By a Falun Dafa practitioner from Jilin Province

(Clearwisdom.net) Ms. Ma Chunmei, 34, is a Falun Dafa practitioner from Anshi Township, Liaoyuan City, Jilin Province. She was detained illegally for explaining the truth about Falun Dafa. She went to Beijing to appeal to the government on behalf of Falun Dafa in September 1999. She was returned home, illegally detained, and forced to pay 1,500 yuan in bail. Only three days after her release, the police arrested her again and confiscated her bail. She was then illegally detained in the Liaoyuan City Detention Center for 70 days and later sentenced to one and a half years in the Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp.

In the labor camp, practitioners were forced to work 16 to 17 hours a day while being verbally abused and cursed. Yet, they took advantage of the limited rest periods to practice the exercises. The guards incited the criminal inmates to beat Ma Chunmei by telling them Ma was hurting their chances of getting bonus money. The criminal inmates gagged her with a rag and tied her up with rope before they beat her. As a result, both her thumbs lost feeling, and she was wounded all over.

Soon, the forced labor camp administrators issued orders to "transform" all practitioners by forcing them to renounce their belief. From then on, shouts, curses, cries of misery, and crackling from the electric batons were the only sounds that could be heard. The odor of scorched flesh filled the air. All kinds of barbarous tortures took place. Practitioners were tortured until they were on the verge of mental collapse.

Eventually, Ma Chunmei's family bailed her out, but she was arrested again and sentenced to three years of labor camp within less than six months. In addition, her house was ransacked.

This time she was deprived of sleep and segregated in a small storehouse. She had to listen to propaganda, false promises, and lies and received daily beatings. Some practitioners such as Meng Yanxi and Zhao Lianhua from Yanbian City were tortured until they were on the verge of death and had to be carried from the labor camp. Ma Chunmei was on the verge of collapse. She felt dizzy, nauseated, and weak. Many practitioners were tortured until their hands and feet became crippled.

Labor camp officials also blocked all inside news from going to the outside and took revenge on those who dared to tell the inside news to outside people. Guard Jin Lihua from Division 3 claimed, "The Party can do whatever they like." Ma Chunmei decided to appeal to the labor camp administrators. When this became known, the guards assigned people to watch her. Having no alternative, she loudly talked about the transgressions of the guards in front of several thousand people in the canteen. The guards were shocked and Director Ma and Chief Chang lured her out of the canteen and hit her violently. They pulled out clumps of her hair and choked her until she was breathless.

The guards tied her to the bed for one afternoon. The pain was so severe she vomited and lost consciousness. The guards Sun Jia and Xi Guirong shackled her to the "death penalty bed" for three days and nights. When they became afraid that she might die, the guards promised never to harm her again. Soon after, however, they threw away her clothes and extended her term by 50 days. In addition, they sowed discord between her and her family by spreading lies. Her husband had a traffic accident because he was under so much pressure. He believed the rumors spread by the labor camp officials and found an excuse to divorce her. He even committed perjury to frame Falun Gong. He ended up hating Falun Gong and Ma Chunmei because he believed what the guards told him. Presiding Judge Tang and Judge Tian Guiying from the Anshi Township Court forced them to divorce and took away all of Ma Chunmei's property. A formerly happy family was broken up. Their young child would wake up crying for mother.

Currently Ma Chunmei has been deprived of the right to stay with her family, has nowhere to take shelter, and no means of earning a livelihood. On the Chinese New Year holiday, her mother bought some food and went to the labor camp to see her daughter. The guards went so far as to push the 60-year-old woman to the ground, scattering the fruits she had brought. When she tried to reason with the supervisors at the camp, the guards concocted an excuse to make the old lady leave the labor camp. Instead of seeing her daughter, she became so aggravated that she had to stay in bed several days.

The physical and mental trauma, combined with too much work, finally caused Ma Chunmei's collapse. The guard Wang Sen and Director Xi Guirong dragged her to the hospital while cursing her and calling her a "damn rascal."

The labor camp changed the package for inferior medicine pills produced by Beijing Tongrentang Company to pass them off as a qualified product. They also turned toilet paper into table napkins without a disinfection procedure. Since the workload was huge, some of the inmates became sick from exhaustion. Some of them no longer had the strength to wash their hands and faces after each workday.

Whenever supervisors came to inspect the facilities, the administrators simply transferred the Falun Dafa practitioners to the guards' rooms or restrooms. Although working days were officially listed as being 6 to 7 hours long, they actually lasted more than 10 hours. During official visits, the canteen was also told to prepare good food to allow the labor camp managers to cover up their crimes.

Posting date: 10/5/2004
Original article date: 10/5/2004
Category: Eyewitness Accounts
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/9/19/84523.html

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