By Yu Ming, a Falun Dafa practitioner in China

(Clearwisdom.net) Editor's note: The author of this article, Yu Ming, had been abducted and taken to Beijing's Lugu Police Station in late October of 2003, and was later sentenced to forced labor. Since he is known in the Beijing labor camps as being steadfast in his belief in Falun Dafa, Mr. Yu is currently still being held in the "Dispatch Center." We hope that the international community will pay attention to his situation.

The "Intensive Brainwashing Team" is one of the darkest places in Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. Many practitioners are severely abused there: Wu Jun, Zhu Zhiliang, Lin Chengtao, Liu Xiao, and Zhao Xindong all suffered mental collapse due to the torture and pressure. Gong Chengxi and Wu Jun were bound to the "dead man's bed" many times. In this form of torture the whole body, from head to toe, is tightly fettered with wide strips of bed sheet to the bed board, so that the victim is unable to move at all. The victim is only allowed one bathroom visit per day. For bowel movements, two assistant guards lead the victim with a string attached to each arm, which is a great insult to human dignity. The victim has to urinate into the bed while the upper part of the body is untied.

Wide strips of cloth are not only used to tightly bind the victims, but also because it leaves no visible marks. Wu Jun was bound to the bed for as long as three consecutive months without being untied once. Gong Chengxi had been tied down for as long as two consecutive months during the hottest summer weather. Consequently, he developed a big sore on his back, which discharged pus and blood, and his flesh and skin festered. Flies fed on the wound, but the guards did not care at all.

Practitioner Wu Xiangwa was sent to the "Intensive Brainwashing Team." Policemen from Team No. 5 including Guo Jinhe, Yue Weihua, and Liu Bin, together with a policeman from the "Intensive Brainwashing Team" shocked him for several hours with four electric batons. Wu Xiangwan lost consciousness several times, and became unable to speak without stuttering for a long time. In order to evade the shocks and the great mental pressure, Wu sometimes knocked his head against the wall, causing him to pass out, while his blood flowed all over the floor. Eventually he was forced to comply with the policemen's demands. Later someone from the Beijing Bureau of Forced Labor came to investigate the case, but nothing became of the investigation. None of the policemen was held responsible for this matter.

The "Intensive Brainwashing Team" treats Falun Gong practitioners in an extremely horrible way but the media does not cover these stories.

Towards the end of 2001 I was transferred to forced labor in Team No. 6, where most of the detainees are general criminals imprisoned for theft, drug-addiction, prostitution, etc. and are termed "general detainees." From the end of 2001 to early 2002, the forced labor camp unlawfully printed unauthorized copies of the "Harry Potter" book series to make money.

It is well known that China has just joined in the WTO. Jiang's regime has promised the whole world they would crack down on pirated publications in China in order to safeguard the publishing business. However within the Bejing Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, which is part of the Chinese legal system, policemen were forcing detainees to bind the "Harry Potter" books series. The books were printed at another location. The detainees were asked to fold, sort, and bind the sheets. Then the finished books were transported to other places for publication.

I was part of Team No. 6 for over three months and the whole team was working on the books. Piles of printed sheets about a meter high could be seen everywhere in the hall and corridors of the floor where Team No. 6 was located. Teams No. 3 and 5 were working on the books as well. It was said that there was a competition among the guards to land the job for their own team. People delivered the printed sheets to the forced labor camp furtively. The vehicles used to carry the sheets looked pretty worn out. The print quality was extremely poor. The paper looked yellowish and had misprints and marks everywhere. It was obvious that they were not legally printed.

In order to get more books ready before the Chinese New Year and to sell them to students during the winter holidays, the police forced detainees to work very hard. Sometimes they worked all night. Of course, the detainees did not get any returns for working so hard, while the huge amounts of money earned by detainee labor went into the pockets of the police. This arrangement made the assistant guards furious and they deliberately damaged, messed up or removed pages while binding the books. Consequently, the quality of the books was really poor. The police cared only for the number of finished product rather than the quality and intentionally turned a deaf ear to complaints about the quality. When the books were picked up, they concealed their poor quality and were satisfied as long as nobody could detect the difference by appearance. These books are much cheaper than the officially printed ones. This is bound to have a severe impact on the profits of authorized publishers, the author's copyright, and royalties.

Whenever supervisors or inspectors came from outside the labor camp, the guards would order us to stop working right away. They would hide the sheets and books in their offices or move them to other places where the visitors wouldn't go. During the Chinese New Year, every police guard got a 1,000 Yuan bonus [500 Yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China.] while the leaders got from 2,000 to 4,000 Yuan each. None of the detainees who worked so hard were paid. We hope somebody will pass this message to the author of "Harry Potter" or the authorized publishers of the book so that an investigation can be conducted to protect both the rights and interests of the author and publishers and the detainees as well.

After several months of hard time, in mid March of 2002 I was sent to a building within the backyard of the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp for continued and intensified abuse. According to documents issued by 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.] at the time, Falun Gong practitioners in forced labor camps should not be released unless they have had a so-called "stable period" for at least three months after they are "transformed." In other words, practitioners who have written the so-called "Five Statements" (renouncing Falun Gong) must be consistent and not change their minds for at least three months before they are released. The forced labor camp signed an agreement with the Neighborhood Committees or Community Committees in different areas that the detainee was not counted as the ones that were successfully transformed if the "transformation" had lasted less than three months. Practitioners of this kind were either directly sent to brainwashing classes held in different areas upon the maturity of their forced labor terms or penalized with extended terms. Thus, at the time, for Falun Gong practitioners, the three months before their terms came to an end constituted a big test. June 30, 2002 was the last day of my term in the forced labor camp and I was right on the test.

In order to attain the so-called "transformation quota" and prevent any practitioner from leaving forced labor camps "untransformed," labor camps in different areas took a series of extremely vicious and contemptible measures to intensify the persecution.

When the forced labor term of a practitioner was drawing to an end, but the practitioner still insisted on his belief and refused to be "transformed," several policemen would forcibly detain the practitioner in a separate room of the old Tuanhe West Building and occupied by Team No. 5 before October 2001. They would strip off the practitioner's clothes, tie him to a bed or the floor, gag him with rags, and bind his mouth tightly with a piece of string to prevent him from shouting or biting off his tongue. Sometimes, they also blindfolded him to conceal the identity of the torturer. Then they used several 100,000 volt electric batons to spontaneously shock all sensitive parts of his body. If the batons ran out of power, they recharged them and continued the torture. This torture would last for hours or even days, until the practitioner could not bear it any longer. Up to a dozen electric batons were used to shock a human body! Imagine the misery of the painful muscle spasms, the burning flesh, and the shortness of breath or inability to breath due to the shocks! It feels like ten thousand arrows penetrating your body or ten thousand snakes biting your body simultaneously. In addition, the police used every possible means to block the news so that it became extremely hard for the outside to learn the truth of this brutality.

If one team had a high "transformation" rate, the team was awarded a large bonus. If a team did not attain the quota, the bonus would be deducted from the team. To reward individuals, every policeman who "transformed" a Falun Gong practitioner was awarded 1,000 Yuan. If a transformed practitioner did not acknowledge that he had been "transformed," or declared all the transformations null and void, the policeman would be fined 1,500 Yuan. Thus, the policemen do not spare any effort to viciously torment Falun Gong practitioners. Money is one of the most common incentives Jiang Zemin and his "610 Office" use to control policemen.

The west building in the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp is the same as the so-called "Conquering Building," referring to the "conquering" of practitioners. Previously, team No. 5 resided in the building, but it is now used especially for the "transformation" of unwavering Falun Dafa practitioners.

The insides differ from the "Intensive Brainwashing Team" building. Superficially, violence could not be observed, but the atmosphere inside was vicious. The building is totally blocked off from the outside. No visitors or reporters are allowed to enter. The windows and doors are covered with newspapers. People outside cannot look inside the rooms. There is nothing in the rooms but a wooden board on the floor. On the walls are slogans or posters slandering Falun Gong and its creator in extremely filthy language. There is little heating even during the bitterest winter weather. Only a thin quilt is provided for warmth. Practitioners are detained in separate rooms, along with up to five criminal detainees who completely follow the policemen's orders.

The policemen made up convenient excuses for tormenting Falun Dafa practitioners. For example, if you said you wanted to cultivate compassion, that you should look within first when conflicts occur among people, that you should not hit back when attacked, and not talk back when insulted, the vicious policemen took advantage of your attitude and intentionally found fault with, beat, swore at, insulted, and abused you, to see whether you could bear it or not. As soon as you showed the slightest dissatisfaction with their contemptible behavior, they would use it as a convenient excuse to beat you up. They said it was meant to help you cultivate "tolerance," and to help you improve.

For example, we were never allowed to take a nap at noon, but had to stay up until two or three o'clock in the morning. Sometimes we were not allowed to sleep for 24 hours in succession. This was called "Taming the Eagle." If you closed your eyes, various torture means were awaiting you. You were asked to sit with both hands on your knees, motionlessly, from morning till night, except for having meals or going to the washroom. A slight motion would be interpreted as disobedience resulting in swearing, beating or kicking. We were deliberately not provided with enough food. We were allowed to use the bathroom only once a day. Articles defaming Dafa and Teacher were deliberately read in front of us. Protests would give rise to torture because we were trying to disturb the order of the 'transformation' process. In short, they were trying all possible means to torment us.

When practitioners asked the policemen on what legal basis they violated human rights, the policemen laughed and swore at us asking: "Don't you want Truth, Compassion, Tolerance? Why don't you practice tolerance then?" This was followed by more severe torture of the practitioner who asked the question. On the whole, they simply wanted to have you abandon the principles of Truth, Compassion, Tolerance; they simply wanted you to give up these noble beliefs. To this end, the policemen were authorized to arbitrarily employ any violent or vicious means imaginable. It is really hard to talk about all of the crimes against humanity that were perpetrated in that building!

Falun Dafa practitioners seek to improve their morality, spiritual health, and purify their physical bodies. However, this noble pursuit constitutes an excuse for Jiang's Criminal Group to persecute Falun Dafa and Dafa practitioners!

I was assigned to the first room on the main floor of the "Conquering Building." Three former practitioners named Yu Shouli, Gu Zhaojiang, and Chen Hengjin in Team No. 5, who had previously been brainwashed, assisted in my "transformation." Jiang Haiquan, Assistant Director of the Educational Section, was in charge of the "transformation" process. He had already personally abused many other practitioners, including Zhao Ming, Wei Rutan, and Wu Yingchang. His hands are stained with the blood of practitioners. Liu Xincheng, Liu Guoxi, and other policemen were also involved in the transformation. The Beijing Forced Labor Bureau awarded "first prize" to these policemen for "transforming" Falun Gong practitioners. They were also on the "honor roll" published by the internal Beijing Forced Labor Reeducation Report in 2002 because of their active participation in transforming Falun Gong practitioners.

On the morning of March 18, 2002 a brutal torture was scheduled. About five policemen carried me up to the so-called "psycho-consultation room" on the second floor. The door and window had been totally covered with newspapers. The policemen could not wait, and stripped off my clothes, shoes, and socks. They tied my neck to a bed board with a rough rope. My chest, waist, arms, legs, and feet were fixed tightly with about eight strips of cloth. They also gagged my mouth with rags to prevent shouting or biting off my tongue, which could cause death. Then they tied a strip of cloth across my mouth, between my upper and lower teeth. At the same time, paper and pen were ready. They told me, "If you agree to write a statement saying that, 'Falun Gong is [...], blink your eyes. And we will stop right away!" With that, they started to frenziedly shock me with electric batons.

Jiang Haiquan shocked my head and upper part of the body; Liu Xincheng shocked my lower part and thighs; Liu Guoxi shocked especially the soles of my feet. They were using custom-made electric batons with over 100,000 volts. Tian Yu, a policeman from Team No. 5 watched by the door in case someone passed by. I lay there, unable to move at all. My ears were full of the sharp sound of electric batons, with occasional bursts of laughter from the policemen. Blue flames fluttered in the air, and the unpleasant smell of burning flesh made me sick.

The policemen became even more irrational and shocked me even more frenziedly. The sharp pain made me feel so miserable, as if thousands of knives were cutting into my muscles and heart simultaneously, and as if thousands of red hot pliers were burning every nerve carefully and simultaneously all over my body. It is hard for me to describe the misery I experienced at the time. I think it could have been no less than that in hell. I was sweating all over, but I could not move or shout. My body became stiff and rigid because of the violent shaking. The torture lasted the entire morning.

Usually, when a detainee, especially a Falun Gong practitioner, was brutally tortured, scars would be left on his body. Afraid that practitioners' family members would see the scars and ask what had happened, the forced labor camp prevented practitioners from seeing their family members. The labor camp used various excuses. For example, they would say the practitioner violated such and such a rule or regulation, and had been refused the right to meet with his family members. When my family members came asking for a meeting, Zhang Fuchao and Ren Baolin, two policemen from the Administrative Section, told my family members that, "[Name deleted] suffers from a mental disorder from practicing Falun Gong. He beats others and swears at them. He is in violation of regulations, and is not allowed to meet people for two months. We are very sympathetic with the family, but what can we do? The regulations are made by the authorities." As a result, my family members did not see me during that month. How can our simple and kind-hearted family members know or imagine the evil that occurs in the forced labor camp?

In some respects, the women's camp is an even more vicious environment than Tuanhe. The newly built women's camp was finished in March 2002. It was put into use right after it was constructed. It is said that nearly 2 billion Yuan was spent on this camp. Superficially, it looks more modern, with more beautiful landscaping and better equipment and facilities. It is much more beautiful than the Xin'an Female Labor Camp where the female practitioners were previously detained. Therefore, it creates greater confusion among people. Since a huge amount of money was invested in the camp, the persecution of female practitioners became even more secretive and skillful.

For instance, the windows in the female camp are not the same as in Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. There are no iron bars from outside but simply one layer of glass. It was officially declared to the public to be more "humanitarian," although it is not generally known to the public, or even to the female inmates, that all the window glass is bulletproof, costing nearly 1,000 Yuan per square meter. This demonstrates how much money is being spent on labor camps. Moreover, this is only a small forced labor camp. It so happened that at the end of 2002 a teenager from the Teenage Team, named Cui Hongyu, tried to escape. This teenager knocked out the window using all his strength. Consequently, the window frame and the glass were knocked out and fell to the ground from the third floor. The glass did not shatter.

As a businessman, my calculations are that Jiang's Criminal Group must be spending about one-quarter of our national income in persecuting Falun Gong every year. This money is either earned by hard toil of ordinary people or from foreign investments. What would the ordinary people and the foreign investors think if they know the truth? Are their investments really being paid pack?

I happened to meet a female practitioner named Zhou Yinhong while I was detained at the Beijing Women's Forced Labor Camp. Her term had been extended because of her unshakable belief in cultivation practice, and she told me lots of shocking inside stories.

She knew of another female practitioner named Lu Kuan whose forced labor term had been extended by ten months. Zhou Yinhong and Lu Kuan were detained together at Team No. 2 of the women's labor camp. Under the leadership of Director Zhu Xiaoli and policewoman Shi X, the director of the Administrative Section, Cheng Cui'e, the leader of Team No. 2, and other policewomen kept about ten female practitioners, including Zhou Yinhong and Lu Kuan in separate rooms shackled or bound in awkward positions. Then they instructed many female detainees imprisoned for drug-addition or prostitution to beat them up, or to drag them by their hair, knock their heads against the wall, or shock them with powerful electric batons.

To make things worse, they stripped off practitioners' clothes, and the detainees inserted toothbrushes into their vaginas, and clawed at their genitals, tearing the tissue. One female practitioner became disabled in this manner and because of that, such torture was temporarily abandoned.

Afraid of an outside investigation into this matter, the Forced Labor Bureau and the labor camp disbanded Team No. 2. Since then there has not been a Team No. 2 in the women's camp and its detained practitioners were transferred to other teams. The police covered up this matter and classified it as top secret. Later, Zhou Yinhong was transferred to Team No. 1, and Lu Kuan to the "Intensive Brainwashing Team." They are still suffering from inhumane abuse and torture. However, none of the policewomen in the women's camp were held responsible at all.

From the "610 Office," the supreme organization in charge of persecuting Falun Gong, to the Beijing Legal Bureau, Beijing Forced Labor Bureau, and the forced labor camps, there is a complete system geared towards the brainwashing and "transformation" of Falun Gong practitioners. At the Terminal Center, practitioners were generally asked to write a statement of guarantee not to practice or spread Falun Gong. The function of the Terminal Center is to make you remember that you are a forced labor detainee, and that you have to obey their disciplinary orders. Through various ways, they make you follow the regulations. The Terminal Center does not play a role in the transformation process, as they think that only when practitioners are disciplined can they be "transformed" at the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. Their job is to make sure that practitioners will not continue to practice at the forced labor camp. They first list their so-called laws, indicating the ones that you allegedly violated. Then they ask you to confess that you did in fact violate a law. Once you confessed that you had done something wrong, they ask that you should show regret about it. The next step would be to write the "statement of regret." Once you feel regretful, admitting your wrongdoings, you would then be asked to make amends and take steps to change direction. Now that you are ready to be "transformed" from "wrong" to "right," you have to write a "dissociation" statement. Writing the dissociation statement is still not enough, although they may not have urged you to write the "denunciation statement" right away. They may give you several days to think about where you are headed, i.e., whether you will be "transformed" or not. Although they give you several days to consider, they won't let you relax because they are starting to hope that you might be "transformed." However, on the surface, they begin to smile at you and not treat you as strictly as before, no longer finding faults with you, or persecuting you at every turn. From this point on, they continuously make you watch videos and read books defaming Dafa. Several days later, when your mind is totally filled with filthy and evil thoughts, you are required to write and make up the co-called denunciation. You are expected to say that you were cheated into practicing Falun Gong, and that you came to realize the [slanderous term omitted] nature of Falun Gong through re-education.

We are Chinese citizens who sincerely believe in Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance. We love our country and our families deeply. For this reason, we cannot allow the jealousy of a power-hungry clown and hooligan to continue the inhumane persecution of millions of kind-hearted people believing in Falun Dafa. Furthermore, Jiang's criminal group has spread the hatred and slander to countries outside China, and through the abuse of their power have abused foreign policies, and bribed overseas media and people from different social classes across the world. Their lies, hateful propaganda, and cheap sensationalism have fooled, polluted, and poisoned people all over the world.

We appeal to all just people internationally to urgently pay attention to the matters outlined above, and to all Falun Gong practitioners who are subject to brutal torture in China, to expose all the crimes and participants in the persecution, to bring the persecutors to justice, and to actively help end the persecution of the belief in "Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance" and the persecution of human rights.

February 12, 2004

Part 1: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/23/45389.html
Part 2: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/24/45429.html
Part 3: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/26/45356.html
Part 4: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/27/45438.html
Part 5: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/2/29/45596.html

Posting date: 3/5/2004
Original article date: 3/4/2004
Category: Eye Witness Accounts
Translated on 2/20/2004
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/2/12/66831.html

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