address for a woman of one's parents
generation] was screaming and yelling in the corridor. She was said to have
a mental disorder. Practitioners who were held together with her said that she
was a normal healthy woman when she first arrived there. Later on she said she
missed her family very much and wanted to go home. A normal healthy woman like
her was abused until she suffered a mental breakdown. When I went to the toilet,
I saw her lying on the ice-cold cement floor in the corridor, tied up with rope.
It was in between autumn and winter at the time. Prisoners who were serving
their labour education terms guarded her. After May 2000 when I was transferred
to the First Brigade of the Second Women's Division, I did not hear anything
more about this auntie. During my stay in the Second Brigade, I was forced to attend brainwashing
sessions, where I was attacked from all sides and beaten with electric batons.
The labour camp resorted to the tactic of having several people take turns to
torture me. Under the severe pressure I yielded to the evil, but at the same
time I felt very disappointed to myself. One day, by chance, I met Su Juzhen, a
Falun Dafa practitioner that I knew. She told me that we should under no
circumstances turn against our Teacher and Dafa. I knew that she had suffered
from severe electric shocks and other forms of corporal punishment. I felt
ashamed for my cowardice, so I finally gathered up my courage and wrote a
statement declaring everything I did under pressure that ran counter to Dafa was
null and void. Therefore, the evil Brigade Leader reprimanded me every day, and
asked me to curse our Teacher, openly reproached me, forbade others to talk to
me and ordered everyone to keep watch over me. At that time I really felt that a single day seemed like a year. I was forced
to stand for long periods of time in a position called "riding the horse" [a
position where the person has to squat down with legs wide apart as in
riding a horse. The position quickly exhausts a person when held for long
periods of time], my clothes were soaked with sweat and whenever I
fell down I was forced to get up and do it again. When other people were having
a break, the officers forced me to "study" political ideology. The Brigade
Leader had also threatened to send me to the solitary confinement cell. Finally,
my term in the labour camp was arbitrarily extended for another three months.
However, a good thing was that I was able to read Teacher's new articles. Under
great pressure, my memory had brought my latent energy into full play and I was
able to maintain a pure and calm heart. I knew that it was the result of the
power of Dafa and strength given to me by our merciful Teacher. One day the Brigade Leader asked me to visit Su Juzhen. I found that she
could not smile and could not speak. She wore no expression at all, her eyes
were staring without any movement and her pupils were round with no reaction
whatsoever. I greeted her and there was no answer. I touched her but she did not
respond. It seemed that she did not know me. Her whole body was very feeble and
traces of blood were visible on her face. There were black and red dots on the
backs of her hands, which were the scars from electric shocks. I knew Auntie Su
was a mentally healthy person, so the Brigade Leader must have forced her to
take some kind of drugs. I recalled that it was early in the morning, and I was
still in bed when I heard Su Juzhen's blood-curdling scream. I did not know how
long she had not had any sleep because of the corporal punishment and torture. I
could not help but to have tears well up in my eyes. I remembered that she
seemed to be crippled from the way she walked. Apparently she was hurt somewhere
in her legs. It was confirmed later that the beatings and long-time squatting
caused her serious injury. One day Su Juzhen smiled at me when we met, and it
was such a bright smile. I knew that she had overcome the evil, so I felt happy
for her. After she was transferred to Dabei Prison in Shenyang City, Liaoning
Province, I lost touch with her. When my sentence extension of three months was over, the labour camp declared
that my term would be extended indefinitely for still not giving up my beliefs!
I would be either kept in the labour camp for further observation or be
transferred to Dabei Prison or to Northwest China. My heart was not moved
because no matter where I end up, I would be a noble and righteous Dafa
practitioner. At that time the 2001 Chinese New Year was around the corner. One
day the Brigade Leader said he wanted to talk to me, but when I went downstairs
I was put into a car where there were already three other practitioners. The
four of us were driven to a hospital and taken to the psychiatric department. A
doctor asked me a few questions and then said, "You refuse to be reformed, and
you are different from others." I was then maliciously declared as having
schizophrenia and the drugs prescribed for me cost me 489 Yuan (about a month's
salary for a worker). I repeatedly explained to the doctor that I had no illness
and refused to buy or take the prescribed drugs, but it was to no avail. This
was because we were denied all of our rights, and I did not even have the right
to arrange for money to be sent in by my family. Once I wanted to give my money
to a practitioner who had financial difficulties but the request was refused. In
other cases, Falun Dafa practitioners were falsely diagnosed as having
melancholia or as being manic-depressive. The prisoners serving in the labour camp forced me to take medicine. When I
was reasoning with them, they said they were simply carrying out orders from the
Brigade Leader. The Brigade Leader ordered these prisoners to watch me to insure
that I take it. When I refused, two prisoners forced me to lie on my back. Then
one of them stopped my nose with his fingers and the other poured the medicine
down my throat. Sometimes when I spit out the medicine, it would be all over my
hair and clothes. Every time they finished pouring the medicine down my throat,
they would force me to stay in bed for half an hour. That was twice daily, once
in the morning and once in the evening. They said that they would continue to do
this until I had some "good sense." While taking that medicine I lost the desire to eat and did not feel hungry.
Also, I was easily startled. Whenever someone called my name, I would feel my
heart jump and start racing. I always felt very tired, unsteady and could not
concentrate. However, I had a very sober mind and good memory. At the end of the
year after going through all kinds of channels, my mother finally managed to
come to see me. She said she went to see a lot of officials and even went on her
knees in front of one leader before she was granted the chance to see me. One
day in the fourth month of my extended term, I was informed that my parents came
to pick me up to receive medical treatment. Later on I learned that among those fellow women practitioners who served
their terms together with me, the staunchest ones were sent to Dabei Prison,
some had been confined in special cells and still others had their terms
extended. The male division was dismantled, and male Dafa practitioners were
transferred to other places. Some officials denied that the forced labor camp
ever held male practitioners. Fellow practitioner Zou Guirong, after being
transferred from place to place, was finally tortured to death in a prison in
Fushun City, Liaoning Province. Fellow practitioner Jiang Wei suffered a mental
collapse from the extreme pressure and torture. Some other practitioners walked
out of the forced labour camp nobly and righteously, and have joined the mighty
current of Fa-rectification and are saving sentient beings. Kind-hearted people all over the world, please help the Falun Dafa
practitioners who are being persecuted so harshly. Let justice be upheld and the
evil have no place to hide. Let the world have more peace and truthfulness, less
terror and lies! Posting date: 9/29/2002 |