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The "610" Office of Wuhan City, Hubei Province Sets Up Secret Concentration Camp to Detain Falun Gong Practitioners

May 30, 2002 |  

(Clearwisdom.net)

On the bank of the Changjiang River at Yujiatou, the "610" Office in Wuhan City, Wuchang District is using a Brainwashing Class to illegally detain Falun Gong practitioners. The guard wall that surrounds the buildings is covered in barbed wire, and all windows and cell gates are strengthened with iron bars. The main iron gate in the guard wall is left closed all the time.

This is a concentration camp. The so-called "unite-educate-rescue" rhetoric won't cover up the evilness of the brainwash class. The iron barred windows and gates won't stop the eventual exposure of their cruel persecution.

1) Here, practitioners are shut in tight, closed cells without daylight or outdoor exercise. The room is so small, even worse than that of a jail house. Jail houses have 2 hours of outdoor exercise while Falun Gong practitioners are not permitted to see sunlight all day long. Some of them (including grandmothers in their 60s) have not even seen any sunlight for the entire winter season, more than 6 months.

2) Practitioners are jailed in cells alone, separated from other practitioners and are forbidden to talk among themselves through the walls. Even the jail administration staff was ordered not to talk to practitioners. This treatment is even worse than that accorded to prisoners sentenced to death.

3) Practitioners suffered severe beatings. During the Spring Festival Season of 2002, because one practitioner was talking with another fellow practitioner, the police said he was making trouble. They then shut him up and cruelly beaten him in a closed cell, and handcuffed him afterwards for several hours. The next day, he continued to talk to protest the guard's cruel physical abuse. 3 guards and 3 administrative staff closed all windows and doors and handcuffed one of his hands. Then two guards started physically attacking him. Practitioners in the next cells heard the beating and all began yelling, "Stop beating people!" The guard answered, " What the hell, I am doing this without fear of punishment all the time whether for gang leaders or the government. I'll beat you to death too." The next day, the practitioner asked for a doctor but was told that a doctor could not help. About one week later, the practitioner became ill. The staff measured his blood pressure at 40/200. Late at night around 11:00 pm, they were afraid of the practitioner dying; they sent him to a hospital and then back to detention again. A few days later, those administrative staff that had witnessed what had happened were dismissed. The guard who did the beating goes unpunished to this day.

4) Practitioners can only eat scraps of leftovers and are denied any food from relatives. Male practitioners often suffer from hunger while the staff tells the visiting relatives "They eat the same food as we do."

5) Male and female practitioners are jailed together. They are forbidden to practice the exercises or to turn off the lights when sleeping. Windows are not permitted to be covered so that male guards can spy on the female cells.

6) The "610" Office ordered "No compromise. No limit on time of detention." Currently, there are still more than 20 practitioners detained here. Some of them have been here for more than 18 months already. Among them, some were hi-jacked here after finishing their illegally sentenced labor reeducation terms because they would not give up practicing Falun Gong, like Zhou Yufen (female), Yu Ganghai, Yang Chen, Chen Yanwen (female), and others. (Zhou Yufen has been here for more than 8 months already. She was kidnapped here from a labor camp under the name of a "monitored living" program while the Chinese law says 6 months is the maximum for "monitored living.") Some of them were illegally jailed and then released to be "monitored" here (such as Liu Hong, female). Some are kidnapped directly from their homes, like Wang Qinglian, Ji Dechong, etc. Peng Weisheng (father of Peng Min, who was tortured to death) was directly transferred here this January after the end of his illegal detention term and release.

7) There is no humanitarian concern here, only cruel persecution. Practitioner Zhou Beichun was making a living by pedaling a tri-cycle. He had benefited a lot from practicing Falun Gong. On three occasions he went to appeal and was illegally detained for one year. At the end of his jail term, he was transferred here directly, and has already been here for more than 5 months. He has a mother in her seventies and a 14-year-old daughter in school. The whole family is counting on him for financial support. Liu Hong was illegally arrested out of her home by Baisha Police Station agents for no reason and without due process. She was detained here while her daughter was only one year old. Mother and baby daughter were separated. Where is the humanitarian concern?

8) Punishment for reporting illegal treatment of practitioners. In the later half of April, an official from the Municipal Police Department was inspecting the "situation" here. A practitioner reported the abuses of law enforcement officers, and their infringement upon the basic human rights of practitioners directly to the official. The official showed his discomfort and went away angry. Later, the guards would not let the practitioner meet with his visiting relatives in retaliation.

9) Liu Hong was put in tight cell for punishment only because she stopped the guard's attempted beating. On April 26, Hu from "610" Office was asking some practitioner for a talk. Practitioner Zhou Beichun told him that the detention of the practitioners was illegal and it was wrong for police to beat people. Hu yelled that the practitioners deserve the beatings and Zhou rebuked him. Hu became very angry, and then a group of thugs was about to try to kill Zhou but was stopped by Liu Hong in a different cell. Hu became angry and found Liu and insulted her. Later Liu was sent to a "strictly monitored" cell, hung up by handcuffs for the entire afternoon without food as punishment.

10) Practitioners have to pay appallingly high fees to be released. Before, in Hongxia Brainwashing Class, the "610" Office extorted practitioners of 2000 yuan per month; currently it is 900 yuan per month here or 300 to 500 yuan if the practitioner is having financial difficulty. If no fees are paid, no visit of relatives is allowed. Nowadays, there are so many layoffs. Also, the average income per person is about 500 yuan. No one can afford such expensive blackmail.

Such are the facts of the "610" Office's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners under the tight control of Jiang's regime of political scoundrels. The evidence is just too solid to be disbelieved.