Camp Officials ignore rules about the treatment of prisoners and limits on working hours.

Slave Overwork at Chaoyanggou Forced Labor Camp

Chaoyanggo Forced Labor Camp in Changchun City forces Falun Gong practitioners to perform slave labor. The camp had long-term contracts with print-shops to bind books for them and assigned the work to inmates in Wards I and II. They brought back large sheets of printed paper from the print shop, and gave them to the practitioners and other inmates to fold into smaller pieces and collate them, then gave them back to the print shop for cutting and binding.

Practitioner Yan Guozhu refused to wear the required uniform or perform slave labor. He was surrounded by several guards and beaten and shocked with electric batons. Practitioner Liu Fengbao did the same and was put under intensive discipline for extended periods of time. He was isolated from others and had his movement restricted. Everyday there were several inmates assigned to follow him around wherever he went and they kept a close eye on him.

Practitioner Wang Guiming was very weak when he was taken to Chaoyanggou Forced Labor Camp since he had been on a hunger strike for many days. He refused to perform slave labor and was beaten and shocked, which caused him to die in two days. (see /emh/articles/2008/6/13/98134.html)

Parents-in-law of guard Sun Haipo in Ward 3 operated a cardboard box factory and signed a contract to work with the forced labor camp. Ward inmates would glue cardboard together to make cardboard boxes. The forced labor camp was paid 0.12 yuan for each box made. Sun Haipo took care of supervisory and technical details. The job was entirely manual labor, comprising a dozen steps. There were no breaks for weekends, and the work began right after each meal. To improve efficiency, no individual restroom visits were allowed and the group visited the restroom at the same time, which was regarded as their break. Practitioners would be watched by other inmates when they worked. There was no break after lunch or dinner. They had to sit all day and keep on working.

A furniture factory managed to establish a relationship with the warden Wang Xiaoming, and shipped their unpainted furniture to the forced labor camp to have the inmates sand them. The forced labor camp would not provide eye protection to the workers in spite of all the dust produced.

Ward 3 also founded a clothing shop in the camp with Hongling Garmant Company in Changchun City. Inmates begin to make clothes after just a few days of training on the sewing machines. They often had to work fourteen to fifteen hours a day and restroom visits were restricted to once in the morning and once in the afternoon. There was no lunch break. The work began right after breakfast at 6 a.m., and continued until late in the evening, often past 9 or 10 p.m., and sometimes as late as 11 p.m.. To avoid being found out by the inspection team from the justice bureau, they started working at 4 a.m.. Even the police were complaining.

Practitioner Xu Guodong got very sick and was diagnosed in a medical facility outside the camp with severe anemia. He was so weak that he could not walk on his own, yet he was forced to go upstairs to the workshop and was not allowed to stay in the bedroom. He was so weak that he did not want to go downstairs to have lunch, but the police ordered others to take him. He could not stop panting after he got there and could not eat anything.

Even when practitioners were working on the sewing machines, they were closely guarded and watched. No two practitioners were allowed to sit next to each other, and no one was allowed to be away from the "guarding group". The "guarding group" is a persecution method that the camp invented in which people would monitor and report on one another. Each evening, if sewing was completed, they would have you work on gluing boxes. The "head" inmate often randomly beat or verbally abused those doing the slave labor.

The justice bureau had issued instructions forbidding the camp to overwork the detained prisoners either physically or time-wise, but the rule has been totally ignored. The camp treats the practitioners and other inmates as though they are machines. The deputy warden Zhang Junhai told visitors, "They can not be left idle. Otherwise they would cause trouble."