Falun Dafa Minghui.org www.minghui.org PRINT

Women Practitioners are Poorly Fed, Brainwashed and Cruelly Tortured in Wanjia Forced Labor Camp, Heilongjiang Province

February 01, 2007 |  

(Clearwisdom.net) Wanjia Forced Labor Camp in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, is widely known as a notorious den of evil in the persecution of Dafa practitioners. In the past few years, the prison guards there have spared no efforts in closely following the gang of Jiang and Luo to persecute practitioners in extremely horrible and loathsome ways.

Wanjia Labor Camp, located in a village suburb of Harbin City, is composed of 13 groups. Female practitioners are held in three groups and male practitioners are held in the remaining ten groups. In this report, we will put our emphasis on exposing the persecution of the women practitioners.

The three groups holding the women are the 12th group, headed by Guo Qiuli, the 7th group, headed by Zhang Bo, and the intensive training group, which is also called the "strict discipline team." Instead of being called "group heads," the heads of the strict discipline team are titled "trainers." This group has two male trainers, Zhao Yuqing and Yao Fuchang. The heads of the three groups follow directly the orders and instigations from the head of the labor camp, Lu Zhenshan. Under the group heads are the subordinate group heads, Huo Shuping and Zhang Aihui, and jail guards Liu Baibing, Zhou Yingfan, Wang Nana, Qiu Yang, Cong Zhili, and Wang Wei. All of them have participated directly in the brutal persecution of Dafa practitioners.

Besides giving the orders to torture practitioners, the heads of the intensive training group, Zhao Yuqing and Yao Fuchang, have also directly persecuted practitioners. They have forced practitioners held in the group to listen to audio propaganda and watch videos slandering Dafa every day, again and again. They also forced them to swear with their arms lifted in the air: "My name is ____. I hereby swear to break from Falun Gong because Falun Gong is evil." They also forced them to call out abusively the name of the founder of Falun Gong, Teacher Li. Only those who followed their orders were allowed to rest, and those who resisted were punished severely for a whole night or even several days. This cursing was promoted by Xu Fengping, who turned against Dafa because of her false understandings of Dafa. Ever since 2004, practitioners have been subjected to similar mental tribulations every day, being forced to curse the name of Falun Dafa and its founder.

Practitioner Ms. Ji Fengqing, who was in her 50s, was hung for 72 hours as a punishment for her refusal to raise her arm and curse Falun Dafa. She suffered so much from the torture that she lost feeling in her arms, which were badly twisted and deformed. Unable to bear such great suffering further, she abused the name of Dafa and its founder, for which she felt so remorseful that she developed a mental disorder and lost her memory. The labor camp then sent her to the Wanjia hospital to torture her further. She became extremely feeble as a result of several days of torture after she was sent to the hospital in stable physical condition. To escape responsibility for her possible death, the labor camp told her family to take her home. She died several days after returning home.

Ms. Song Wenjuan, a practitioner of about 40 years old, refused to curse Dafa and Teacher. The prison guards then stuck an electric baton into her mouth and shocked her. Her mouth bled when the prison guards brutally rotated the electric baton inside her mouth. Later, she was transferred to the 12th group for further persecution, but she still refused to abuse Dafa and Teacher or break from Falun Gong. The prison guards then tortured her by shocking her with electric batons, hanging her up for a long time, punching and kicking her violently, and beating her with police batons. They even stripped off her clothes and forced her to sit on a tiger bench and tortured and humiliated her.

Practitioners held in the 7th and 12th groups were overloaded with labor every day. They were forced to make paper bags for packaging rice and paper and boxes for ice cream. The labor camp set a quota of 400 rice bags or 400 ice cream wrappers for people older than 55 and 500 rice bags or 450 ice cream wrappers for those younger than 55. After they got up at 4:30 in the morning, they were first forced to recite the prison rules. Then they worked from 5:30 a.m. To 9:00 p.m., with only three meals for breaks. They were forced to labor for more than 13 hours each day except for the 10-minute break for each meal. Their backs ached and their hands became numb due to the long hours of tedious labor. Their working hours would be prolonged indefinitely if they failed to complete their assigned quotas, and they were not allowed to rest until they completed them. Some of the older practitioners had to work nonstop until 11:00 or 12:00 at night to complete a day's quota. After one day of labor, they were completely exhausted. On top of that, they were provided very poor food, such as solid food made of corn powder, which was hard to chew, and soup made of water, cabbage slices, and a little lard, which was very distasteful to swallow. The practitioners were in poor physical health due to the harsh living conditions. In addition, they were not allowed to sleep at night until they "agreed" against their will to making the so-called "vows" to renounce Falun Gong. If they refused to do that, they would be tortured as punishment. Every day was spent like that. The suffering was so great that some practitioners compromised, but they were remorseful after doing so. During the day, they suffered from the burden of slave labor. At night, they were forced to swear against their consciences and were punished if they refused to. In this way, they were subjected to brutal physical and mental torture every single day.

The prison guards and other perpetrators took turns persecuting practitioners. If the practitioners refused to promise to break from Falun Gong, as a so-called mild punishment, they would be forced to stay in a standing or crouching stance for a long time. While standing, the victim was forced to keep her legs straight and pressed together. When they crouched, they were forced to join the tips of their toes, lift their heels, lower their heads, and lift their arms behind their backs, sometimes with their hands cuffed. They were subjected to such torture for long periods of time, and they would be punched and kicked or whipped violently with police batons if they made even the slightest move. It was not unusual for practitioners to stand or crouch for a whole night when they were being punished.

"Severe punishment" includes cruel tortures such as the "tiger bench" and "sitting on an iron chair." Here we will provide a brief description of "sitting on an iron chair." In winter, an iron chair was placed in an ice-cold room or corridor with the windows open. In their bare feet, practitioners were forced to take off all their outer clothes until they were wearing only their underwear. There were two iron panels, each about 20 centimeters wide, about 20 centimeters above the chair seat, which could be adjusted to connect to each other. When the iron panels were separated, the victim was forced to sit on the chair. Then the iron panels were lowered to press the legs of the victim, whose bare feet were placed on the ice-cold concrete floor. Their lower legs were fastened to the chair legs with iron chains, and their hands were cuffed behind their backs and hoisted upward until they were as high as the top of the back of the chair and were then fastened with iron chains. The iron chair was so hard and cold to sit on that the victims were frozen after only a short while of being tortured like this.

Another severe punishment is called the "big hang up." The victims' hands were cuffed behind their backs and fastened to the upper bed of a two-meter high two-tier bunk bed. They were suspended in the air with their feet off the ground, with all their weight on their wrists. After the torture, the victim's shoulders were severely wrenched back and deformed and their hands became numb or even completely handicapped. Ms. Ji Fengqing, from the intensive training group, could not longer use her hands after she was subjected to this form of torture for 72 hours straight.

Shocking with electric batons is another "severe punishment." The prison guards shocked practitioners in the hands, face, neck, and ears using high-voltage electric batons. They shocked victims in whatever parts they wanted. The electric batons sizzled and flashed blue sparks when they were shocking them. Wherever victims were shocked, their skin was burned, body fat dripped, and there was smoke from the burning flesh.

Prison guards whipped practitioners with police batons. A police baton is different from an electric baton. It is made of rubber and does not carry a charge, but it causes great pain when it strikes the body. It readily causes internal injuries rather than surface injuries.

When the practitioners held in Wanjia Forced Labor Camp were subjected to this inhumane physical and mental torture, many of them failed to forbear the unimaginable suffering and were forced into cursing Dafa and Teacher. Afterward, they were remorseful for what they had said or done, they were grief-stricken, and sobbed. They often made up their minds to behave themselves in a better manner, but they were tortured again the next day when they refused to abuse or swear to break from Falun Gong. In subsequent days, they were still tortured. They were abused by prison guards even if they swore every day. In this way, most practitioners spent their days in great suffering. In addition, the prison guards even intimidated the visiting family members of Dafa practitioners and coerced them into cursing Falun Gong. They placed an image of the founder of Falun Gong on the ground to force people to step on it. Later, some practitioners with righteous thoughts were able to take the portrait out of the room. The prison guards then painted an image and the name of the founder of Falun Gong on the ground and forced practitioners' family members to step on it and curse it. Otherwise, they would not be allowed to see their loved ones.

The prison guards and perpetrators live in Harbin City, although we do not know their street addresses. They often receive telephone calls or truth clarification materials from Falun Gong practitioners, but they just refuse to listen to them or read the materials and constantly change their mobile phone numbers. What these perpetrators fear most is that their crimes will be exposed on the Internet, so they usually check the Internet for information about themselves. Most of them are in their 20s or 30s, but they are in poor physical health. Many of them are suffering from arterial sclerosis in the heart and brain and diseases of the breast and liver. When practitioners send forth righteous thoughts, the guards feel unwell and their bodies ache. So they are afraid of the practitioners' righteous thoughts. Sometimes, when practitioners went to the labor camp to see their captive fellow practitioners, they sent forth righteous thoughts from outside the labor camp. The perpetrators felt so unwell that they went outside the labor camp and arrested the practitioners.

The prison guards and perpetrators in Wanjia Forced Labor Camp are extremely evil. We hope that international organizations and people in society will pay attention to this. We hope that all practitioners in China and abroad who see these facts will send forth powerful righteous thoughts against the perpetrators in Wanjia Labor Camp, in order to disintegrate this dark den used to persecute practitioners and to eliminate all the evil elements used to persecute practitioners.