(Clearwisdom.net) The Nanmusi Women's Labor Camp in Zizhong City, Sichuan Province is a concentration camp where the authorities carry out the persecution of female Falun Dafa practitioners from all over the province. Since the persecution began on July 20, 1999, this facility has illegally detained several thousand Dafa practitioners, with most of the long-term detentions handled in Brigades 5, 7, 8 and 9. Practitioners detained there have been put through the most inhuman and hideous conditions. The following is an eyewitness account of how the guards of the 7th Brigade tortured Dafa practitioners:
The leader of the 7th Brigade is Zhang Xiaofang, and the deputy brigade leader is Fang (given name not known). The guards were Mao, Pan and Lan. When I was detained in the 7th Brigade in 2002, I saw Zhang Xiaofang instigating several "transformed people" (former practitioners who have turned against Dafa under pressure), including Li Jinwen, Guo Nian, Meng Qing, and Hu Rong, to come up with all sorts of devious and ruthless ways to torture the steadfast practitioners. For each of the three daily meals, they provided practitioners with just a few ounces of rice, and one third of a steamed bun. Zhang Xiaofang also incited a group of drug-addicted inmates to forcefully administer water to practitioners who refused to abandon their faith in Dafa. These inmates would use a special tool to pry open practitioners' mouths and force water into them several times a day, until their abdomen expanded like a balloon.
The authorities also organized groups of several "transformed people" and inmates to continuously guard a single practitioner, preventing them from going anywhere freely, even to the restroom to use the toilet. When a practitioner could not endure anymore, she would be forced to relieve herself in her pants. As soon as this happened, the perpetrators would strip off her clothes, clean up the floor and then dump all her soiled clothes into the garbage can. Because the guards and inmates repeated this kind of humiliating torture so often, it did not take long for many Dafa practitioners to lose all their clothes this way, and they had no more clothes to wash or to change into. They had to endure and suffer during the bitter winter cold wearing very few clothes. After the guards found out there were no more clothes to take away from practitioners, they came up with yet another cruel trick. They would fine practitioners who had involuntary relieved themselves in their pants 10 yuan (1), ostensibly to buy mops to clean up the floor. Some practitioners were penalized with fines of more than 100 yuan that way.
The guards also tortured Dafa practitioner with military style training. They gathered all the practitioners during the scorching heat of summer when temperatures reached above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and ordered them to run back and forth. After a prolonged time of forced running, many practitioners could not keep up. The guards would then order drug-addicted inmates to drag the practitioners who did not cooperate. Some practitioners suffered severe injuries after being dragged around. They could not walk nor sleep because of their painful injuries. After prolonged torture like this, several practitioners were driven to the point of mental collapse. Practitioners who suffered mental collapse were Zhu Xia, He Yumei, Wu Houyu and Gao Yan.
Zhu Yunfang, 52 years old, was a Dafa practitioner from Chengdu City. She was detained in the 7th Brigade. Yunfang went on a hunger strike to protest the brutal tortures. Brigade leader Zhang Xiaofang and guard Mao ordered inmates and "transformed people" to drag Zhu Yunfang into a solitary confinement cell. They shackled all four of her limbs to the wall so she could not move at all, and taped her mouth so that she could not cry out. One day at noon they took Ms. Zhu out and exposed her to the sweltering heat under the sun, with temperature reaching 36.7 degrees C (about 98 degrees F). They tried to force Zhu Yunfang to give up her Falun Gong practice. Yunfang refused. The guards ordered inmates to savagely beat Yunfang until she fell down to the ground. After the hooligans saw that Yunfang had lost consciousness, they ordered all practitioners to return to their cells. They closed all windows and locked all doors. The inmates guarded each hallway and no one was allowed to peek through the windows. Nobody was allowed to go out even when dinnertime came around. Dinner was delivered by inmates to each cell. That night one inmate quietly told me that a doctor came and pronounced Zhu Yunfang dead after examining her. As accomplices to the Jiang Regime, Zhang Xiaofang and her cohorts beat practitioner Zhu Yunfang to death simply because Yunfang stood by her faith in Dafa.
One afternoon in late March or early April 2003, a practitioner was abducted and brought to the 7th Brigade. This practitioner immediately sent forth righteous thoughts, with her right palm raised in front of her chest. Seeing her doing that, the guards ordered several "transformed people" and a number of inmates to shove her into the solitary confinement cell, where they tortured her using various means. We heard this practitioner yelling out, "Falun Dafa is good! Falun Dafa is righteous!" during the tortures. After more than one day and night of torture, the guards injected this practitioner with unknown drugs under the guise of SARS prevention. This Dafa practitioner, whose name we never knew, was tortured to death just after twenty hours since her abduction and detention in this hellish dungeon.
The guards adopted even more ruthless tortures against practitioners who persisted in their practice of Falun Gong. They ordered inmates to tie practitioners' feet in the double lotus position as if they were doing the meditation exercise, using thin ropes to tie both legs tightly. Then they tied the practitioners' hands behind their back, stuffed dirty socks in their mouth and taped their mouth shut with thick tape. They forced Dafa practitioners to sit this way for 24 hours. It would not take long for practitioners to succumb under such torture, suffering unbearable pain. Quite a few practitioners signed the so-called Repentance Statement against their own will under such torture. The marks left by the thin ropes would remain for a long time, and some practitioner's legs developed permanent scars. Many practitioners could not walk for a long time after this torture. The guards would also order inmates and "transformed people" to tie up Dafa practitioners to steel doors and windows with all four limbs spread out. Then they would post signs slandering against Dafa all over the face and body of the practitioners. Practitioners Geng Xiaochun, Bo Liqong, Wang Hongxia and many others all suffered these tortures.
There was another sinister torture used by the guards at Nanmusi: the water dungeon. The water dungeon was a solitary confinement cell littered with urine and excrement. They would then pour water in there and force practitioners to sit in there. No bath was allowed even in the hot summer. After a while many practitioners would develop scabies all over their body.
Many practitioners were forced to stand for prolonged periods of time. They were forced to stand under the sun during the day, and facing the wall in the cell at night. They were not allowed to move even one step, let alone to sleep. After a while many practitioners' feet and legs became swollen and they lost feeling in their legs and feet. Some would faint and fall down. The guards would then order inmates to drag the practitioners around in the courtyard, supposedly to help the practitioners to free up their joints and stretch. By then practitioners' legs and feet were already so stiff that they could not move about. Yet after being tortured by dragging, practitioners were still ordered to continue the standing torture until they passed out again.
What is stated here is just a part of what we saw at Nanmusi Woman's Labor Camp. There were other tortures that we never witnessed. We could often hear crying and screaming from behind the iron bars of windows, torture rooms and small cells. We never found out what tortures our fellow practitioners suffered in those places.
I remember once when a team of higher authorities visited the camp for an inspection. On the day before the inspection, the guards ordered inmates to force Dafa practitioners to do a thorough cleaning job of the prison. They transferred all practitioners who were injured and wounded to another brigade and forced them to stay on the upper floors, telling them to take a nap. They also arranged several "transformed people" to recite rehearsed stories to the inspection team, telling such lies as, "The guards at Nanmusi have treated Falun Gong practitioners with utmost care and kindness."
The guards even got rid of the electric batons tainted with blood, telling the inspection team, "We have never even touched a single Falun Gong practitioner for the past few years. They eat well, sleep well and are very happy." A regular inmate later secretly told me this story: She said to me that she was very sympathetic towards the suffering of the Falun Gong practitioners. She felt that justice must be served after witnessing the guards blatantly lying and covering up the truth in front of the inspection team.
(1) Yuan is the unit of currency in China; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.
2004-8-16