April 18, 2003

(Clearwisdom.net)

708 female Falun Dafa practitioners are currently being illegally held at the Balizhuang Labor Camp in Baoding City, Hebei Province.

Labor camp officials impose inhumane living conditions, personal humiliation, and numerous forms of torture including extended forced labor to force practitioners to renounce their belief in "Truth-Compassion-Tolerance." They incite criminal inmates to disallow practitioners to sleep, perform beatings and force practitioners to curse Dafa and Teacher. As part of a comprehensive brainwashing program, the guards and criminal inmates formed a "strict-monitoring" team.

Practitioner Yuan Guihua is from Fuping County, Hebei Province. In 2002, she was illegally sentenced to three years in Balizhuang Labor Camp for distributing Dafa truth materials. She firmly believes in Dafa and Teacher and refuses to cooperate with the persecution imposed on her. She conducted a hunger strike to protest the inhuman treatment she was forced to receive. As a result, she was sent to the "strict-monitoring" team. Prison guards tied her onto a bed, shocked her with high voltage electric batons, prohibited her from using the bathroom, and force-fed her on numerous occasions. Furthermore, the guards incited the criminal inmates to strip her and ruthlessly beat her with a thick bamboo stick. As a result of the torture, Yuan Guihua's entire body becam swollen and her right arm became numb from the handcuffs. Two months into the hunger strike, she vomited blood and fell unconscious. Fearing that they would be held responsible if she died, the prison guards released her.

Practitioner Xiao Qian from Shijiazhuang City is sixteen years old. She was sent to the "strict-monitoring" team because she refused to give up her belief in Dafa. Another practitioner, Ma Zhanmei, retracted all words she said against Dafa under coercion, declaring them to be null and void. As a result, she was tortured further in the "strict-monitoring" team for an extended period.

Practitioners such as Bai Yun, Wang Zongxian, and Zhang Guiting are still being held in the "strict-monitoring" team.

There are two team heads, one with the last name Li, and another named Zhang Guohong. They are responsible for directing inmates to torture practitioners using various vicious means. Practitioners imprisoned at Balizhuang Labor Camp are not released unless they give up their belief, even though they complete their term. Instead they will be transferred to the "610 Office" (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) to be tortured further until they renounce their belief.

We hope that every practitioner who reads this news will send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil factors in other dimensions so that the detained practitioners can be released to return to the stream of Fa rectification.