Written by a practitioner in China

Written on April 15, 2003

I was unlawfully detained and sent to a forced labor camp because I resolutely practice Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong). I personally experienced and witnessed how the evil people there persecuted Dafa practitioners.

In order to achieve their objective of persecuting Dafa practitioners, authorities from the Beijing Police Department and Labor Camp Administration Bureau secretly set up a Transfer Office in Tuanhe Labor Camp specifically to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The policewomen I saw at the Transfer Office were all specially trained in torture methods and good at using electric batons. Immediately after Falun Gong practitioners were secretly detained here, criminals would search practitioners while policewomen would stand watch with their electric batons in hand. Whenever they didn't like you, they would shock you with electric batons. When practitioners were found carrying Falun Dafa books or articles, policewomen would shock them and criminals would curse and beat them together at the same time. After being searched, practitioners were forced to stand in the blazing heat of the summer sun, causing them to get sunburned. Practitioners were not permitted to go inside until late evening, and even after they were brought inside, they were not allowed to sit on chairs or beds but were forced to stand. Some practitioners were forced to stand for seven or eight days.

I was forced to stand for four days and my feet even became swollen from standing. After that, my swollen feet didn't recover for more than 3 weeks. There were criminals taking turns watching over Falun Gong practitioners 24 hours a day. They didn't allow practitioners to talk, communicate in any way, or even make casual movements, nor were practitioners allowed to smile at each other. Because police saw me smile at another practitioner, I was forced to squat down in a torture position for five hours. There was not any freedom for Falun Gong practitioners there. However, those real criminals who actually broke the law could freely talk and walk around. Falun Gong practitioners were not allowed to raise their heads to look at police or even at other practitioners when they went to buy food or use the toilet, nor were they allowed to look at other rooms. If any practitioner raised her head and looked in a direction she was not supposed to, policewomen would immediately shout fiercely and then criminals would hit the practitioner's head. Every day, practitioners were given only two minutes to use the toilet, wash their faces, and brush their teeth, and during that time they would usually be beaten and cursed at by criminals. Practitioners had to go to the bathroom and return on time. Even if they didn't get a chance to use the toilet, practitioners still had to go back and had to wait to use the toilet until the next time.

Even in very hot weather, Dafa practitioners could only get a small amount of water every day. Water was supplied once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and at those times, each room of eight people was allowed only two basins of water. Practitioners were not allowed to take showers. They were not allowed to wash their bodies when they washed their faces, nor could they wash their clothes. Some practitioners secretly washed their underwear when they washed their face. If they were caught doing so by criminals or policewomen, the "light punishment" that practitioners received would be either to squat on a piece of square brick, be forced to remain perfectly still, or be forced to stand facing a wall with their nose touching the wall. The "heavy punishment" was that everyone in the same room as that practitioner was not allowed to wash. Criminals here conspired with policewomen and some criminals received rewards from police because they followed their orders to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The quality of their food was improved, or they would be reported to higher authorities for early release from the forced labor camp.

An elderly Falun Gong practitioner from a Beijing suburb asked to practice the exercises and went on a hunger strike to protest her unlawful detention and persecution. Policewomen asked criminals to tie her to a chair force-feed her. The cries of the old lady as she resisted the force-feeding were heartbreaking. Seeing fellow practitioners being persecuted, some other practitioners also started hunger strikes to ask for their right to practice the exercises, and police responded quickly by shocking them with electric batons. In order to cover up their dirty deeds, policewomen took practitioners to a room with the door and windows tightly shut. After closing the door, they would ask you if you still wanted to practice the exercises. If you said yes, some policewomen would pin you to the ground and keep shocking you with electric batons. Because I declared that I wanted to practice the exercises, policewomen fiercely grabbed my hair, held me down, and then shocked my neck and armpits with three electric batons. When I still expressed that I wanted to practice my exercises, they increased the torture to using five electric batons.

Policewomen held down some practitioners and then inserted electric batons under practitioners' arms, between their legs or breasts, shocking their genitals, etc. in order to mask the wounds. During the time when I was detained in the Transfer Office, two practitioners were severely tortured because they asked to practice the exercises. They were shocked to the point of losing consciousness, and when they awoke they could not walk. The police were afraid that their evil actions would be exposed, so they carried the practitioners to criminals' cells and didn't let those practitioners come back until they could walk again. One time, police held a meeting for Falun Gong practitioners. After police gave a speech, they ordered everyone to applaud. Because the applause was not very loud, policewomen forced practitioners to squat down in a torture position for a long time after they were brought back to their rooms. Because the Tuanhe Transfer Office detained a lot of Falun Gong practitioners, a small room that could only hold eight people was used to detain more than a dozen people. Some practitioners even had to sleep under the beds. The smell in the room was foul because the weather was hot and there were too many people crowded into one room and practitioners were not allowed to take showers or wash their clothes.

December is winter in Beijing and very cold, but police still didn't allow any rooms to close their doors. They forced practitioners to work more than twelve hours every day wrapping chopsticks for use in restaurants. Some practitioners' feet were frozen and frostbitten because police didn't allow them to close the doors. The existence of the Transfer Office itself is evidence of the persecution of Falun Gong, and the grotesque actions of policewomen at the Transfer Office are countless.

Sending practitioners to the Tuanhe Transfer Office is just the first step toward sending them to Xin'an Labor Camp. Some practitioners were brought to the labor camp with injuries they had sustained at the Transfer Office. On the way to Xin'an Labor Camp, policewomen would handcuff two practitioners together and force them to kneel down in the van facing the back of the van. Police did not allow practitioners to raise their heads so as not to let people outside see them. The van looked empty from outside, and the kind-hearted people on the street could not see how the police persecuted Falun Gong practitioners. Some police cars would lead the way in the front and some cars were escorting from behind.

Xin'an Labor Camp is another place where they persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Policewomen organized evil people to surround, attack and torture practitioners. If practitioners didn't give up practicing Falun Gong, they were not allowed to sleep and were forced to read materials slandering Falun Gong. Practitioners had to stand facing a wall and were not allowed to sleep until close to the time to get up in the morning. Practitioners would then be made to get up right after they lied down. Sometimes, because practitioners refused to give up practicing, policewomen would incite drug addicts to beat them, or they would send practitioners to a special "training room" for 24 hour a day monitoring. In the basement, policewomen could use any method they wanted to torture practitioners at will. Since people could not enter the training room freely, no outsider could find out what was going on there. If Falun Gong practitioners were caught practicing the exercises in the training room, the monitoring staff would call policewomen over to maliciously punish them. Because no one could see them, the police shocked practitioners' faces and mouths with electric batons until their faces became swollen and deformed. If practitioners were still resolute, police would assign someone to watch them closely, and they would also extend the time period of illegal forced labor.

Because they spared no effort in persecuting Falun Gong, some police officers were promoted and thus marketed to the police in Beijing their "expertise" regarding how to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Police proclaim to the outside world that Falun Gong practitioners are living a good life in labor camps and that "everyone has a potted flower and a pet gold fish." In fact, those fish were brought by Falun Gong practitioners' families because police ordered them to do so when they came to visit practitioners. Police wanted to use such things to cover their brutal treatment of Falun Gong practitioners.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg of the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in the Tuanhe Transfer Office and Xin'an Labor Camp.

Posting date: 4/29/2003
Original article date: 4/29/2003
Category: Eye Witness Accounts
Translated on 4/10/2003
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/4/15/48429.html

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