In February, 2008, a dozen people, including two lawyers, went to Shenyang City in order to visit imprisoned Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Feng Guofu to investigate stories of beatings at his labor camp. They were arrested before they could reach him at the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp. There were several illegal home searches at the same time. It is obviously difficult to investigate reports of abuse in the labor camp/prison system.

The Details of the Persecution in Tianshui Prison

Fifteen prisons in Gansu Province use Tianshui Prison as a centralized location to "transform" Falun Gong practitioners. This continues to this day, with nearly thirty practitioners currently imprisoned there. Practitioner Liu Zhirong of Qingyang was tortured to death in this prison.

There is a special section in Tianshui Prison, whose specific assignment is the torture and "transformation" of Falun Gong practitioners. This section is under the jurisdiction of the Education Department of the Prison Bureau of Gansu Province. Pan Xinsheng is the department head, and the primary person responsible for these activities. After practitioner Liu Zhirong was tortured to death there, and after increasing pressure from the outside world, the guards have stopped routinely beating the practitioners. Instead, the guards have now turned to using sleep deprivation as a form of torture, and are forcing practitioners to watch the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) brainwashing videos. The guards deceive the practitioners' families into helping them with the persecution, and put pressure on the practitioners to cooperate and "transform."

Newly-arrived practitioners are usually first sent to the prison orientation team, which is under the jurisdiction of the prison Education Section. The Education Section helps the special section to brainwash and to "transform" Falun Gong practitioners. The Education Section has an "information network center," with Wang Caixia in charge. The purpose of this center is to carry out psychological testing of newly-arrived Falun Gong practitioners. The special section designs the "transformation" plan for each practitioner according to the test results. Usually they order the long-time hardened criminal inmates on the orientation team to force practitioners to watch movies that slander Falun Gong. They deprive the practitioners of sleep and force them to watch these slanderous movies continuously for three to five days with no breaks. This takes place on the sixth floor of the prison. The guards from the special section also instigate the criminal inmates to commit crimes targeting practitioners. The guards themselves first observe the practitioners' situation, and then take them out to have a "conversation." When they notice some weakness in the practitioner, they use it to try to deceive the practitioner into "transforming." If the practitioners refuse to be "transformed" this way, the prison orders the family to come to the prison and pressures the family members into coercing the practitioner. If the practitioner still refuses to be "transformed" by the orientation team, he or she will then be sent to another ward and the orientation team will keep no more than three practitioners.

After the practitioners are sent to the different wards, each ward will then arrange to have at least two criminal inmates closely follow and monitor the practitioner around the clock. For the practitioners who refuse to be transformed, Liu Jiangtao, who is deputy head of the special section, instigates inmates who are there for criminal offenses, to force the practitioners to watch movies slandering Falun Gong, and to deprive them of sleep. The ward does not allow the practitioners who refused to be "transformed" to mail letters, does not allow their families to visit them, does not allow them to buy daily necessities at the prison store, does not allow them to go outside to exercise and get fresh air and does not allow them to have term reductions. Instead the practitioners are confined to their cells, and are not allowed to go outside. Each practitioner is monitored by two to four criminal inmates around the clock.

The guards use the propaganda board in the prison to wantonly propagandize the "Tiananmen Square Self-immolation" hoax to deceive the guards and the other inmates. They will also periodically organize collaborators to give reports, and force the more than 1500 inmates, all the practitioners, and all the guards to listen. In September 2007, Pan Xinsheng, who is head of the Education Department in the Prison Bureau of Gansu Province, led three collaborators to give reports in Tianshui Prison. Practitioner Xu Feng shouted out "Falun Gong is Good!" in the middle of the meeting, and he was removed from the scene immediately. After the meeting, Fu Yici, of the special section, who was responsible for the brainwashing activities, interrogated each of the practitioners who refused to be "transformed," and forced them to discuss their thoughts about the reports. Afterwards he intensified the "transformation" efforts. The "information network center" of the Education Section also actively participates in persecuting practitioners. Wang Caixia wrote a dissertation paper expounding on "The Application of Psychological Testing to Transform Female Falun Gong Practitioners," which was given a high award among the individual education papers submitted by all the prisons of the province.

Practitioner Xu Feng has been imprisoned for seven years. He persists in his belief and the guards were unable to "transform" him. They then spread rumors saying that he had a mental disorder.

Practitioner Cao Dong was arrested for accepting an interview from the international community, and was subsequently imprisoned in Tianshui Prison. The prison was afraid that he would find out how severely the prison has been persecuting Falun Gong practitioners and expose the severity of the persecution. They therefore confined him in a large cell and had four criminal inmates closely watch him around the clock. He was not allowed to leave the cell.

After practitioner Liu Zhirong was tortured to death, the authorities at Tianshui Prison fabricated rumors saying that Liu Zhirong had committed suicide. This was an attempt to deceive the guards, the inmates and the outside world. They also attempted to use the death of Liu Zhirong as an example to even further deceive the inmates, saying that practitioners had a tendency to commit suicide. Furthermore, they used the death of Liu Zhirong as an excuse to carry out even closer monitoring of practitioners. I pass by Tianshui Prison every day on my way to work and I often see the inmates come out to work. I learned that one practitioner was even run over by a vehicle. The prison then forced the other inmates to perjure themselves, and the prison doctor also provided false certification of the deaths, saying that the inmates had died as a result of violating the work rules. Practitioners are treated much worse than criminal inmates.

Tianshui Prison, Education Section: 86-938-8278937, 86-938-8278957

Falun Gong Practitioners in Lingyuan City Jailed, Family Members Arrested

In February, 2008, a dozen people, including two lawyers, went to Shenyang City in order to visit Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Feng Guofu in jail. On February 25, 2008, they were arrested while they slept. After they had money extorted from them, everyone in the group except Ms. Li Shuming, a practitioner from Lingbei Town, was eventually released. Ms. Li, about 50, is from Lingbei Town, Lingyuan City, Liaoning Province. She has been beaten, jailed, and endured forced labor many times because she practices Falun Gong.

On February 24, 2008, after learning that Mr. Feng Guofu was on a hunger strike at Masanjia Forced Labor Camp in Shenyang City and that some practitioners detained at the camp were brutally beaten, a dozen of Mr. Feng's family and friends decided to visit the camp, including two attorneys that they had hired. Early on the morning of February 25, 2008, while they slept at a hotel in Shenyang City, officers from the Renaolu Police Station (located within Shenyang City) unlawfully entered their rooms and took them away. That afternoon they were taken to the Lingyuan City No. 2 Detention Center and detained by officers from the Lingyuan City Police Department. In the days that followed, other family members went to the police department to demand their release. Their families questioned the police as to why they were arrested for visiting relatives in jail and asked which law gave them the right to make these arrests. The officers from the Domestic Security Team resisted demands for the family members' release. In addition, the officers ordered that every detainee pay a 2,000 to 3,000 yuan "fine."

At around 3:30 a.m. on February 25, 2008, Domestic Security Team Leader Wang Guilin (male) and Chen Zhi (male) led officers to Ms. Lou Caihua's home in the Xintai Community. They knocked on her door and pretended they were from downstairs and had come up to complain about a water leak. Once Ms. Lou opened the door, they illegally arrested her. The officers searched her home and seized a notebook computer, a printer, and other personal property.

Then, around 9:00 a.m., Wang Guilin, Chen Zhi and others surrounded the apartment where practitioner Ms. Xiaoxue lived. In an attempt to escape the police, Ms. Xiaoxue jumped from the sixth floor. Fortunately, she hit the advertising board of a first-floor shop, which slowed her fall enough that she didn't die, although she did sustain serious injuries. Her computer, printer, and more than 30,000 yuan in cash were seized. A couple days later, disregarding her injury, Wang Guilin forced Ms. Xiaoxue to leave Lingyuan City to return to her hometown.

By law, to conduct a search of anyone's house, police officers must have a warrant signed by the director of the police department as well as the director of the local police station, and a local community witness must be present during the search. The officers must show the warrant before their search. All seized items then must be detailed on an official list and signed by the owner. None of these procedures were followed in any of the above cases. Instead, the officers illegally invaded private residences and plundered the practitioners' personal property.