(Clearwisdom.net) Around 6:30 P.M. on May 15, 2004, the evening news program on the Huaihua TV Station in Hunan Province reported an attempted assault by a local woman, Ms. Zhou Manxiu. The report failed to mention that the woman had suffered a mental breakdown as a result of being tortured by police in a forced labor camp for nearly five years before the assault. Instead, it reported the attempted assault as a homicide committed by a Falun Gong practitioner. The false information on the TV caused the viewing audience to misunderstand and even abhor Falun Gong practitioners.
The following are the actual facts behind the false news report:
Ms. Zhou Manxiu is about 45 years of age. She is a local resident in Jielong Township, Zhongfang County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province. Ms. Zhou started to cultivate in Falun Dafa in February 1999, and made a tremendous improvement in her physical and spiritual health. Although she was poverty-stricken, she was very generous in helping others in need, doing charity work, and sharing with others the excellent benefits of cultivating in Falun Dafa based on her personal experience.
Since Jiang Zemin officially started the persecution of Falun Dafa on July 20, 1999, Ms. Zhou felt she had to clarify the facts about Falun Dafa to the State Council Appeals Office to help end the persecution because she had witnessed the benefits of Falun Dafa in herself and, thus, knew the facts about Falun Dafa. However, the staff from Huaihua City's "610 Office" [1] snatched her back to Huaihua while she was exercising her constitutional right to appeal to the Appeals Office and illegally detained her for fifteen days. In September 2000, a misguided individual reported her to the Huaihua police while she was clarifying the truth about Falun Dafa to local residents in Chenxi County. The Huaihua police abducted her and illegally detained her for two months. During the two months, the police subjected Ms. Zhou to beatings and curses. They also frequently denied her food and sleep, and often tortured her by hanging her in the air by the handcuffs that held her arms behind her back. Despite the fact that the Chinese Constitution gives every Chinese citizen freedom of spiritual belief and speech, the Huaihua City "610 Office" illegally sentenced Ms. Zhou to two-and-a-half years in Baimalong Forced Labor Camp in November 2001. Ms. Zhou ended up being incarcerated in Baimalong Forced Labor Camp for 3 ½ years because the staff there arbitrarily extended her term by one year.
During the 3 ½ years of incarceration at Baimalong Forced Labor Camp, Ms. Zhou once resorted to a hunger strike as a non-violent way to protest the illegal detention, but it didn't end her detention. Moreover, the disciplinary staff subjected her to many types of torture in order to force her to renounce Falun Dafa. They shocked her head with high voltage stun batons [A], grabbed her hair and slammed her head hard against the wall, locked her in a small cage made for animals for a long period of time [B], hung up her in the air by her hands tied behind her back for a long period of time [C, D], kept her handcuffed in a painful position for a long period of time [E], tortured her with punitive force-feeding [F, G, H] and ordered inmates in her cell to watch her around the clock. Despite these excruciating tortures, Ms. Zhou Manxiu refused to betray her conscience and renounce her belief in Falun Dafa. The disciplinary staff thus escalated their torture -- they administered her with nerve-damaging drugs. After nearly two years of suffering from all of the aforementioned tortures and forced drug injections, Ms. Zhou suffered a mental collapse. At first, she became absent-minded and talked nonsense. Then her situation deteriorated as time went on.
[A] An illustration of the shocking torture with a high voltage stun baton
[B] An reenactment of a prison guard shocking a Falun Gong practitioner incarcerated in a small cage with a high voltage stun baton
[C] An illustration of the hanging torture
[D] A reenactment of the hanging torture
[E] An illustration of being handcuffed in a painful position
[F] An illustration of punitive force-feeding
[G] An reenactment of punitive force-feeding
[H] Another reenactment of punitive force-feeding
A Chinese woman (name withheld for security reason) has seen Ms. Zhou Manxiu's deteriorated mental state as a result of the daily torture in the Baimalong Forced Labor Camp and provided the following facts that she had witnessed:
"One day in April 2003 when the inmates in her cell were not watching, Ms. Zhou Manxiu tied a long piece of cloth to the upper rail of a bunk bed, made a loop and tried to hang herself. Someone saw her and stopped her attempt at suicide. Later she often stared blankly out in space, and kept asking everyone, 'Do you believe your mommy or your daddy?' She often stayed up at night staring blankly at the window. The 7th Squadron of Baimalong Forced Labor Camp was under the lead of Captain Ms. Xiong Yanxiang and was responsible for forcing Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their belief in Falun Gong with all necessary means. After the 7th Squadron drove Ms. Zhou to a mental collapse, the disciplinary staff member, Ms. Tan of the 7th Squadron, declared to everyone: 'Zhou Manxiu has accepted our reeducation and given up her cultivation in Falun Dafa altogether.' The truth is that the cruel tortures and nervous system damaging drugs had caused her to become mentally disoriented. That was the true reason why she was released. Ms. He Huan, a drug addict in her 20's from Xiangtan, was one of the inmates in her cell that took turns watching Ms. Zhou around the clock. It was He Huan that kept an around the clock record of Ms. Zhou's behavior. Therefore, the staff of Baimalong Forced Labor Camp was able to check the records and verify that Ms. Zhou wasn't faking her mental collapse before they released her home. The truth is that it was Baimalong Forced Labor Camp's atrocities against Ms. Zhou Manxiu that drove her to a mental breakdown."
Fellow practitioners who knew Ms. Zhou visited her after she was released. They said that she was not at all the Zhou Manxiu they used to know. The alleged assault happened on May 15, 2004, less than a month after she was released. Ms. Zhou was released on April 17, 2004, and her mental state never improved. Her husband had openly declared, "My wife was not like this at all before they locked her up in the forced labor camp." In fact, Ms. Zhou's mental state deteriorated right before the alleged assault happened. On May 15, 2004, her husband bickered with her and left her home alone unattended. Mentally disoriented and emotionally excited from their bickering, Ms. Zhou took a knife and wounded a neighbor woman. Ms. Zhou's husband soon discovered and reported the assault to the local police. The staffs from the local "610 Office" and the police officers that responded to the 110 call [equivalent to 911 in the United States] brought her to the Tuanjie Police Station. They detained Ms. Zhou at the police station for 48 hours and confirmed during the detention that she was indeed mentally unstable, so they didn't press charges and released her.
[The above are the facts behind the alleged "homicide" reported by Huaihua TV Station's evening news.]
Similar Cases of Persecution at Baimalong Forced Labor Camp
China's prisons, forced labor camps, and psychiatric institutions, including Baimalong Forced Labor Camp in Zhuzhou, Huaihua City, Hunan Province, have been known to administer Falun Gong practitioners with nervous system damaging drugs in order to force them to renounce their spiritual belief.
- World Attention Focused on Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong Practitioners in China, Part 1 (Photos)
- World Attention Focused on Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong Practitioners in China, Part 2 (Photos)
- World Attention Focused on Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong Practitioners in China, Part 3
- An Urgent Call To End Psychiatric Abuse in China
So far we have confirmed that the following Falun Gong practitioners have been subject to the forced injections of the drug Thorazine which damages the nervous system [2] at the Baimalong Forced Labor Camp: Ms. Yu Yingzhu from Zhuzhou Chemical Factory, Ms. Yang Youyuan (an elderly woman in her 60's from Xinluhe Township, Zhongfang County, Huaihua City), Ms. Xia Ting from Zhuzhou City (Please see "6. Sending practitioners to mental hospitals and injecting them with drugs" in Report on the Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners in the Baimalong Forced Labor Camp in Hunan Province), Ms. Chen Chujun from South Station of Huaihua Railway, and Ms. Liu Liumei, a young tailor from Chenxi County, Huaihua City who had already been driven to a mental breakdown due to the atrocious tortures. These are but a few cases that have made it to the editors of ClearWisdom.net. There are many more similar cases of torture in Baimalong Forced Labor Camp that remain hidden due to various information blocks in China. The torture against Ms. Zhou Manxiu is but the tip of a colossal iceberg of tortures against Falun Gong practitioners.
The tragic story of Ms. Zhou Manxiu fully illustrates the nature of the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners. In order to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their belief in Falun Gong for the purpose of increasing the "transformation rate" and thereby obtaining Jiang Zemin's monetary reward and career advancement, the disciplinary staff, including the prison police, have been torturing practitioners and injecting them with drugs that damage the nervous system until they give up their belief in Falun Gong, become mentally traumatized, or are killed.
Then in China's media, they parade the victims of the persecution that have been forced to renounce their spiritual belief as accomplishments; shift the blame for their mental trauma from the forced labor camps' tortures to Falun Gong; and report the forced labor camps' homicides of Falun Gong practitioners as suicides. Thus China's genocide, torture and crimes against humanity are justified by China's media and used to incite the Chinese people's hatred and to sustain and justify the persecution.
Ms. Zhou Manxiu's tragic story is a typical case that illustrates the horror of the persecution and the severe consequences of the persecution to the Chinese people and the country. Ms. Zhou Manxiu might have wounded her neighbor with a knife while she was mentally disoriented, but the root cause of the tragic assault is Jiang Zemin's senseless and horrible persecution of Falun Gong. Jiang Zemin, as well as the "610 Office" in Huaihua City and Baimalong Forced Labor Camp that have been assisting in Jiang Zemin's persecution, shall be brought to justice for their crimes.
The organizations participating in the persecution of Ms. Zhou Manxiu:
The "610 Office" in Huaihua City
"Evening News" program of Huaihua Television: 86-745-2261234
Zhongfang County Government: 86-745-2276300
Tuanjie Police Station: 86-745-2233445
Jielong Township Government in Zhongfang County: 86-745-2675028
Baimalong Forced Labor Camp: 86-733-8634800
Notes:
[1] The "610 Office" is a Gestapo-like agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems. Due to the international communities' condemnations on the 610 Office's leading role in the persecution against Falun Gong, the Chinese government has renamed the "610 Office" on October 15, 2003, and lied to the world, stating that the "610 Office" has been "disbanded."
[2] The psychotropic drug Thorazine (also known as Aminazin, Chlorpromazine, Largactil, Thorazine or Wintermin) is a strong tranquilizer that is used in the treatment of psychiatric patients. Thorazine can have powerful side effects, such as tardive dyskinesia (a serious, irreversible neurological disorder), tardive dementia (a global deterioration of the mind and mental faculties caused by the drugs), general dulling of awareness, emotional numbing, and cognitive dysfunction. Symptoms of tardive dyskinesia involve uncontrollable movement of various body parts, including the body trunk, legs, arms, fingers, mouth, lips, or tongue. According to Amnesty International's medical advice, these drugs are not in themselves sinister. There are specific disorders for which they are prescribed, but they should be administered by qualified doctors, and their use monitored. In the light of cases of torture and ill-treatment of Falun Gong practitioners, and in the absence of evidence that they suffer from any psychiatric disorder, it is evident that the administration of such drugs is a punitive measure. In other words, Falun Gong practitioners have been inappropriately administered psychotropic drugs in order to punish them for their spiritual belief in Falun Gong.