The Outrages of the Shanhaiguan Detention Center in Hebei Province

By a Falun Dafa practitioner in Mainland China

(Clearwisdom.net) The Shanhaiguan Detention Center (also known as the Qinhuangdao City Third Detention Center) is a facility that illegally detains and persecutes Falun Dafa practitioners. Over the past several years, the center has continuously conducted inhuman torture of Dafa practitioners.

As soon as Falun Dafa practitioners are sent there, the center illegally and forcibly does a body search, takes pictures, takes finger and palm prints, then conducts brainwashing and forces practitioners to do hard labor. The rooms where Dafa practitioners are detained are damp and dark. The air is turbid. In the summer, the rooms are hot and muggy and are infested with mosquitoes. In the winter, there are leaks in the doors and windows and the rooms are dark and cold. Practitioners are not allowed to take showers throughout the year. Painful and itching scabies covers many practitioners' bodies. The center also watches Dafa practitioners around the clock, noting their every word and action. Director Zhang Haiqin (male) once watched a women's cell through the window when they were bathing in the summer. He does not have any basic morality at all.

Moreover, the food provided by the center is very poor. The standard meal costs less than 3 yuan per day [the monthly salary of an average urban worker is about 500 yuan], but the center overcharges board expenses at 10 yuan per day. During 2000 and 2001, the detention center detained Dafa practitioners continually. The number of detained practitioners reached up to 60 at the high point and was at least 20 to 30 persons on average. The shortest detention term is one month. Most practitioners were detained for an extended term of 2 to 6 months. Some were detained for more than 6 months. Many practitioners were repeatedly detained. The record was seven times. Adding it all together over several years, the center has wasted several hundred man-years of productivity. How much money did the center extort from practitioners and their families during these years?

In the detention center, there is no guarantee of personal safety for a Dafa practitioner. At any time, practitioners can be abused, threatened, bullied, punished, beaten or even brutally tortured at the hands of the guards. The vicious means include:

• "Big Hanging Up": The victim's hands are handcuffed and the body is hung up. The person who is hung up is in extreme pain. Sweat falls from their bodies like rain and the two hands become totally numb. This is a serious situation where their hands may be disabled.

• Hanging Up with Rope: One is bound and hung up with a rope that pulls the body up and down as they move. One loses consciousness after several movements. Some practitioners are hung like this for as long as 5 hours, which causes severe pain.

• Da-Bei-Kao: One hand is pulled over the shoulder to the back, the other hand is twisted behind the back near the waist. The hands are handcuffed together and a bottle or board is inserted between the arms and back, which tightens the handcuffs against the skin and causes bleeding. This torture causes intense pain.

• The upper body is stripped of clothing and the practitioner is whipped with a belt dipped in cold water. In this serious situation, because the practitioner is badly mutilated, the skin and flesh may fall off when touched. Even female practitioners are subjected to this torture, and sometimes they insert a "bit" in a practitioner's mouth so she can't eat.

• Use of twine to tie up the whole body and then pulling it very tight. This torture causes the person to feel unbearable pain, and breathing becomes very difficult; the whole body becomes black and blue, leaving many scars.

• Burning with lighters and cigarette butts.

• Sleep deprivation for extended periods (days).

• Detention in an iron cage.

• Detention in a cold room for several days, sometimes for more than 20 days.

• Punching and kicking; beating the head until unconscious; slapping the face until one's face becomes swollen; hitting the face with a stick; beating the thighs until they are black and purple and the practitioner is no longer able to walk.

• Punishing practitioners with extended periods of forced standing, including standing in a bow-shape while wearing handcuffs; forcing practitioners to kneel, while putting a stick on their lower legs and then having two people step on it.

• Putting dirty rags in a practitioner's mouth.

• Beating the soles of the feet until swollen to the extent that a practitioner can no longer walk.

Many Falun Dafa practitioners have suffered from at least one of these brutal torture techniques. The guards don't even spare older women over 50 years of age. After suffering from the torture, some practitioners have scars that do not disappear for years; some have headaches and insomnia for a long time, while others were at the gate of death. The guards asked Dafa practitioners' families to pay emergency medical expenses. One practitioner, who contracted pulmonary tuberculosis during detention, was quickly released, because the guards were afraid that they would have to take responsibility for his communicable disease. The practitioner lost consciousness for several hours when he returned home, but the authorities only compensated the family 5,000 yuan for "getting this thing over in a hurry." These vicious actions are shocking and despicable, and are condemned by people of conscience.

The main perpetrators include:

The Director of the Shanhaiguan Detention Center, Zhang Haiqin.

Policemen Wang Yongheng, Wang hongbin, Zhao Baoxiang (who has already redeployed to the District Branch of the Police Department), Fu Zhuo.

Telephone number of the Shanhaiguan Detention Center: 86-335-5021427

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2004/3/12/69757.html

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