(Clearwisdom.net) I was arrested in 2002 and locked up in the Shandong No. 2 Forced Labor Camp for three years and three months. Because I didn't give up practicing Falun Dafa or stop believing in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance," I was ruthlessly tortured as a "key" person. I escaped death many times, but even now, I still tremble when recalling those experiences.
The following are my statements about the brutal and inhuman tortures and persecution I suffered, so as to let people know the atrocities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to expose the role that the forced labor camp had played under the direction of the malevolent CCP.
More than 200 practitioners were locked up in the Wangcun Forced Labor Camp. In order to force the practitioners to give up the practice and to give up their belief in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance" the guards in the forced labor camp, under the instruction of Jiang Zemin's regime, cruelly tortured and persecuted practitioners who steadfastly practiced Falun Gong. Every practitioner who was locked up in the forced labor camp must endure the "Five Passes." These are: 1) Being deprived of sleep and monitored by people in shifts; 2) Sitting on a narrow bench; 3) Being hung up by their handcuffs and beaten and tortured with all kinds of brutal methods; 4) "Swelling Air Balloon," and 5) Mental torment (brainwashing).
Sleep Deprivation and Round-the-clock Monitoring
On arriving at the forced labor camp, the first step in breaking down practitioners was to deprive them of sleep. Every hour of every day, practitioners were forced to sit on a wooden bench two inches wide and were not allowed to close their eyes. This torture lasted at least five or six days, sometimes over ten days, or even one month. If a practitioner closed his eyes only for a moment, he was then beaten right away. The police took turns resting. After this suffering was over, one would then be allowed to sleep only for half an hour (from 4:00 a.m. to 4:30 a.m.) and then would be awakened before 5:00 a.m.
The long-term torture made one muddle-headed. One's balance would be off while walking; the four limbs and the brain completely lost coordination. When going to the toilet supported by two persons, practitioners often had their head hit the wall, until they eventually collapsed mentally and talked nonsense. Some practitioners became psychotic only a few days after they came to the forced labor camp. Eating excrement and drinking urine happened often.
Sitting on a Narrow Bench
Sitting is also a very brutal method of persecution. For nearly 24 hours every day, one sat on a two-legged, two-inch wide "bench for severe discipline." With nails protruding through the surface and the legs of the bench loose, if one wiggled the bench even a little, the nails pierced one's buttocks. People were forced to sit on the bench, stiff and still. Two or three large men stood by watching. One's hands had to be placed on one's knees, and the lower legs had to be upright. Two hours later, one would suffer an aching back and leg numbness, and one's eyesight grew dim and everything became blurry. Sitting longer, one would suffer aches throughout the whole body. Even scratching an itch would incur a beating from the perpetrators. Except for going to the toilet, practitioners were forced to sit this way at all times.
In less than two days, the buttocks were worn raw, with a big hole on each side. The flesh and blood mingled together, and one's underwear and pants were stuck together. When going to the toilet, since the pants couldn't be taken down, I soaked them with cold water first, and then slowly peeled them off, layer by layer. After the wounds scabbed over, it was even more agonizing to touch the bench; however, I was still forced to sit there. No words can depict the extreme pain. Ulcerous boils developed on my buttocks, agonizingly painful to tolerate and impossible to describe.
Being Hung Up by Handcuffs, Beaten and Tortured
Being hung up by the handcuffs and beaten is also called, "Riding a homemade airplane." There are many variations to this type of torture.
"Helicopter:" one was handcuffed and hung up to the window frame by the handcuffs, with the back rubbing against the windowsill, and the tips of the toes touching the ground. In just a moment, one's back and legs would ache; the whole body became numb, and the wrists were intolerably painful. Some practitioners were hung up for as long as over ten hours; some were even hung up for several dozen hours. They were tortured to the extent of hovering between life and death or sobbing incessantly. The guards were afraid the sobbing would be heard by others; they then used old rags to gag practitioners and then used tape over the gags. They called up five or six ruffians to simultaneously scratch the practitioners' chest, poke their ribs, pick at the ligaments in the groin, scratch the armpits, and severely punch the thighs and arms. A normal person couldn't tolerate the excruciating, violent pain. When I suffered this torture, I gritted my teeth so severely they became loose in the gums. I still cannot chew hard food, even now.
"Jet type:" one had one hand handcuffed to the top of the bed frame, while the other hand was affixed to the bottom of the bed. One could only slightly twist one's body.
"Skewed type:" The hands were handcuffed to the corners of the upper and lower bunks. The hands were hung askew and the body was inclined, forming a cross shape. The back and hipbone twisted tightly. As time passed, one felt pain in the back and legs, and the whole body was numb. The body even became bow-shaped.
"Hung up by arching one's back:" They had practitioner's back rub against the bunk bed's metal rails. Then they moved the lower bunk away. They had practitioner's head drop and handcuffed his hands to the bottom of the bed legs, forcing him to bend and arch, and remain folded at the waist for a long time. There were also several other variations of this torture, such as forcing one to lie on the bed with the four limbs handcuffed to the four corners of the bed, the same as the cruel punishment of dismembering a criminal's body. Then a group of ruffians wantonly tortured the practitioner additionally. They used extremely indelicate and brutish methods like wild animals, having completely lost their humanity.
Punishment with electric batons: there were also various methods of this torture. The guards shocked some practitioners simultaneously with seven or eight electric batons, until the skin was torn and the flesh gaped open and the whole body was burned. Some were shocked on the acupuncture points, from the soles of the feet all the way to the top of the head, leaving out no points, until the person shook violently or passed out. Some were specifically shocked on the face, with the skin and flesh of the whole face burned, leaving facial scars and resulting in lifetime torment.
Thrashing with ropes or whips: The perpetrators thrashed one's whole body with a rope to the extent one shouted insanely, or until at last one couldn't move and passed out. On the surface, only rope traces could be seen. There was no injury to the skin but the torture injured the person's insides. Later on, one's bones and flesh became separated. It was unbearably painful and one couldn't recover for a long period of time.
Other torture methods: The guards used all sorts of other methods to torture practitioners. They punched and kicked practitioners, punched their chests, struck their backs with a heavy hammer, hit their sensitive body parts, pounded practitioners' heads with ridged wooden sticks dozens of times, or hundreds of times, until practitioners' heads swelled to such an extent that they were as soft as steamed buns and blood streamed down the hair. Bloody tufts of hair came off, and practitioners could not stand up by themselves.
The police slapped practitioners on the face and chopped them on the neck with their new boots. One time, a pair of brand new boots was used to the extent that the uppers and treads became separated. A square stool was also one of the instruments of torture. The police took that stool and started to wildly chop and pound practitioners on the head and the body. One strike could make one retreat five or six steps; with more than a hundred strikes, one had already lost consciousness. The police also stomped on practitioners' toes with their boots. My toes are still blackish purple to this day and I still cannot stand properly. They also used chopsticks to injure practitioners' fingers. When the fingers were smashed, they then pressed the fingers on hard blocks and used the soles of their boots to strike them until blood seeped out from the nails.
"Swelling Air Balloon"
This was an extremely cruel persecution method that killed people in a subtle way. The police forced practitioners to drink water but didn't allow them to urinate. The lower abdomen was swollen like an air balloon. It was intolerably painful, and one was made unable to stand up or sit down. Many practitioners were forced to hold back urine for over 30 hours. In order to force them to "reform" they still dragged them upstairs and downstairs. It is really hard to depict the intolerable feeling. At last the urine couldn't be excreted and the lower abdomen hurt over a long period of time. Some practitioners were tortured to the extent of incontinence so that their pants and beddings were drenched with urine and couldn't be used. Male practitioners had to use toilet paper or even a plastic bag as a mat.
Brainwashing
In order to force practitioners to give up their belief in "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance" the guards used collaborators who had given up the practice to instill practitioners day and night with the lies fabricated by the evil Party. They played recordings and videotapes to attack Dafa. All were full of filthy speech. In the evil environment, the police ordered the collaborators to beat practitioners. Abuses were a daily occurrence. They disabled, injured, and killed Dafa practitioners unscrupulously and without any fear.
What I was able to recount is only a tiny portion of a much larger ordeal. Testimony to even more brutal persecution methods that haven't been exposed yet is still forthcoming.