Ms. Wu Guifang's Account of the Suffering She Endured in Gaoyang Forced Labor Camp
Compiled according to Ms. Wu Guifang's oral account
(Clearwisdom.net) Introduction Ms. Wu Guifang, in her 50's, is from Chicheng County, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei
Province. She was abducted and twice taken to the Gaoyang Forced Labor Camp,
where she experienced extremely cruel torture and brainwashing. In mid-August of
2004, she was tortured to the brink of death. Afraid of being held responsible,
the labor camp authorities released her on medical parole. The two years of
torture turned her into skin and bones. She was extremely weak and pale. She
appears to be a different person compared to two years ago, when she was a
healthy woman. Many people cannot even recognize her anymore. The Gaoyang Forced Labor Camp is located in Baoding City in central Hebei
Province. The labor camp is mainly used for illegal detention of Falun Gong
practitioners from northern Hebei Province and the Beijing area. This labor camp is notorious for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. The
labor camp uses many vicious methods to torture people, such as burying them
alive, using snakes to bite the practitioners, cutting their flesh with
scissors, and burning their heads. The labor camp guards are brutal when beating
the practitioners. They withhold the practitioners' allowances, as they only
give them only 60 Yuan even though they are entitled to160 Yuan. They do not
provide hot water. The practitioners are only given dry, stale and tough to chew
steamed buns. No other food is provided. The practitioners are only given a
small amount of soup. They are forced to do very heavy labor with an
overextended work schedule, and they are sometimes only allowed four to five
hours of sleep. To make extra money, the guards force the practitioners to work
in the factories nearby as cheap labor. The following was compiled according to
Ms. Wu Guifang's oral account. 1. My first time being sent to forced labor Chicheng County in Hebei Province is one of those counties where the
persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is the most severe in the whole province
or even in the whole country. I lived in Dongmao Township. The Township Party
Committee Secretary Su You has done all kinds of evil things in the persecution.
Su's plotting was the reason for my being sentenced to forced labor twice. In 2000, I was sent to the Gaoyang Forced Labor Camp for the first time.
Division chief Wang slapped me on my face over 60 times because I refused to
answer roll call. A few days before the 2001 New Year, guard Ma Li stripped me
naked, cuffed me onto a heater radiator, and then used an electric baton to
shock me in my mouth. Another time, division chief Hu woke me up while I was
sound asleep and ordered me to write a Guarantee Statement to give up practicing
Falun Gong. When I refused, Hu then used an electric baton to shock me on my
insteps. During the 2001 Chinese Spring Festival, division chief Yang Zemin attempted
to force me to give up Falun Gong. Yang took me into a room and forced me to
stand against the wall, with my hands laid flat on a half-round table in front
of me. Guard Zang Haili and another guard turned on the electric batons, which
were emitting sparks, and then ordered me to hold the batons. On top of their
beating me, they also wanted me to shock myself. I refused. The two guards then
started to shock the backs of my hands. They also pulled up the collar of my
clothes and shocked my neck. While shocking, they kept moving the batons back
and forth, from my chin to my throat. They also shocked me in my mouth and moved
the baton violently in my mouth. As a result, my mouth became swollen right
away, and my lips were burned so badly that the oil came out from flesh. There
was also a lot of yellow fluid coming out of my mouth. They ordered me to open
up my mouth to attempt to shock my tongue. After torturing me for over two hours and seeing that I would not give in,
they moved me to a bigger office, where they took off my shoes and socks. They
ordered someone to hold on to my waist and have my legs straightened, then
several people including division chief Hu, division chief Yang, team leader Ye,
Zang Haili, Duan Guanghui and others took turns to shock the tops and bottoms of
my feet. The electric batons kept discharging electricity to shock me. My
insteps became badly injured and a lot of yellow fluid oozed from the wounds.
Even today, there is still a walnut-sized scar on the instep of my right foot.
The electric shocks resulted in a big hole on my left ankle, which affects my
movement even today. Seeing me still refusing to give in, they used copper wire
to tie up my hands and then shocked me with electricity generated from a
hand-cranked electric telephone generator. I was tied up and could not move, and
their shocking my head caused a large clump of my hair to fall out. Every guard
who entered the cell where I was detained had the "right" to shock me.
I became the target for them to vent their anger. During the half-year alone, from January to June 2000, all the team leaders
in the Gaoyang Labor Camp, without exception, had participated in torturing me. In the last month of 2000 (lunar calendar), the guards took me out to the
field over ten times. Inside an empty room, they cuffed me in a squatting
position and left me there, exposed to the cold weather for a whole day and
night. It was so cold that my legs and feet soon became swollen from frostbite.
Once a guard took off my coat and threw it into the snow, and then used
snowballs to hit me. I lay down on the snow and could not move. A guard said,
"Why not throw her into a ditch! Then let her husband come to take her
ashes!" Later they dragged me out of the snow and cuffed me inside a room
with the window open, letting in the bone-chilling wind. Guard Wei Hongling and
her boyfriend watched me being exposed to the cold weather for a day and a
night, but I still refused to give in. A few days later, division chief Wang, Ma Li, Liu Huili and team leader Wu
handcuffed me outside, still trying to force me to give up Falun Gong. They
called in two young men to torture me. Zang Haili and his accomplices, with each
of them holding an electric baton, started to shock me on my lower back over
twenty times. Every time they shocked me, they asked me, "Do you still
practice or not?" I said, "Yes." They repeatedly shocked my lower
back and my arms . They did not stop until they shocked me about a hundred
times. My body was covered with wounds. My arms and hands were badly swollen.
Many parts of my skin were black and blue. One time when I shouted, "Falun Dafa is great!" several guards
swarmed over to cover and scratch my mouth. The scabs on my mouth were scratched
off, and that area kept bleeding. They dragged me to a big room in the factory
and handcuffed me there. During the process, the blood kept dripping all the way
on the snow-covered road. Now the scar on my lower lip is about three
centimeters in size. In January 2001, the staged act of the "Tiananmen Square
Self-Immolation" occurred. Gaoyang Forced Labor Camp repeatedly broadcast
this horrible farce. I said that Falun Gong practitioners follow
"Truth-Compassion-Tolerance" and would never commit suicide or kill
others, and that the self-immolation was a frame-up. Team leaders Ma and Ye
immediately used dirty socks to cover my mouth and two other practitioners'
mouths. They also used scotch tape to seal our mouths, and the tape was not
taken off from morning until noon. One day in February, I washed my woolen sweater and hung it on a rod to let
it air-dry. After I took it back, I found that my sweater had a strong gasoline
odor. Gasoline is not allowed in the labor camp. The inmates do not have
gasoline. It must have been the team leaders who did this. I did not wear that
sweater anymore. I wrapped it up and put it on my bed, so every day I just wore
unlined garments. I am not afraid of death, but if the guard had taken me out
and used me to stage a suicide tragedy like the "self-immolation,"
wouldn't it become an excuse for them to slander Falun Dafa and deceive people? 2. Sent to forced labor for the second time In September 2002, just before the 16th National People's
Congress, afraid that Falun Gong practitioners would go to Beijing to appeal,
the officials of Chicheng County "610 Office" in Zhangjiakou City,
Hebei Province, led more than ten people including Dongmao Township Police
Station chief Mi Changshuai, township party secretary Su You and others, came to
my home. They deceived my family by saying that they would take me to the
township government to attend an "education class." They promised to
take me back in the evening. Mr. Wu Xuyin, Ms. Wu Shouzhi, Ms. Zhang Shumei, Ms.
Qiao Lianying, Ms. Zhao Yu-e, Ms. Yan Shumei, Ms. Lu Zhenglian, Ms. Liu Shuqin,
Ms. Zhai Guihua, Ms. Zhang Yuzhen, and I, a total of eleven Falun Gong
practitioners, were taken to the Dongmao Township government. We were then sent
to the Chicheng County Detention Center. Our over a dozen Dafa practitioners
were just given a half pot of food for each meal, which was only enough for
three people to eat. We were only given one spoon. We had two meals each day and
did not have enough to eat. One day at the end of October, they ordered us to
sign our names on a document. When we asked the purpose, they said they did not
know. Later we found out that we had already been sentenced to forced labor,
although neither we nor our families were given a notification letter. On October 31, 2002, Falun Gong practitioners Wu Xuyin, Wu Shouzhi, Qiao
Lianying, Zhao Yu-e, Zhang Shumei, Liu Shuqin, Yan Shumei, Zhai Guihua, Zhang
Yuzhen, a person from Longmensuo Town and I were sent to the Gaoyang Forced
Labor Camp in the evening. When we were transferred that evening, we were told
that we were being taken back home. Most of us were sentenced to three years of
forced labor. We were told the terms of the sentence when the guards tortured us
in the labor camp. At noon on November 1, we were sent to the Gaoyang Forced Labor Camp. Mr. Wu
Xuyin was sent to the male team. Ten of us female practitioners were stripped
and our quilts were taken out and examined. We were then asked to stand in line
at the fourth floor to wait for their instructions. We were not allowed to squat
or sit down. Most of us were over 50 years old. We stood there from morning
until evening, after the guards finished their dinners. As soon as we squatted
down, the guards would punch and kick us. In the evening, more than ten guards
led by Yang Zemin, division chief Hu, Duan Guanghui, Wei Hongling's husband, Liu
Guili, Ma Li, team leader Ye, Zhang Yuan, came to a room, carrying seven to
eight electric batons. They interrogated us one by one, trying to force us to give in. After that,
they started to torture the practitioners. Several of them shocked Ms. Wu
Shouzhi and made her lose consciousness. They then grabbed her and pulled her
up, and continued the shocking. Other practitioners were not allowed to witness
the torture, so we could only hear Ms. Wu's screams. When the guards heard that
the practitioners did not give up their cultivation, they would punch and kick
the practitioners, and shocked them with electric batons. The electric batons
kept sparking. The noises from the guards' frenzied beating and kicking and the
practitioners' miserable screams filled the air. While I was detained there for the second time, the guards became even more
vicious. Two practitioners from my hometown who were sent to the labor camp at
the same time when I was sent there became mentally disoriented from the
torture. In May 2003, during the SARS epidemic, the guards took my photo. While I was
detained there the first time in 2000, the torture deformed my face. My chin was
burned and had turned black, and there were scars on my lips, so they did not
want to take the photo. The photo taken this time was used for documentation for
my previous detention during the winter. They did it this way to deceive people.
It was then already very hot in May. But when the guards took my photo, they
forced me to wear a cotton-padded coat and pants and sit in front of a fire pan.
They also covered the front of my body with a cotton-lined quilt. Division chief
Wang and Ma Li stood by me, showing an expression of being very concerned about
me. Guard Yang Zemin took the photo. I could not endure the subsequent physical and mental torture, which became
increasingly brutal, and I gave in. I wrote the "guarantee letter" to
not practice Falun Gong. After that, my life became agonizing. During the 2004
New Year, the guards ordered us to answer questions on paper, and many of us
wrote down our positive understanding of Falun Gong. Most practitioners who had been "Reformed" under the pressure of
the labor camp wrote down their solemn declarations of "determinedly
practicing cultivation in Falun Dafa." The leaders and guards of the labor
camp became exasperated, since they could not report this to their boss. They
frenziedly tortured the practitioners to vent their anger. A new round of torture started. The practitioners were tortured one by one.
The guards tied the practitioners' hands and feet with wire, and then used a
hand-cranked electric telephone to generate electricity to shock the
practitioners. The guards shocked the practitioner with several electric batons
at the same time. They took a practitioner to a field and then buried her. She
was not dug up until she was almost suffocated to death. The guards put snakes,
scorpions and geckos into the practitioner's clothes, or put these poisonous
creatures on the practitioner's body and then used electric batons to shock the
creatures. During the torture, the guards clamored, "We'll conquer all of
you in ten days." Before the 2004 Spring Festival, practitioner Liu Yuzhen, who was in the
Fifth Team, was the first one who was taken out for torture. Liu is from Qinghe
in Beijing. After the electric shocking, she could not move. In the evening, the
guards did not dare to bring her back to the Fifth Team and took her to the
Fourth Team instead. Next day she was sent to the Gaoyang Hospital for
treatment. She recovered a little after three days. Practitioner Liu Yanxiang,
who is from Tangshan City, Hebei Province was the next one to be tortured. The
guards used knives to cut her body and used a cigarette lighter to burn her
forehead. I was also tortured very badly. After the torture I had to lie on the bed for
over twenty days. One day when I recited Hongyin [a collection of
poems by Master Li], the guards carried me to the torture room in the second
floor, which had all kinds of torture implements. On the door and the wall were
the paintings that slandered Master. Drawings of human skulls were everywhere. I
was not afraid of them, demanding them to take down the paintings that slandered
Master. The guards frenziedly beat, cursed and humiliated me. The dragged me
from the second floor to the yard and then handcuffed me to a flag post. I was
left there until late in the night. Several days later the guards came to me, showing unusual politeness, and
asked me to go out with them. Inmate Wang Shaojie and another inmate who stayed
in the same cell as I did led me to the west building. Once I entered the door,
they put my hands on the door and took off my shoes and socks. Guard Wei
Hongling's husband used an electric baton to shock me on the tops and bottoms of
my feet. Wang Shaojie also took an electric baton and shocked me on my mouth,
which made my mouth very swollen. After torturing me for over one hour, they
dragged me out and handcuffed me to a post. I did not know why I was shocked,
and the guard did not tell me the reason. During that period of time, the labor camp forced us to fold handkerchiefs.
Some practitioners wrote down on paper slips how I had been tortured and then
put the slips into the handkerchiefs, hoping to send the information out and get
the public's support. The guards discovered this and made the practitioners
re-do all the handkerchiefs that had already been folded, since they were scared
that the persecution was going to be known by people outside the labor camp. As
a result, the work could not be finished in time. The guards vented all their
anger on me. One day I asked division chiefs Yang and Ma Li when the government would
redress the Falun Gong case and release all the Falun Gong practitioners. Guard
Yang Zemin ordered Wang Shaojie, Wei Hongling and others to handcuff me to the
flag post. Guard Zhao Yuan kicked me on my mouth many times. I was handcuffed
there for one day. The guards were very cruel. Every time after they finished torturing us, the
practitioners were always very weak and could not work, and had to be carried
back. Observing the long-time cruel torture, I made my determination to use my
life to resist the labor camp in their committing crimes. On May 15, I declared that I started a hunger strike, demanding the guards to
stop handcuffing and beating the practitioners, to give the labor camp detainees
the treatment that they are legally entitled to, and release all of the Falun
Gong practitioners. After the hunger strike had gone over twenty days, the
guards started to force-feed me. Twice per day, guard Wei Hongling handcuffed me
onto the bed, saying, "For whichever day you do not eat, you will be
handcuffed on that day. You will be handcuffed until you resume eating." One day in June I refused to cooperate with the force-feeding. Division chief
Wang kicked me on my left leg, and that area became black and blue and swollen.
The swollen area was as big as the opening of a bowl. Several days later, guard
Huang Bao used an electric baton to shock me on my swollen area, and as a
result, a gaping hole appeared in the swollen area and kept bleeding. Later,
that area formed a four-centimeter scar. By July, my hunger strike had already lasted over 50 days. I was extremely
weak and only skin and bones. My heart, intestines and stomach became to shut
down. Seeing this, the labor camp ordered Duan Guanghui and Li Yanji to inform
my family members and told them to come to see me. They required my family
members to persuade me to resume eating or take me out on a medical parole. My
family members took the certificate for medical parole to Dongmao Township party
secretary Su You and asked him to stamp it with an official seal. Su You
refused. My family members did not know what to do next while my condition was
becoming worse every day. My family members traveled back and forth and
experienced a lot of hardships before they finally got the seal. On August 12, my family finally got me out of the den of evil. That
afternoon, the section-level leaders in the labor camp held a meeting "to
learn new instructions from top officials." I saw that several
practitioners were taken out. Before long, I heard their cries of pain. In the
evening, two guards carried the practitioners back. Before I left, I witnessed
yet another miserable tragedy. September 17, 2004
Chinese version available at
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/9/18/84465.html
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