(Minghui.org) “Study project” is a term with strong academic implications. In some people’s impressions, a “study project” is a task that only highly educated experts can perform. From another viewpoint, “study projects” are closely related to the progress of human society. However, if this term were to be used in the study of human torture, most people would be horrified and repulsed. Yet, evidence shows that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) indeed conducts “study projects” to develop methods, including torture, to employ in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
On July 13, 2012, an article appeared on the Chinese Minghui website titled, “Blood-thirsty Violence Became ‘Study Project’ for the Chinese Communist’s Minions.” The article describes how a Falun Gong practitioner from Wuhan, Mr. Zhang Weijie, was abducted, brought to the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center, and brutally tortured. In an attempt to force him to give up his belief, the guards beat him and forced him to remain standing around the clock. The guards deprived Mr. Zhang of food while claiming that he had gone on a hunger strike; they then force-fed him. They kept inserting and extracting the force-feeding tube through his nose, sometimes inserting it into his stomach and then deliberately agitating the feeding tube. The forced-feeding was usually done twice a day: once in the morning and once in the afternoon, with each session lasting over an hour while utilizing one or two buckets of food.
When Mr. Zhang’s stomach was full, the food would overflow from his mouth. Deputy captain Hu Gaowei would wipe the food over Mr. Zhang's face with newspapers, and cheer excitedly. Hu would also hit Mr. Zhang in the face and head while others laughed.
One day, Hu proudly told Mr. Zhang that their torture of him was a “study project.” They deprived him of sleep and food and tortured him by force-feeding to see how long his will could hold. The past record was ten days, which Mr. Zhang had already broken at the time. The guards' goal was 15 days, which was later achieved. Afterward, they switched to another experiment.
Such cases of torturing Falun Gong practitioners as part of “study projects” and telling the practitioners of the plan outright is unusual. But similar torture methods are not rare. For example, practitioner Mr. Li Xiwang from the Hebei District of Tianjin was sentenced to eight years in prison and persecuted in Gangbei Prison. He was tortured in various ways, and he barely survived. The guards once tied his arms to a post with his body face down, placed heavy shackles on both feet, and tied each foot to a post at different heights. He was left this way for 28 days
According to the guards, Gangbei Prison was built by the Japanese when they invaded China. No one has ever lived past six days under this torture method. When they let Mr. Li down, no one expected him to be alive, but he was. In this case, if considered as a study project, the record of human endurance of such torture had been extended by 22 days.
In July 2011, Mr. Li was again sent to the prison and tortured. This time, they used a method called “land anchor.” Land anchor is an extremely cruel torture method. It employs an iron tube to force the person to stand with their legs straight on the floor. Then the person’s hands are shackled to the ground, thus forcing him to bend his back while his legs are completely immobile. The past record of human endurance with this torture was two hours. However, Mr. Li was held there for over ten hours before he died.
The torture of practitioners as “study projects” could not proceed without the Chinese Communist Party’s coercion and direction. The so-called Anti-Cult Division of the Psychological Department of the Chinese Academy of Science compiled a book titled “The Psychological Analysis of the Falun Gong Phenomenon.” The so-called Anti-Cult Association of Wuxi City in Jiangsu Province claimed to have used their own funds of 300,000 yuan, combined with the funding of 170,000 yuan from the Science and Technology Bureau and the Social and Scientific Studies Association of the city and province. They cooperated with the Wuxi City Mental Health Center to conduct a study project titled “The application of psychological treatment to educate and transform Falun Gong’s strongest adherents.” These studies sounded impressive on paper, but what was truly meant by “psychological treatment?” It was no more than injecting nerve-damaging drugs to persecute steadfast practitioners under the pretense of scientific studies.
An article titled “Tan Fengjiang, Liu Zhuanjiang, and Other Practitioners Tortured in Jiamusi Prison” (http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2010/12/14/121936.html) was published on the Minghui website on December 14, 2010. Included in the article was a photograph of an official document from the CCP that stated: “Additional treatment with drugs is needed for practitioners.” This shows that the CCP has been using results obtained from applying drugs to practitioners and making modifications to refine their methods of persecution. Such actions came from directives from the upper levels of the CCP. Such directives were directly related to the CCP's so-called study projects.”
In reality, the CCP’s labeling the torture of Falun Gong practitioners as “study projects” has long existed, but it has not been widely known by the outside world. For example, in Masanjia Forced Labor Camp, they use an extremely cruel torture method called “sitting on the small bench.” In 2005, the Yunan Provincial No. 2 Women’s Prison sent people to Masanjia to learn ways to “transform” Falun Gong practitioners. They learned this torture method and began to apply it to the practitioners at the prison. In this torture, the guards forced each practitioner to sit from 6:30 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. on a 30-cm (approximately 1-foot-long) rectangular bench. The person was forced to keep their body straight and stay immobile, or else they would be beaten severely. This torture resulted in practitioners' buttocks becoming severely infected. This “sitting on a small bench” method had been developed at Masanjia and promoted as a “study project.”
Torture promoted as a “study project” is only part of the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners. Much more shocking is the extraction of organs from living Falun Gong practitioners under the banner of “study projects.”
The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) issued its latest report on February 16, 2012, disclosing that the former police chief of Chongqing City, Wang Lijun, was involved in experiments involving extraction of organs from living Falun Gong practitioners when he was directing the “On-site Psychological Study Center” at the Jingzou City Police Department.
WOIPFG also disclosed that Wang, the then Jingzhou City Police Chief, also acted as the director of the “On-site Psychological Study Center,” and was awarded the “Guanghua Special Contribution Award” and a grant of 2 million yuan in study funds by the Chinese Guanghua Technology Foundation on September 17, 2006.
Wang himself said, “Both the site that we are at and the technological achievement that we have obtained are the essence of thousands of our on-site study results. It is the result of many people’s effort … A person marches toward the execution site and, in a few minutes, transfers and extends his life to several other people. We are all in awe. It is a great deed.”
According to the Liaoning Evening News, a Jinzhou reporter came to the “study center” – the Sujiatun Economical and Technology Development Center of Jinzhou City – at 5 a.m. on June 9, 2005, to witness the “whole process of execution by injection.” The place was filled with experts and the execution site was like a laboratory. The researcher at the center told the reporter, “The data obtained will be greatly beneficial to the understanding of the dying process of the criminals, the physiological change of a healthy person before and after the drug injection, the status of the drug residuals in each organ, the psychological changes when a person is facing death, the organ transplant after the death by injection, and contribute to future treatment of drug poison victims.”
The Chinese official publications revealed that Wang Lijun's studies in Jingzhou's “On-site Psychological Study Center” was promoted to find ways to prepare the death injection drugs to improve the effectiveness of extracted organs. Wang’s goal was to obtain “more lively organs.” He tried to “kill” the person by injection first, but in the meantime to also delay the time of the person’s death as much as possible. During this time, he quickly extracted all the organs, washed them with buffer solutions to rid them of the residual drugs, and transplanted them to the recipient. Thousands of such cases were performed. During this period, Wang once ordered the “extermination” of Falun Gong practitioners.
Promoting the results of torture and live organ extraction as “study projects” are indeed, as described in David Kilgour and David Matas's book, Bloody Harvest – the killing of Falun Gong for their organs, “a new form of evil on this planet.” The perpetrators have lost all humanity in committing such crimes.
