(Minghui.org) Four residents in Wuhan City, Hubei Province refused to give up their belief in Falun Gong and were arbitrarily put in a brainwashing center on April 18, 2021.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditation practice that teaches Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. It has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
The four practitioners were locked in Etouwan Brainwashing Center, also known as Qiaokou District Legal Education Center. One of the practitioners was released 10 days later, but was since forced to live away from home to avoid future harassment.
Etouwan, one of the leading brainwashing centers among over 60 sites in the city, has a long history of detaining and torturing Falun Gong practitioners. The brainwashing centers are located in every level of government offices, colleges and universities, state enterprises, and private companies and residences. Places such as nursing homes, hospitals, welfare homes, guest houses, and hotels are also used to hold brainwashing sessions.
The Arrest of Six Practitioners
In front of Wuhan Exhibition Center, a surveillance camera caught Ms. Yin Guixiang, 83, giving a copy of Falun Gong literature to Ms. Huang Yongmei on April 17, 2021. Later two plainclothes officers arrested the two practitioners.
The officers body-searched the two practitioners at the Wuhan Exhibition Center Police Station. Ms. Yins’s 190 yuan cash was confiscated.
Four more practitioners were also arrested later that day and taken to the police station.
The police interrogated the six practitioners without giving them food and water all day. The officers also forcibly collected blood samples from the practitioners and treated them like criminals. They photographed the practitioners, took their fingerprints, and measured their height and weight.
Four Practitioners Transferred to Brainwashing Center
Officers from Qiaokou Police Department took four of the six practitioners, including Ms. Yin and Ms. Huang, to Etouwan Brainwashing Center after midnight on April 18. The situation of the other two practitioners remained unknown.
Not only were the four practitioners transferred to the brainwashing center in separate vehicles, but they were also locked in separate rooms. Each of them was closely monitored by two staff members. Twice a day, the practitioners had to sit in a room watching videos slandering Falun Gong; they were not allowed to look away or close their eyes. When they walked across the hallway, they were not allowed to look aside. The monitors put a lot of stress on the practitioners in an attempt to coerce them into signing the statements to renounce their faith.
Ms. Yin’s son went to the brainwashing center and took her home on April 28. She decided to live elsewhere to avoid further harassment.
Crimes Take Place in Brainwashing Center
To force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith, the Chinese Communist Party created the 610 Office, an extra-legal agency responsible for carrying out the mission to eradicate Falun Gong. The 610 Office set up many brainwashing centers targeting the practitioners and called them “legal education centers,” or “learning centers.”
There are no rules for these brainwashing centers. The authorities in these centers can arbitrarily take away the practitioners’ freedom and incarcerate them for unlimited amounts of time. In order to force the practitioners to renounce their faith, the authorities torture, brainwash, and use nerve-damaging drugs on the practitioners.
As the international community has continued to expose the crimes that have taken place in these brainwashing centers, starting in 2021, the authorities in Wuhan began to further disguise the brainwashing centers by calling them “caring homes” or “caring centers.”
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Category: Accounts of Persecution
