By Gong Chengxi, a practitioner from Mainland China

(Clearwisdom.net) When Wu Jun and I were on hunger strike, a director from the management division of the Labor Education Bureau of Beijing came to inspect the labor camp. He angrily confronted me. Within two days, the Tuanhe Labor Camp and Dispatching Division started to force-feed us. On June 10, inmates carried me into a small room in the training brigade. A guard with the last name of Shen from the Dispatching Division and a strong inmate came to the room to force-feed me. The Assistant Director of the Tuanhe Labor Camp Zhuang Xuhong, guard Liu Jinbiao, prison doctor Xiao Zheng, five or six other guards, and several inmates (including Li Daiyi) were already in the room, standing around the bed. Several inmates lifted me up and held me down on the bed. They tightly tied me to the bed with a rope. Several people held my legs, arms, and chest. The prison doctor Xiao Zheng listened to my heart with a stethoscope and said, "He is fine." Then, somebody pinched my nose. The inmate from the dispatching division violently pressed on my cheeks with his fists to force me to open my mouth. Another person started to pry open my teeth. Amidst the acute and stifling pain, I felt a fluid fill my mouth. It was extremely painful. When a slit was pried open between my teeth, they immediately put a steel spoon between my teeth and started to pour fluid into my mouth. My mouth was filled. Because I struggled to breathe with my nose, the fluid went into my trachea. Since my nose was also pinched, I was suffocating and my mind was going blank. In the afternoon, guard Liu Jinbiao instructed inmates to force-feed me again in the courtyard. A guard from the education division came and videotaped the entire process of forced-feeding. After forced-feeding, my cheeks were swollen and injured for over a month.

Before and after the forced-feeding, I asked the director of the labor camp, Zhuang Xuhong, the following questions, "Why did they start forced-feeding me without discussing with me about the incident where people were beaten in the second brigade? Why didn't they allow practitioners to practice the Falun Gong exercises? Why did they adopt such brutal means for forced-feeding?" He said, "There is nothing to talk about. This is using 'the Party compassion' on you." He tried to force me to write a guarantee letter indicating that I would reject Falun Dafa. I refused. Two or three days later, general inmates Song Wanjun, Xu Zheng, Wang Zheng, and Huang Yingtao were sent by policeman Liu Jinbiao to watch me. They suddenly shut the door and windows. They started to curse Falun Gong for no reason in front of me. They wrote statements defaming Falun Gong on paper streamers and fastened the paper streamers to my body, including my buttocks. They abused me and tried to provoke me. They grabbed my hands, which were tied together, and tried to make me write the guarantee letter. I shouted, "No, no!" which irritated policeman Xu Jianhua in the "Intensive Training Unit". I asked him to stop the inmates from committing crimes. Xu said, "I don't know you. What do you want me for?" Actually, in the past, he had always been responsible for carrying out the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners. Then, Xu left. Song Wanjun and other inmates became even more violent. They started to write defamatory words on my body and my feet with a ballpoint pen. They stabbed the pen with force into my arches and the space between my thumb and index fingers. They smeared my fingers with fingerprinting ink, which could only be found in the police office, and forced me to press my fingerprints on the paper strips. They tormented me like this for hours. On the same day or the day after, inmate Zhang Jianlin was on duty. He started to verbally abuse me just after he entered the room. He slapped me hard on my cheeks, punched me in the chin, and twisted my head. In the next several days, he beat me every day. I was tied to a bed. Every time he abused me he would tear apart my pants and underwear and sexually abuse me. Because the weather was hot and I was not permitted to take a bath for a long time, after he tore apart my pants and underwear, the smell of my body attracted swarms of flies that crawled around my private areas. The inmates and guards saw what happened but showed no sympathy. When I was tortured on the bed, I was not allowed to buy regular food and other daily necessities and I was given only coarse bread and pickles, even though I had become very frail from the hunger strike and being tied to the bed. In addition, they often deprived me of sleep and forced me to listen to propaganda broadcasts that defamed Falun Gong.

September 4, 2001 was the tenth day I was taken to the confinement room and the day of punishment after three months of training. On that day, prison guard Liu Jinbiao asked me to write a "summary about the training." I wrote, "The fingerprinting ink and the stamp with the picture of Falun Gong's founder on it, which were used by inmate Song Wanjun to torture me, can only be found in the office of the prison police and the education division. How could a regular inmate obtain such 'forbidden goods'?" Liu Jinbiao immediately tore the "summary" apart after he read it. He shouted at me, "Damn you!"

From the end of July to the beginning of September 2001, I was detained in a metal cage in the training division. In the training division, three other Falun Gong practitioners and I were forced to sit on wooden planks holding our knees every day from morning to bedtime except for breaks for meals and going to the bathroom. Everyday, we were given food with little nutritional value that consisted of coarse bread, which was hard to swallow, pickles and a few boiled vegetables, and tap water. We were often dragged to the guards' office for brainwashing. We were forced to watch videotapes defaming Falun Gong, and they tried to make us write reports about our understanding of the brainwashing. We were frequently beaten or scolded for resisting their attempts to force us to renounce our belief, or threatened with violence. The pressure was immense. During the detention, I received a letter from my family. "Intensive Training Unit" guards Liu Jinbiao, Xu Jianhua, and Zhang Yijun not only opened the letter without my consent, they even threatened to read the letter in front of all the inmates. They often opened and inspected the letters of Falun Gong practitioners, and monitored phone conversations of Falun practitioners with their families. They treated Falun Gong books containing the teachings of Falun Gong principles, messages Falun Gong practitioners exchanged, and their diaries as "forbidden goods." Every few days, the guards from the security division would come to search for such things. If any were found, they would be confiscated as a light punishment. The heavy punishment included an extension of detention time, and being sent to the "Intensive Training Unit". On several occasions, when the guards came to conduct a body search, they tried to humiliate me by forcing me to take off my underwear in front of other people.

Guards Liu Jinbiao and Zhang Yijun often dragged me alone into their office to put pressure on me so that I would renounce my belief, and tried to force me to copy and write materials slandering Falun Gong. They threatened me, "We will fry you with electricity." One time, a guard with an electric baton in his hand forced us to stand under the burning sun for a long time without moving. I fainted and fell to the ground. The guard made fun of me and slandered Falun Gong. Inmate Li Daiyi poured water over my body. The guards constantly applied pressure on us and tried to force us to give up our beliefs so that they could fill their goal of forcing practitioners to renounce their belief and in return receive large cash rewards. Any guard who was successful in getting one Falun Gong practitioner to quit their practice of Falun Gong, would not only receive a special reward of about 1,000 yuan (almost one month's salary), but would also accumulate political capital for future promotion.

In the notoriously brutal Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, it was very common that the police used regular inmates to help them abuse and persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Inmates were used to commit crimes or take actions that the police wanted but could not do openly because of their job and their fear of having to take responsibility for committing crimes. Any inmate who acted on the police' behalf was promised a premature release, a few months before their term ended. By contrast, if any Falun Gong practitioner practiced their exercises or even talked, the inmate on duty would be reprimanded, or even worse. For example, inmate Li Daiyi was sent to forced labor for three years for patronizing a brothel. Since he was sentenced to serve time in the forced labor camp, he had actively participated in brutally beating and torturing Falun Gong practitioners, used the cruelest methods to torture many Falun Gong practitioners; he had used ropes to tie numerous practitioners, and used a metal lock to hit Falun Gong practitioner Yang Shuqiang's head, beat and injured practitioner Liu Xingdu's chest, as well as used his knee to bruise my ribs. For such brutalities he was promoted from a class head to the brigade head in the "Intensive Training Unit", and was given many awards by the forced labor camp and the labor camp bureau. Finally, he was released with a half-year reduction in his sentence.

In July 2001, dozens of Falun Gong practitioners' valuables, which they had been required to hand over to the forced labor camp for safe keeping, were privately sold to make money for the authorities. The culprit was Training Division Captain Liu Jinbiao. We reported this incident to the deputy labor camp chief Zhuang Xuhong, who promised he would resolve it in a week. However, even when I left the labor camp on December 19, 2002, it was still not yet resolved.

From September to November 2001, I was constantly brainwashed in No. 5 and No. 7 Divisions. On November 4, 2001, Wei Rutan, Qin Wei and I, about six or seven people in all, were sent to a building in the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, which is used solely to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their belief using any means. The building has six or seven rooms on the each floor. There was only one bed board placed on the floor in each room. We were separately detained in the rooms, put under tremendous pressure and subjected to forced brainwashing.

In order to completely destroy our faith, prevent us from seeing each other and create a high pressure and terrifying environment to completely deprive us of our freedom, the Education Section Head Wei and the responsible police used newspapers to block the windows of every door, didn't allow us to see each other, or to look outside. Even when using the toilet we had to go separately. We had to sit on small plastic child's chairs and were subjected to endless propaganda and lies. A police officer was there in the room for monitoring day and at night. We were forbidden from standing at will or walking around, not to mention leaving the room; nor was it allowed to have any private activities. When going to the bathroom for washing and to the toilet, there was a group of monitoring personnel following closely at every step. The bathroom and the washing room were installed with monitoring equipment. At night, there was a police and a prisoner in every room to watch us sleep.

Because the environment was so highly enclosed, there was no way for other prisoners in the labor camp and the outside world to know the actual situation. People from the outside who came to visit and interview certain people in the Tuanhe Labor Camp couldn't enter the "Intensive Training Unit" or the building where we were being detained. Brainwashing was only the method, the final goal of the forced labor camp, to force us to write the documents to give up the practice and actively defame our practice of Falun Gong. They also videotaped the process, in order to deceive other Falun Gong practitioners and the media inside and outside of China, to display their so-called "Educate, Transform, and Save" policy; to cover up the inside truth of the brutal persecution. When they discovered brainwashing didn't work, they didn't allow us to sleep, physically punished us, beat, and electrically shocked us.

Quite a few police officers used multiple high-voltage electric batons to shock Wei Rutan for a whole night and warned him not to tell other people. His stomach and back were full of injuries from the electric shocking. That day, Wei was forced to write a "transformation" statement against his will, and was forced to read it and while the police videotaped him. On the same day, Education Section Heads Jiang Haiquan and Wang Tingting, as well as No.2 Division Captain Liu Bing, entered my room and asked me what my thoughts were. I remained silent. Jiang Haiquan and Liu Bing twisted my arms, intended to write dirty words that slandered Falun Gong on my body. I didn't cooperate. Liu Bing then started to loudly verbally abuse me.

Another time, police Yue Qingjin slandered Falun Gong, and I refused to go along with him. He came up and used his arms to choke my neck tightly and dragged me backward, making it difficult for me to breathe. His attack injured me in several places.

On Dec. 16, 2001, practitioner Qin Wei's term had expired after the term was initially extended for half a year. A few days before that, Qin Wei suddenly disappeared. During that period late night, we often heard the sound of kicking, beating and cursing coming from upstairs. Around December 14, one prisoner who was responsible for watching him told me that a few police officers had ordered Qin Wei to write statements against his will. Qin Wei was under constant torment.

Labor camp police used a whole string of torture methods to assault people's minds and torment people's bodies, to force Falun Gong practitioners to write statements to renounce their belief and then videotape them while they were forced to write those statements, in order to brainwash more people, to deceive the public and the international community. In order to avoid leaving any evidence of their persecution, the police had been more and more covert in their methods. For example, before they would electrically shock a practitioner, they would tie him on a bed board and blindfold him, not allowing him to see the police officers who were torturing him, at the same time increasing the feeling of terror. They used cloth to gag his mouth; didn't allow him to make noise, so other people couldn't hear what was going on. It was forbidden to have any prisoners on the site and to intentionally shock practitioners' private parts.

December 19, 2001 was the day my unlawful forced labor term had expired. Around December 16, two police officers came to question me about some things relating to my situation. I kept silent. Police officer Yi asked me if I wanted to renounce my belief or not. I said "No." He used this as an excuse to torture me and to find "evidence" to extend my term.

In order to find excuses to extend my term, that evening police officer Liu Guoxi specifically organized a "group study" for me, he ordered us to read a propaganda book defaming Falun Gong. I refused to read it, and the study ended. Later, they used the excuse of "resisting education study" to extend my sentence by ten more months. All the people who were reading the book at that site were forced to make a statement of proof that I had refused the study and refused to renounce my belief.

All of the steadfast Falun Gong practitioners held in the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp were not released after their sentences expired. Each time practitioners' sentences expired, they were arbitrarily extended by the camp officials for at least half a year. In late May of 2002, the deputy director of Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp Li Aimin publicly announced in a general meeting to all detainees, "If you do not transform, you should not even think about leaving this forced labor camp!"

On the night of December 16, Liu Guoxi ordered me to attend a brainwashing session. About two or three hours later, chief Liao of the Education Section along with policeman Liu Bing came and handcuffed me. They then sent me to the "Intensive Training Unit" for brainwashing. There, I was brainwashed for three months.

During the night of December 19, 5 or 6 inmates lifted me and took me to the "Intensive Training Unit" office. The deputy chief of the 5^th Brigade and another policeman told me that my detention period had just been extended for another 10 months. Thus, I was psychologically traumatized once again. Their reasons for extending my detention period were: 1. Refusal to denounce Falun Gong, 2. My hunger strike to protest the persecution on May 27, 2001, and 3. Rejection of the fabricated materials on December 16, 2001. After reading the statement, the police asked for my signature. I refused to sign the document, and I did not utter a word. Chief Liu Jinbiao of the "Intensive Training Unit" and police Xu Jianhua then ordered the guards to detain me in a confinement cell. Upon entering the cell, I saw a few ropes on a bedboard. Liu Jinbiao intended to tie me up. I asked of him, "I have neither extreme opinions nor criminal intentions. Why do you want to tie me up?" Xu Jianhua then demanded, "Did you write the guarantee statement?" Suddenly, inmate Li Daiyi tripped me, pressed me down on the bedboard, and said to Liu Jinbiao, "It is not your business." Upon saying that, he tightly tied me to the bedboard in front of Liu Jinbiao and a few other inmates. Then, I was once again continously tied up at all times for the next two weeks. I was not allowed to purchase any food or necessities, so I could only eat steamed buns with pickles every day which provided little nutrition. Also, the guards only permitted me to use the toilet once a day. The inmates tied up my shoulders with two ropes, and one person pulled the ropes on each side. When I used the toilet, they would tie the two ropes to the water pipe in the room. This seriously insulted my personal dignity. All of these things were done to me based on the instuctions of the policemen of the "Intensive Training Unit".

Around December 23, 2001, when inmate Li Daiyi was tying me up again, he also forced me to kneel down. I was lying on the bedboard at the time, and it resulted in the injury of my right leg and the right part of my chest, both of which then hurt for nearly a month. I reported this matter to chief Jiang Haiquan and other policemen of the Education Section, but I received no response.

According to the regulations of the "Intensive Training Unit", we were allowed to purchase daily necessities such as toilet paper and additional food to provide some nutrition. However, the guards withheld this privilege from Falun Gong practitioners to make daily life unbearable for them, and to compel them to stop holding hunger strikes and to renounce the belief. All of our personal belongings and even our rights were arbitrarily taken away because we practiced Falun Gong.

After being detained in the "Intensive Training Unit" for three months, I was transferred to the 7^th brigade on March 15, 2002. This brigade is where the drug addicts are kept, and officials of the forced labor camp intentionally left me with those addicts as a means of isolation and to cause further hardship to me.

On August 27, 2002, I wrote a litigation statement and submitted it to Beijing Daxing District People's Court. In this I sued policeman Jiang Wenlai, Ni Zhenxiong and Wang Hua of Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp 2^nd brigade for their illegal treatment, including their use of sleep deprivation, their instigation of other inmates to verbally abuse and beat me and their own use of physical and verbal abuse against me between the dates of March 1, 2001 and May 27, 2001. The police of the 7^th brigade supposedly handed in the lawsuit statement for me, but I have never received a reply from a court regarding this letter.

On September 19, 2002, I saw, through the window of the 7^th brigade, 3^rd brigade policeman Liu Guoxi and others abuse three Falun Gong practitioners including Wei Rutan in the exercise yard at 6 a.m. Liu Guoxi ordered the practitioners to squat down, then stand up repeatedly for a long time, and he did not stop even when the practitioners were too tired to stand up. He forced the three practitioners to do push-ups endlessly in front of him, and he then made them to run laps around the exercise yard without rest until noon.

On September 23, I wrote once again on Liu Guoxi's actions and submitted a prosecution letter to the Tuanhe Procuratorate. I asked the police of the 7^th brigade to transfer it for me. A few days later, the police told me that they had already handed in my letter to the Administrative Section according to procedures. However, I have to this day received no response from the relevant department. Once in either late September or early October of 2002, a department head of the Bureau of Forced Labor Camp administrative office came to talk to me at the 7^th brigade. I told him about the criminal behaviors of Liu Guoxi, but he found many excuses to put off my urgent requests for justice.

I was detained for two years, and I suffered countless instances of mistreatment and torture. These mistreatment severely injured both my body and my spirit. While still in detention, I tried again to sue them for the acts of persecution they committed against me. On December 16 ,2002, I wrote three prosecution letters to the Supreme People's Procuratorate to report the criminal actions of the Beijing Forced Labor Camp Management Committee, the Beijing Reeducation Through Labor Personnel Dispatching Department and Beijing Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp against me, and I handed these letters to the deputy director of the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp Li Aimin according to the regulations of the forced labor camp. However, on December 19, 2002, before I was to be relased, the police confiscated my remaining prosecution letters, copies of my previous litigation statements and all of my personal litigation materials with the excuse of acting according to "the regulations of the forced labor camp." So far, I have received no response from any of the authorities to whom I sent my prosecution letters and litigation statements. However, they have also not retaliated against me for filing those lawsuits. In 2000, Falun Gong practitioner Li Chunyuan filed a case against Jiang in which Mr. Li stated that Jiang overrides the law by persecuting Falun Gong. Not long afterwards, he was arrested on December 28, 2000, and he was accused of "disturbing social order" and sentenced to one and a half years in a forced labor camp. In the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, police abused him and detained him in the Intensive Training Unit's iron cage for at least half a year. He had to sit on a board in one posture from early morning to the evening, and he was not allowed to go out or to talk. Also, he could only eat stale and hard buns with pickles every day. Aside from placing him in prison, the authorities did not respond in any way to his prosecution letters or his litigation statements.

October 19, 2002 was the due date of the 10-month extension of my illegal detention. In the morning the police told me that they would release me that day. I waited until nightfall, when finally a police officer asked me to gather my belongings and wait in the captain's office. Soon, two police officers from the Security Team came and tied me to the chair. Zhang Fuchao then said to me, "Because you refuse to renounce Falun Gong, we have decided to extend your term for another two months and send you to the Intensive Training Unit right away." My heart sank when I heard the startling announcement. Zhang Fuchao did not even have any official notification of the extension, and forcibly dragged me toward the door. I protested loudly, "On what grounds are you extending my term?" To prevent others from hearing me, several police officers from the Security Team removed my glasses and gagged me with a rag. Then several police officers hauled me downstairs by my head and limbs to the Intensive Training Unit. As soon as we got there, someone put his arm around my neck and pulled me into a "Small Cell," which almost choked me to death. Once inside the "Small Cell," I was tightly fixed to a bed board that they had prepared in advance.

Five days later, I went on a hunger strike and was force-fed with a tube forcefully inserted. [The purpose of force-feeding is never to nourish, but rather to punish practitioners and to cause so much pain that they will renounce Falun Gong practice. It is the number one cause of deaths of Falun Gong practitioners.] Once again I was subjected to the excruciating pain for protesting the persecution. During my hunger strike, the deputy director of Beijing Labor Education Bureau Dai Jianhai, and the deputy director of Tuanhe Labor Camp Li Aimin came to inspect the small cells. When they passed my cell, I shouted, "Why did you extend my term illegally?" They did not respond.

Another time the director of Tuanhe Labor Camp Zhang Jingsheng came to the small cell. I asked him why the labor camp tortured Falun Gong practitioners. He said blatantly, "There's no torture." During the four months I spent in Team Seven, I witnessed almost daily that the policemen Liu Guoxi, Bai Zhongyin and others from Brigade Three, as well as Education Section Chief Yang Jinpeng, policemen Zhang and Yang Bin from Brigade Five brutally tortured practitioners who refused to be transformed. For instance, they forced practitioners to run laps for several hours non-stop, and then for half a day again in the afternoon or next day. As a result, many practitioners were exhausted and could hardly move.

On national holidays, when other detainees were taking a break, policeman Yang Bin from Brigade Five still forced practitioners Wang Fangpu and Liu Litao to run laps in the pouring rain. He also forced determined practitioners to "stand in the military posture." He deliberately forced them to stand in the grassy area in the summer evenings, where there were lots of mosquitoes and other insects, and not allowing them to move at all. They had to stand for at least one hour at a time. In the drill ground, he also forced them to kneel down on one knee, and not allowing them to get up for long periods of time or change knees. He also forced practitioners to put their hands behind their backs, and walk laps in the exercise yard while in a squatting position. Sometimes he also humiliated them by forcing them to "squat down and get up" hundreds of times non-stop.

On the morning of August 15, 2002, during morning exercise, policeman Liu Guoxi slapped a practitioner in his face, struck and kicked him to the ground in front of several hundred detainees. Director Zhang Jingsheng witnessed the brutality but did nothing. They often deprived practitioners of sleep. It was not uncommon for practitioners not to be allowed to sleep for over 10 days. They also shocked practitioners with high-voltage electric batons. The police usually dragged practitioners to a place where there was no one around, gagged them, tied them up and placed them on a bed. Then the police would shock them with several electric batons simultaneously.

On December 5, 2002, while interrogating me, a policeman from the administrative division told me in a harsh tone, "Don't even think about leaving the labor camp without being transformed."

On November 28, 2003, the Party Secretary of Beijing Politics and Law University Feng Shiyong and others came to Tuanhe Labor Camp trying to deliver the "thorough transformation as precondition" for the resumption of my study when my term in the labor camp was up. In early 2003, the university announced that I was expelled.

On December 19, 2002, Tuanhe Labor Camp temporarily released me. However, before my release, the "610 Office" notified my school, my local police station, and my family to come to the labor camp and jointly signed an agreement stipulating that they disallow me to continue my practice, and implement strict surveillance on me.

Around the Chinese New Year of 2003, I learned from my family that my school had expelled me from school since I refused to give up my cultivation practice. They also sent my residence card back to my hometown in Xinjiang Province. As a determined practitioner who refused to be transformed, and who did not have a school to bail me out should I be arrested, I could be subjected to the authorities' various persecutory measures that would take away my personal liberty, including brainwashing or worse. Recently I learned that the Beijing police had delivered an order to the local police in Xingjiang, asking them to collect information about me, keep track of me and prepare to arrest me and sentence me to prison.

On December 19, 2002, just before my release, the "610 Office" forced my father to sign an illegal document agreeing that if I continued practice, my family would be implicated. That night, the section chief of the administration division and a policeman from the "Intensive Training Unit", leaders from the students' association and security department of my school, as well as the school district police escorted my father and me to a train bound for my hometown. The section chief asked the police on the train to monitor me along the way. The district police questioned my father and also recorded contact information of my local police and our home phone. After I returned home, the police called my home immediately, frightening my parents badly.

The surveillance and hounding of Falun Gong practitioners is pervasive and reaches every corner of China. Although at present I am out of the labor camp, at any moment a warrant could be issued for my arrest, and once again I would be subjected to persecution.

Posting date: 3/1/2004
Original article date: 2/29/2004
Category: Eye Witness Accounts
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/2/2/66124.html

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