The Hongshan District Brainwashing Center in Wuhan City, Hubei Province

(Minghui.org) Almost every district in Wuhan City, Hubei Province has a brainwashing center specifically set up to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The brainwashing center in Hongshan District is located in the former building of the Shiju Middle School and its operation depends on funding from the city government and the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extra-judiciary agency tasked with persecuting Falun Gong.

The Hongshan District Brainwashing Center has fourteen full-time employees, including three directors, three instructors, one chef, one housekeeper, a driver and a security team of five. Whenever a Falun Gong practitioner is taken there, the brainwashing center hires two more people per practitioner to monitor their daily activities. 

According to information collected by Minghui, the minimum monthly salary for each director is 10,000 yuan, and 7,000 yuan for each instructor. The security personnel, the chef, driver and housekeeper each receive 5,000 yuan per month. The contractors hired to monitor Falun Gong practitioners usually each receive 4,500 yuan as monthly compensation. In addition to the base salary, each person is also provided a meal plan of 60 yuan per day. In order to persecute one practitioner, the salary and meal plans cost 1,550,400 yuan every year, not including the utility fee and other costs, such as building maintenance. A security personnel once revealed it cost them 700,000 yuan to renovate the building.

Security personnel were recruited through a staffing company and the directors were members of the Chinese Communist Party who worked in the judiciary institutions and who were usually nearing retirement age (between 55 and 60).

Most of the personnel hired to monitor the practitioners have been doing the job for decades. Some were retired prison guards, some were members of the township women’s federation, and others were retired from various professions. Some of the senior personnel include Yu Sumei (the coordinator for many brainwashing center in the city), Wang Xingmei, Hong Meili, Zhang Yanli, Xia Yu, Chen Zhibin, and Han Jun. 

Below is an account from a Falun Gong practitioner who was taken to the brainwashing center last year and whose name was omitted for security reason.

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Since early 2022, a staff member of the residential committee began to monitor me in my apartment hallway. Sometimes he leaned on my door, trying to listen to my conversations with my family members. I reported it to the property management. Two security personnel came and took him away. Then he began to stay at the entrance of my subdivision to monitor whether I went out or not. As I was walking on the street one day, I was arrested and taken to the Hongshan District Brainwashing Center. I heard that many Falun Gong practitioners were arrested this way.

Four young men held my arms and dragged me towards a SUV. Someone pushed me into the rear seat. Two officers sandwiched me and I had difficulty breathing. 

Upon arriving at the brainwashing center, I was brought to the farthest room on the second floor. Two young men stood outside of the room to guard me. I noticed that there were eight posters on the wall smearing Falun Gong. I tore them off and threw them in the trash.

Instructor Lu Huakun, monitoring personnel Xiang and Chen Zhibin, as well as Nie Yuancheng of my residential committee, were assigned to brainwash me. I recognized that Nie was present during my arrest.

Lu, 72, has been participating in brainwashing Falun Gong practitioners for eight years. In the beginning, he read books smearing Falun Gong to me for 1.5 hours every morning and another 1.5 hours in the afternoon. I urged him not to do such things and he responded that he would always follow the Communist Party. Unable to refute him, I tore apart the books he was reading. In retaliation, Lu took away my chair and ordered the chef to cut my food portion by half.

I made another attempt days later to persuade Lu not to participate in the persecution, and he still refused to listen. After reading books smearing Falun Gong for two and a half months, he read the history of the Communist Party for another two and a half months. After that, he began to play videos demonizing Falun Gong. 

I found an opportunity to delete the videos from their hard drive. A new monitoring personnel, Han Jun, a strong man standing at 5’11’’, kicked me from behind and caused me to fall to the ground. For the next 100 days, they played the brainwashing videos 11 times every day. 

The brainwashing center staff often said to me that as soon as I wrote a statement to renounce Falun Gong, they would release me. I said to director Tian, “The Communist Party always forces people to do things against their conscience, either cutting their ties with their parents or children, or betraying their spouses or teachers.”

Six months after I was taken to the brainwashing center, Qu Shen, the head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee who was in charge of the brainwashing center operation across the city, came over to see how things were going there. Qu has been participating in the persecution for at least 18 years and he is especially notorious for torturing elderly and female practitioners. I heard that he once went into the room of a female practitioner in her 20s, wearing only his underwear. Qu one day forced me to watch brainwashing videos for 13 hours. 

After more than nine months of detention, I was finally released.