(Clearwisdom.net) The Tangshan Jidong Prison is located in Fengnan, Tangshan City, Hebei Province. It is in a remote location hidden amidst miles of salt ponds. Communist Party officials take advantage of this unique geography and the tight information blockade to continue persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners there.

Every division of the Jidong Prison has solitary confinement cells, which are two meters in length, one meter in width, and have only a small skylight on the ceiling. The walls of these cells are padded with foam to prevent distraught detainees from committing suicide. The better cells have very dirty mats, others have nothing. All cells are damp and musty.

Solitary confinement in these cells is nerve-racking. Some inmates have nervous breakdowns, and may howl day and night.

These solitary confinement cells are the first thing that greets illegally sentenced Dafa practitioners. Each practitioner is locked up for at least 15 days, and sometimes up to several months, until he gives up Falun Dafa. Detained practitioners are forced to stand for over ten hours every day, causing extreme swelling in the legs. Wardens deprive practitioners of sleep, and as soon as a practitioner closes their eyes, wardens order inmates to prick them with needles. When a practitioner is allowed to sleep for a short time, he can only lie on the damp dirty mat or the floor. Inmates often kick and hit Dafa practitioners with sticks and triangular belts. Wardens directly order inmates to torture practitioners in whatever ways they wish. The more brutally an inmate tortures practitioners, the bigger his sentence reduction is.

Prison authorities also force Dafa practitioners to perform slave labor in the salt-abstraction ponds. Salt is poisonous before abstraction: birds that drink the brine die quickly. Under the baking summer sun, the brine in the ponds can reach up to 50^oC (122^oF). Dafa practitioners are forced to work barefooted in the ponds under such conditions. In addition, practitioners have to use iron rakes that weigh over 125 lb to rake up the salt. Crystallized salt is harder to rake, so wardens tie bricks to the rakes to greatly increase their weight and force.

There is not a single tree or shade near the salt ponds, so the baking sun makes the pond feels like a stream cooker. In the winter, the extremely cold brine chills practitioners to the bones. When practitioners' boots wear out, prison authorities do not issue new pairs. The ice-cold brine water soaks the boots and socks. When blisters or open wounds on the feet or legs are soaked in brine, they fester and sometimes rot into big holes. Even under such conditions, Dafa practitioners are not allowed to quit working. Some practitioners had their feet amputated because of brine-related injuries.

Despite the arduous slave labor, Dafa practitioners are only scantily fed and with the lowest quality wheat flour. Dirty potatoes are only rinsed once before stewing. After a meal, one can see dirt and grains of sand in the bottom of the bowls. Only two meals are served on Saturdays and Sundays. The prison store sells goods at 2 to 3 times the market price.

Posting date: 9/3/2007
Original article date: 9/3/2007
Category: Eyewitness Accounts
Translated on 8/25/2007
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2007/8/21/161246.html

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