(Clearwisdom.net)
(continued from Part 1: http://clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2010/5/30/117502.html)
1-1-2. Persecution Process
When a Falun Gong practitioner is taken to the 5th Brigade, she will be assigned to the "attacking group." The guards there can put practitioners into the solitary confinement room without a reason. The room is about the size of a queen-sized bed and the iron door claims about a quarter of the room. Besides a small spittoon (to use as a toilet), a blanket on the floor, and a small chair, there is nothing in the room. A small desk is outside of the door to hold Chinese Communist Party (CCP) books and block the practitioner from going out. The single small window in the room is completely sealed and covered, making the solitary room an isolated box. In this room, even drinking water requires approval. The guards have four inmates as personal monitors to watch the Falun Gong practitioner around the clock. Practitioners are not allowed to go out. Eating, sleeping, and using the toilet are all done in this room. The water supply is limited. Each day the practitioner only gets a little water, barely covering the washing basin. She is not allowed to take a bath, not allowed to have family visits, is forced to read the CCP's books slandering Falun Dafa, and forced to write a Disassociation Statement promising to stop practicing Falun Gong.
If the practitioner does not write a Disassociation Statement, the personal monitors will use many methods to torture her. These include prohibiting her from sleeping or only allowing her to sleep 1 or 2 hours; forcing her to stand all day without moving (many practitioners' feet swell so much that their shoes are torn); forcing her to sit on the small chair without leaning against the back and with her hands on her knees (the monitors will beat her if she changes her sitting position); torturing her using torture instruments such as electric batons or tying her up for days.
The CCP's "Prison Law" stipulates that a person can be put in solitary confinement for no more than 15 days. But that does not apply to Falun Gong practitioners. An inmate torturing Falun Gong practitioners once admitted that they knew there is a corner in the solitary room that the monitoring video camera cannot see, so they would torture practitioners in that corner. Also, they only hit practitioners on their chests because it was harder to find the injury there.
Once a practitioner writes the Disassociation Statement, she is moved to the "consolidating group." There, each guard manages two rooms. Each room has three or four practitioners. Other inmates are there to monitor and torture practitioners. Every action and word of the practitioner is recorded and reported to the guards, including whether they change their underwear.
While being "strictly managed," the "consolidating group" also does some "advising" and fake "caring" work, such as organizing singing, dancing, reading, or writing events. They create a "merry" "transformation environment" that is tightly controlled inside but looks loose from the outside. This deceit is to cover their torture and also to force practitioners to feel "grateful." For example, occasionally they will give a practitioner a birthday cake or some money. Their goal is to have the practitioner write a thank-you letter to show their "transformation results" to the outside.
1-1-3. The Essence of "Study" - Brainwashing
Guards force Falun Gong practitioners to "study" half the day and work half the day. The new arrivals are subjected to brainwashing continuously throughout the whole day. They are required to talk after the brainwashing sessions. If the practitioner tries to clarify the truth, the guards threaten her as having "committed a new crime in prison." If she does not speak, she is charged with "refusing to be transformed."
The women's prison has also created many confession methods: each new arrival is told to write statements admitting to crime, self-confessions, and "how I got on the criminal path;" practitioners are forced to write the three statements; everyone is made to write a "thought report" each month; the guards hold seasonal and annual "reviews," and the reviews cover the practitioner's confession level such as crimes admitted to, criminal actions, etc. They also have many "political studies," and tell practitioners to "actively participate in reforming" every day.
The "Prison Law" states that each inmate has the right to be visited each month for up to one hour. However, the 5th Brigade only allows Falun Gong practitioners to be visited once every three months and for only fifteen minutes each time. The practitioners have to submit a visit application first. In the application, the practitioner has to address the guards as "respectful government police officers" and refer to herself as "criminal so-and-so." Practitioners who are firm in their belief in Dafa will never write this application, which is in essence a confession. The guards then scold them as having no human nature and not caring about their families. The guards tell practitioners to say that they give up family visits in their letters to their families. Some practitioners wrote that "family visits are not allowed here," but such letters were taken back by the guards.
The guards also gather some practitioners' relatives for a conference. They use their relatives' words, sometime even their cries, to torment the practitioners.
1-1-4. Forced Labor
In March 2006, all practitioners who wrote the Dissociation Statement and some practitioners who refused to be "transformed" were taken to the east part of the prison for intensive labor. In the meantime, the guards broadcast anti-Falun Dafa slander over the speakers in each room.
The 5th Brigade claims that there is only half a day of forced labor. The work starts at noon, but inmates are given a whole day's workload. They are forced to sit on hard benches for a long time to carry out the assigned labor; some of them develop scabies and sores on their buttocks from sitting for so long. Steadfast practitioners are given the highest work quota and it is very hard to complete. They are also forced to copy the prison regulations and are not allowed to sleep. Sometimes inmates in their room are also forced to copy the regulations, as a way of inciting hatred against the practitioners.
The 5th Brigade does not have a work factory. Inmates eat, sleep, and work in their rooms. Their beds are the work tables. However dirty the materials are, they have to put them on their beds to work on. For example, when stuffing cotton into animal toys, their entire room is filled with cotton and each person sits in the cotton pile to stuff toys. They have to do it very quickly otherwise they won't be able to meet their quotas. The fan in the room usually will have a layer of black dust within less than two weeks. All materials, regardless of whether they are irritating or contain large amounts of dust, are put into their rooms. And they will be left there until all the work is done. Nobody considers whether these materials will damage the inmates' health.
In the 5th Brigade, each person is enslaved as a machine. Many practitioners have developed physical ailments such as high blood pressure, back problems, heart problems and poor eyesight as a result of the intensive forced labor.
(to be continued)
