I am a Falun Dafa practitioner, risking my life to write this to you. I am currently being held in the Changchun Women's Labor Camp. The following report details many of the events that I have experienced and witnessed here.

1. My fellow practitioners and I have not violated any laws. We have filed petition letters and requested a dialogue with the government regarding Falun Gong issues, but we have never received any response. We are thereby deprived of our right to petition the government. Since last May, the prison guards have even denied our freedom to write. We have to ask permission to write a letter, and even with permission, the time we are allowed to write is strictly regulated.
2. The prison guards often encourage other prisoners to beat up the Falun Dafa practitioners. This has led most of us to hunger strikes and demands for our release. The camp guards then resort to force-feeding methods, inserting tubes through the nose and into the stomach when a practitioner refuses to eat. If force-feeding doesn't work, they use an electric baton to administer electrical shock torture, causing painful injuries to many practitioners. Li Er (pseudonym) was one of the victims. The guards tortured her with the electric baton for 30 minutes until we could smell the odor of burning flesh coming from her body.
3. The guards use the electric baton and various physical punishments to stop practitioners from practicing the Falun Gong exercises in the camp. One day in late April, Li Shuying, Xu Yingchun, and Huang Shufen were stripped of their clothes and repeatedly shocked with the baton. They had bruises all over their bodies. In May, the majority of the practitioners of Labor Team No. 4 were physically abused to varying degrees. I was caught practicing the Falun Gong exercises and taken to the office. Four or five men including a prison guard and a supervisor took turns beating me and shocking me with the electric baton. They forced me to kneel down in front of them and continued to shock me. Later, the guard kicked me down to the floor and then tied me with a belt to a steel bed frame so that I couldn't move. For eight whole days and nights I was tied up there. I had to excrete on the bed and be fed by others. During that time I felt unbearable pain in my arms. When I was finally released, my arms had lost all their feeling and I had no control over them. For more than two months after that, I was unable to put on my pants by myself.

In order to meet the "reformation" quota imposed since last June, the guards have adopted bitterly cruel and shameful methods to torture practitioners and force them to give up Falun Dafa. Every day I hear the beatings and the screams of agony. I smell the odor of burning flesh coming from the office. Many practitioners have been unable to withstand the extreme physical and mental torture, giving in to the forceful demands to sign statements renouncing Falun Gong. One Saturday morning, several other firm practitioners and I were ordered to read out anti-Falun Dafa materials. We refused. The supervisor took Li Er into the office and shocked her with an electric baton for half an hour. Her face was horribly deformed and the following day it was covered with dark blisters. The scars from the blisters remain on her face to this day. They repeatedly torture us since we refuse to be "reformed." They even entertain themselves by throwing watermelon rinds at our faces, smashing the fruit and laughing as the melon juice drips down.

One evening in late October, a guard caught me reading a booklet of Teacher's short articles and immediately took it away. The guard wanted me to tell where I'd gotten it, but I refused. She punched me hard several times. That night over 100 inmates in Team No. 4 were forbidden to go to bed because I wouldn't tell where I got the booklet. At 1:30 in the morning, they let us go to sleep after deciding to hold me entirely responsible. I was taken to the office Monday morning and several guards beat me up, punching, kicking and using the electric baton to shock me. I still refused to tell where I had gotten the articles. They then ordered several other of the firm practitioners to interrogate me, to no avail. The guards announced that it must therefore be these practitioners who had given me the articles. They began to torture us with the electric baton, causing some to cry out in extreme pain. The next day, one of the practitioners was put into solitary confinement for eight days.

One day in December, I pointed out in my Progress Report that it was illegal for the guards to forbid practitioners to sleep. They took me to the office and gave me a severe beating with a bamboo pole and more shocks with the electric baton. They told me that I was not allowed to write anything like that again.

About five days later, the team leader alleged that I again had Teacher's articles in my possession. The guards searched me but did not find anything. I was taken to the office and tortured brutally. They kept on beating me and shocking me with the electric baton. My neck was bruised all over. I was required to stand in a "flying plane" position (bending over 90^oC with both arms pointing up to the sky from the back). Then I discovered the real reason why they had beaten me that day. They felt uneasy because several days before I had written a letter asking for help. It had explained how a practitioner had been coerced to sign a "repentance" statement using various inhumane tortures. The following is an account of what happened:

The labor camp was pursuing a 100% "reformn rate" so the guards held an "intensive class" to reform a few of the firm practitioners. This so-called "intensive class" is truly a "hell on earth." In the beginning, we were not allowed to sleep for many days and forced to listen to persuasion from so-called "reformed people" (the people whose minds have gone awry due to brainwashing and torture by Jiang Zemin regime). Physical abuse followed. For example, we were ordered to stand on one foot and raise our arms for days and nights. Refusing to be "reformed," they stripped us naked and required us to assume extremely painful and degrading positions, while they continued with their beatings and electrical shock torture. We were bruised all over. Finally, we were locked into small cells, similar to solitary confinement. The guards threatened that if we did not renounce Falun Dafa we would be against the Party. They would beat us to death and claim that we committed suicide. Wang Lixiu was unable to endure these inhumanities any longer, and signed the statement to renounce Falun Dafa. The "intensive class" tortures continued for as long as a month, and Wang still feels the pain when talking about it now.

Every word set forth here is the truth. The torture has reached new heights of inhumanity, without even a shred of human decency left in our brutal oppressors. This is just the experience of a few of us, for all practitioners have their own painful stories to tell. The persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in the labor camp has been escalating. Practitioners are not allowed to sleep for days on end, and are routinely tied up, beaten and tortured with electric batons. Every detainee has witnessed this.

In order to let the whole world know what is happening to practitioners here, I am risking my life to write this report of the crimes committed by guards in the Changchun Women's Labor Camp. I hope that all people will learn the truth of the principle of Truth-Compassion-Tolerance. This is my responsibility to society, the country and the people of the world.

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Reported by a Practitioner in China

January 26, 2001