News and Events from around the World -- November 5, 2006

Issued by Clearwisdom Net

Content

  • The Slave Labor of Falun Gong Practitioners in Shandong Province's 1st Forced Labor Camp

  • The Persecution Perpetrated by the Police in Chaoyang District, Beijing



  • The Slave Labor of Falun Gong Practitioners in Shandong Province's 1st Forced Labor Camp

    Since July 1999, when the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, Shandong Province's 1st Forced Labor Camp (popularly known as Jinan City's Jiangshuiquan Forced Labor Camp) has spared no effort in carrying out various persecution efforts. One of the methods used is to make prisoners put in long hours of hard labor.

    From 2002 to 2003, one of the tasks in the labor camp was to stick labels onto medicine packages. The labels were printed by Jinan City's Tianyi Printing Company. (Formerly called the Donggang Company, it is known to the outside world as a company that produces high-class non-carbon paper.) Labels must be affixed both inside and outside the package. The contents are "Beijing's Pressure Lowering No. 0" produced by Beijing's Shuanghe Medicine, Ltd.

    Practitioners in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Groups of the labor camp must stick the "Shuanghe" label on the packages of "Beijing's Pressure Lowering No. 0." The medicine boxes are closely packaged in a bigger paper box and delivered to the labor camp. The paper boxes come in two sizes. The big box contains 2,000 medicine boxes, which are placed in two layers. The smaller box can hold 1,000 medicine boxes. In order to make more profits, the labor camp usually has the larger-sized boxes delivered.

    Practitioners from the 1st, 2nd, and the 3rd Groups are each forced to finish three to four boxes each day. Young practitioners can complete eleven boxes at most in a day. In other words, everyone has to put labels on 6,000-8,000 medicine boxes; sometimes, even over 20,000 boxes.

    Approximate working hours are 7:30 to 11:30 a.m., 12 to 6 p.m., and 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and even 9 or 10 p.m. Practitioners have to do 12 to13 hours of high-intensity labor everyday. Long hours of labor causes extreme pain in the back, shoulders, and hands, and particularly in the neck area. The neck becomes so numb it cannot move.

    Guards from the labor camp cooperate with a young man named Wang, who is assigned by the Jinan City's Tianyi Printing Company. They gave strict requirements for the labeling process. Usually, a company's label is stuck on the assigned spot in an appropriate position. But Wang demanded that the label be put on the box in a very particular and specific position, not allowing even a little crookedness. He required that the label be centered, with a specific distance to top, bottom, left, and right. Many people cannot achieve that degree of exactitude, and the labels are often crooked or the distances not right. In those cases, it is considered a wasted product. The laborer will either be bullied by the guards or be ordered to take the unqualified products back to his or her cell and redo them after the regular day's work is done. Very often, they work till 11 or midnight, and they still need to start another load of work the next day.

    The guards don't ease off even on older women. Those who are young and quick with their hands don't escape constant monitoring and harassment. A young female college student from the 2nd Group is quick with her hands. Everyday she has to finish more than ten boxes. One day, for some reason, she only completed six boxes. The guards ordered a "collaborator" named Su Fenghua to question her. Su asked, "With quick hands like yours, how come you finished less than the average person?" One time, fewer labels were delivered. The guards ordered some quick hands to come and do them. One guard, Xu Ruiju, pointed to the seven or eight boxes by the table and said to the college student, "These boxes are just for you."

    The 2nd Group guard, Cao Dongyan, is in charge of production. She walks around and does inspections. Falun Gong practitioners are forced to work long hours. Everyday they are in an extremely stressful state. If anyone doesn't meet the quota or slacks off a little bit, she will suffer officer Cao Dongyan's wrath. Humiliation and verbal abuse become an everyday thing. Often someone faints in the production room. Practitioners who operate the sewing machine often accidentally have the machine needles punch through their fingers. In addition, one doesn't know when Cao Dongyan's hoarse and hysterical yelling will begin.

    Behind every business deal between the forced labor camp and outside companies, prisoners' blood and tears are exchanged.


    The Persecution Perpetrated by the Police in Chaoyang District, Beijing

    On September 11 and 12 of 2006, Ms. Li Lianna and her family members, who live in Fangcaodi, Chaoyang District were illegally arrested. We have no further information regarding Ms. Li Lianna, her husband Mr. Zhang, or her son Zhang Xiaoyong, who are all Falun Falun Gong practitioners. The police arrested one of them the first time, and returned a second time for the other two members of the family.

    During the same week, a group of police from Hujialou Police Station in Chaoyang District, Beijing broke into Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Chen Shuying's home and illegally arrested her. Chen, who is over 60 years old, was once sent to prison in 2004. Throughout that period of time in the Beijing Women's Labor Camp, she continually clarified the truth to all the people she met there and refused to cooperate with the evil. She was freed in July 2006. Before her health recovered, the police came again. The policemen harassed her several times at her home before they finally took her away again the fourth time.

    The police usually turn off the practitioners' power at their homes and then knock down the door. Some other police stations have also sent policemen to harass local Falun Gong practitioners. It was said that this was because there were a lot of truth-clarifying fliers found in the area on August 25.