(Clearwisdom.net) Yushan Forced Labor Camp, also called Cai-Shi-Chang [meaning "quarry"], is located in Ji County, Tianjin City. Because of the terror and hard labor in the camp, the mere mention of its name would make any one who had been detained there turn pale.
In 2001, I was abducted and taken to Yushan Forced Labor Camp for clarifying the truth about the persecution of Falun Dafa and distributing truth-clarification flyers. One year later, at the end of 2002, the labor camp transferred all the Dafa practitioners detained in all the four divisions of the labor camp, about twenty of us, to the No. 1 Division, which was thus called the "Special Supervision Division."
Immediately after the 2003 Chinese New Year, following the "spirit" of "the Sixteenth National CCP Congress," which declared Falun Gong a "hostile force," the labor camp began to persecute the fifteen Dafa practitioners who had refused to accept the brainwashing. Labor Camp Deputy Director Wang Guifu as well as Zhang and Lu took the lead, while No. 1 Division guards Li Zhan (the political head) and Wang Baodong (the division chief) actually carried out the persecution.
First, the prison guards prepared many posters and banners that contained language slandering Falun Gong and the founder of Falun Gong. They posted the posters and banners everywhere in the hallways, cells, restrooms and conference rooms, and then forced the Dafa practitioners and all other inmates in No. 1 Division to gather in the conference room. They ordered every one to verbally abuse Falun Gong. This practice was repeated several times per day, and every inmate must do it. Every evening from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., the guards ordered all the inmates in the division to attend a "Law Class," and in every morning they forced the Falun Gong practitioners to spend three more hours studying articles that slandered Dafa. The guards attempted to use this means to brainwash the practitioners in the long run, and at the same time, poison, threaten, lure and deceive other inmates, so as to make them hate Dafa and isolate the Dafa disciples.
Second, as the atmosphere of terror was continuously created, the physical and mental abuse of the Dafa practitioners kept escalating. Under the excuse of taking care of the Dafa practitioners' health, the guards forced the practitioners to participate in the punitive "lineup" exercises, which lasted a long period of time. The persecution helpers, or those inmates who helped the guards in watching and persecuting the practitioners (for each practitioner there was one or two inmates following and watching him), under the instigation of the guards, would drag, punch, kick those who resisted the persecution.
Third, after returning from the lineup exercises, the persecution helpers forced the practitioners to maintain a sitting position called "three straightened and one staring." [This is a way of torturing the practitioners. The "seat" is a small stool that is universally used in labor camps in China. The practitioners are forced to sit on it with the legs kept together. The thighs are kept horizontal and the shins are kept vertical. The fingers point towards each other and the palms are put on the tops of the knees. The neck, back and waist are straightened. This is called "Three straightened." The eyes look straight and stare at a spot designated by the monitors. Blinking is not allowed. As long as a practitioner refuses to be reformed, he or she will have to sit like this without moving for a long time. This is called "three straightened and one staring," which was described at http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/12/16/55642.html]
They ordered the practitioners to sit on small stools in a stiff and straight position, and keep in line with each other; otherwise they would be verbally abused or even punched or kicked. In the meantime, several persecution helpers, who were surrounding the practitioners, face-to-face, kept reading those articles that slander Dafa, so as to mentally torture the practitioners and achieve the effect of brainwashing.
Among the persecution helpers, there were several inmate leaders and thugs who made tall paper hats and paper boards, on which they wrote language slandering Dafa. They forced a hat on a practitioner's head and hung a board around his neck, and then dragged him to the hallway. They shouted while showing others what they had done to the practitioner. The guards who saw this situation did nothing to stop it. Actually, without the sanctions of the guards, the inmates would have not dared to do such evil things. None of the practitioners were allowed to do anything on their own. Before doing anything, they first had to get approval from the persecution helpers, and then be accompanied by the helpers while doing it.
Fourth was sleep deprivation. Practitioners were not allowed to sleep for a period from a minimum of five days and nights to as long as several weeks. The guards forced the practitioners to take over all the night shifts (each shift was eight hours long) that were supposed to be assigned to other inmates. During the interim, the persecution helpers also tortured the practitioners through means of swearing, using needles to prick the practitioners' fingers under their nails or other parts of the bodies, pouring cold water on them, threatening, burning fingernails with cigarettes, and others.
Additionally, the guards also held meetings to slander Dafa. In one meeting, two Dafa practitioners stood up and loudly spoke, "Falun Dafa Is Good!" The persecution helpers, inmate leaders and thugs took off their dirty socks and stuffed them into the two practitioners' mouths. They then sealed the practitioners' mouths tightly with tape. So these villains, under the instigation and instruction of the guards, used despicable and brutal means, at their will, to torture the practitioners; they have not received any punishment for what they had done, and instead, were rewarded with reductions of their terms of sentence because of their "good" behavior.
Seeing that they were still unable to shake the Dafa practitioners' belief, the guards started to resort to the following means: they instructed the inmates to bring in from the kitchen about ten pounds of coarsely grounded corn flour, mix it with salt and ground hot pepper, put the mixture into a large Sprite bottle, fill up the bottle with tap water, and then force-feed the content of the bottle into a practitioner's stomach. As the salt content was very high, the practitioner who had been force-fed would lose his or her voice in less than half an hour and repetitively have diarrhea. Even so, the practitioner was still not allowed to drink water.
Fifth, after exhausting all the means of torturing as described above, the guards eventually tore off their masks of hypocrisy, which was their last resort. Driven by their personal interests (a guard who has successfully brainwashed a practitioner will be rewarded with a bonus of several thousand yuan, and the persecution helper rewarded with a sentence reduction), the guards and the persecution helpers started to persecute Dafa disciples using any and all means. Guards Li Zhan and Wang Baodong instructed the inmate leaders and thugs to shock the Dafa practitioners with several 160,000-voltage electric batons. The villains who were actively involved in shocking the practitioners were all inmate leaders and inmate thugs, mainly seven of them, who included Yang Shaolin (from Tianjin), Wei Enjie (from Tianjin), Gao Jinhua (from Yanbian City of Jilin Province), Feng Shuangli (from Hebei Province), Hao Chuan (from Baodi County of Tianjin), Meng Fanguang (from Yanbian City of Jilin Province), and Gao Shuangjian (from Tianjin).
These villains first deceived or dragged a practitioner to a warehouse, which was, in fact, a torture chamber. Located in a rather isolated area, it was difficult for people to hear the noises resulting from the electric shock torture. Several of them then surrounded the practitioner and asked if he would continue to practice Dafa or not. If the answer was "yes," they would take off the practitioner's clothes and shoes, knock him down on the floor, and restrain him. They used a blanket to cover the practitioner's head to muffle the screams of pain. Then they started to shock the practitioner all over his body.
Enduring this was an extremely painful experience. Unable to withstand the shocking, some practitioners wrote the three statements. Among the practitioners, Han Ying and Ma Zexuan received the worst electric shocking. Once, after Han Ying was shocked for a long time, the back of Han's head and the entire back of Han's body were covered densely with blisters. Wang Chuanwu's mouth was also filled with blisters as a result of electric shocking. Additionally, they also did not allow Wang to sleep for a long time. As result, Wang suddenly collapsed in the hallway.
Dafa practitioner Li Shitou, who has a Master degree, was transferred there from the Shuangkou Forced Labor Camp. In March of 2003, guard Li Zhan punched and kicked Li Shitou for refusing to accept the arbitrary physical abuse; Li Shitou's eye-glasses were broken as result of the beating. Later, Li Zhan and Zhou Haiying (the inmate leader in the cell where Li Shitou was detained) tortured Li Shitou again with electric batons, trying to force him to accept the brainwashing.
To strengthen and keep the so-called "transformation" achievements, the guards kept torturing the practitioners mentally, using the following means:
(1) The guards ordered the persecution helpers to closely watch the activities of the practitioners, who were especially not allowed to say anything about Falun Dafa. The inmates who have actively helped the guards persecuting the practitioners included Liu Baoan, Hou Kuaihua, Li Qingyun, Liu Mingyi, Ma Guoling and Liu Yijian.
(2) The guards forced the practitioners to spend a lot of time watching videos and reading books and newspapers that slander Dafa. After watching or reading the materials, the practitioners were also forced to write down "their understandings."
(3) Every week the practitioners were forced to renew their "Three Statements."
(4) The guards let three 610 Office members, who pretended to be Dafa practitioners, bring in some fake articles, which they deceivingly claimed to be written by Master, so as to use them to deceive the practitioners. They also resorted to stepping on Master's photos, as well as other means. If a practitioner refused to accept the brainwashing, the guards would extend, again and again, his term of forcing labor or even formally sentenced him to prison.
Every time officials of the Reeducation-through-Labor Bureau visited the labor camp, they would talk with Dafa practitioners. Guards Li Zhan, Wang Baodong, Zhang Xuyong and Li Lixin (these four guards were the main ones in No. 1 Division who were actively involved in persecuting the practitioners, but they rarely did the beating by themselves; other guards including doctor Wang from No. 3 Division and Wei Wei from No. 2 Division also participated in the persecution.) were worried that their crimes would be exposed. So before every visit, they always talked to Dafa practitioners in order to prevent the exposure of their crimes. They ordered the practitioners to tell the visiting officials how the guards had "transformed" them. The practitioners were not allowed to mention what had actually happened in the labor camp, and they were instructed to only say that they had willingly stopped the practice or they quit because they had been moved by the guards' caring and persuasion; the guards wanted to use these lies to cover the facts of the persecution and deceive the visiting officials. The guards acted this way during every visit.
The labor camp guards forced the detainees to do slave labor. The guards used batons, rubber clubs, pick handles, and other means to torture the detainees. To make money, the labor camp forced the inmates to work overtime and over-capacity and do dangerous work that nobody wants to do, such as using dynamite to blow up rocks in the mountains, removing and transporting rocks, loading lime, sewing balls and toys (for export).
The inmates worked usually 15 to 22 hours per day; when they could not finish the work, they were even not allowed to sleep for several days in row. There was no safety or protection gear for the detainees who were asked to go to the mountain to load lime. Lime is caustic, so the inmates, without exception, showed various degrees of burns and pus formation in the infected areas all over their bodies. Nevertheless, they still had to go up to the mountains, and the work there was still very intense.
Yushan Forced Labor Camp is one of the dark dens in Tianjin City that are used to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. In Tianjin City, other labor camps involved in the persecution include Banqiao Women's Forced Labor Camp, Shuangkou Forced Labor Camp, Jianxing Forced Labor Camp, and Qingbowa Forced Labor Camp.
By early 2005, the practitioners who were abducted to this forced labor camp were released because they were "transformed" or their terms were finished. Most of these practitioners have started to cultivate in Dafa again and do the three things that Dafa practitioners should do.
One of them is Chang Tianxiang, 40 year old, from Jinnan District, Tianjin City. After he was released from Yushan Forced Labor Camp in 2004, he studied the Fa and "clarified the truth" diligently. He clarified the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong on commuter buses and received very good results. However, he neglected taking safety precautions. In August 2004, when he clarified the truth and distributed VCDs on a bus, he was reported by someone to the police and thus arrested. Next day the police searched the house he had rented and took away his new computer, worth over 3,000 "yuan", his printer, worth more than 300 yuan, and some truth-clarification materials. He was sentenced to two years of forced labor, and taken to Shuangkou Forced Labor Camp in Shuangkou Town, Beichen District, Tianjin City. His current status is unknown.
The facts about the persecution of Dafa practitioners in Yushan Forced Labor Camp have not been exposed in detail before. Today I wrote down these facts to thoroughly expose the crimes committed at this forced labor camp.