The forced labor labor camp uses slave labor to make counterfeit and dirty products for market at home and abroad. The prisoners wrote an open letter to tell public the horrible situation there.

Falun Gong practitioners Ms. Wang Zhongqing was arrested while walking in the street. After one year's detention, she was sentenced to four years in prison, with no one allowed to defense her.  Due to the torture, she suffered a mental collapse.

Counterfeit Products Produced in Handan Forced Labor Camp (Photos)

There are currently five groups in the camp: Initiation Group (about 30 prisoners now), Special Education Group (about 50 prisoners), Group 1 (68 prisoners), Group 2 (67 prisoners), and Kitchen Group (20 people). Those in each group who get brutally beaten must still perform arduous duties. The Initiation Group mainly packages chopsticks. Group One puts seams in balls. Group Two mainly ties fishhooks and makes wreaths. Most prisoners can't complete the high quota, so guards beats them with sticks, kick them, hit their heads against the wall, and punche them in the face.

"Sterile" Chopsticks Are Contaminated

Prisoners in forced labor camps are often put to work packaging pairs of chopsticks into sealed bags. However, the chopsticks handed out in restaurants are not produced under sterile conditions. Often the packers in the labor camp have dirty hands or runny noses, which will contaminate the chopsticks.

Xiao Dong, a practitioner who was forced to package chopsticks in the Handan Labor Camp, said, "I will never use the supposedly sterile chopsticks when I am released. During the hot summer when we work, we sweat all over. Some people intentionally scratch themselves with the chopsticks and then put the chopsticks covered with sweat into the bags. One time I caught a cold and had a runny nose. I know I dripped on the chopsticks, which were then packaged. Some prisoners wear slippers and insert the chopsticks between their toes before packaging them into the bags."

Counterfeit Japanese Fishhooks for Export

People in Group 2 at Handan Forced Labor Camp make fishhooks and recording machines. Recently they made counterfeit Japanese fishhooks which they then exported. The manufacturer is written as "Made in Japan" in Japanese (See photo one) and priced at 260 yuan. In fact, these "Japanese" fishhooks are made in Chinese Communist Party forced labor camps.

Printing Pirated Books

On December 23 last year, Group 2 stopped producing fishhooks and reconfigured the workshop. They installed printing equipment and now print pirated books. At present, they mainly print copies of the Xinhua Dictionary. Prisoners fold 3,000 copies every day, scratching the board with a primitive bamboo strip, and manually arranging the pages. The marks are uneven, so the prisoners are beaten and berated. Because the task can't be finished, they are kicked. A so-called law enforcement facility has become a printing company that produces pirated books.

The box the dictionary is packed in states: "Commercial Press, 36 Wangfujing Ave, Beijing. The telephone for the Department of Publishing is 65253913." For the fine watermark flyleaf and copyright page, see photo two. (This batch of books will be transported out possibly in two weeks. Next month, they will print teaching assistant materials.)

The company that collaborates with the labor camp to print pirated books is Yongnian Printing Company. The license number of the vehicle that transports paper into the labor camp is "Hebei DE 8079f." The address of Yongnian Printing Company is BeizhongBao Village, Yaozhai Town, Yongnian County, and the company's legal representative is Cao Shouhua. Besides Xinhua Dicitionary, the Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary and all kinds teaching assistant books for elementary and middle schools are being printed.

Bloody Persecution under the Guise of "Civilized Law Enforcement"

The meals are also used to extort money from practitioners. Since many find the food inedible or not nutritious, they buy food, which is ridiculously expensive. One egg is one yuan, a cake (three pieces) is two yuan. The 137^th Document of Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Finance (1995) stipulates that 110 yuan per month be allocated to "board" each labor camp inmate. This board is to include 25 kilograms of grain, 30 kilograms of vegetables, 1.5 kilograms of meat, 1.5 kilograms of cooking oil, eggs, fish, and 2 kilograms of bean product. Actually, each person gets less than 2.5 kilograms of vegetables and less than 0.1 kilogram of meat per month, all of which costs less than 50 yuan.

The "Special Education Group" is also called the "Special Discipline Group." This unit mainly tortures Falun Gong practitioners from Handan City, Yingtai City, Hengshui City, and Cangzhou City. Group leader Ge Qingxi, Political Instructor Wang Zhiming, Guard Gao Fei and Zuo Tao brutally beat Falun Gong practitioners, in order to coerce them to write the guarantee statement and the three statements. They let regular prisoners, including thieves and gangsters to monitor practitioners. Practitioners are not allowed to speak with each other or walk around without permission. They have to ask for permission to use the restroom. When practitioners use the restroom, they cannot be accompanied by inmates from other squads.

Complaints and Allegations by Regular Prisoners

Below is an open letter from several non-practitioner prisoners in Handan City Forced Labor Camp to the director of Hebei Provincial Law Enforcement Department.

Dear Director,

Greetings. Under your management and direction, inhumane crimes are happening at the Handan City Forced Labor Camp. Please listen to our complaints, which are backed up by our tears and blood.

1. Bribery is commonplace. The group leaders take advantage of the labor camp's entrance education class and policy of term reductions to solicit bribes. Cai and Wang of the Initiation Group took a lot of bribes in the form of money, cell phones, and laptop computers. Xue Peijun of Group 2 abused the power of his post and took a bribe of tens of thousands of yuan. He set up his own kangaroo court and instigated the squad leaders to beat and berate prisoners.

2. Abuse of power. The group leaders have low morals. Xue Peijun, leader of Group 2, uses profanity and degrading language all the time. He does not care at all about the brutal torture happening in his team. Many prisoners have been beaten and injured to the point where they attempted suicide by swallowing fish hooks or by cutting their wrists. As long as the perpetrators who beat and torture others submit bribes, they do not face charges. Instead, the victims' terms are extended. It's so absurd.

3. Work shifts are extended beyond human endurance. In 2008 alone, the work schedule for prisoners making fish hooks was usually extended until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. If the quota for the day is not met, prisoners are slapped on the side of the head, causing punctured eardrums, beaten with wooden sticks, punched and kicked, shocked on the genitals with electric batons (Leader Zuo Tao of the Special Education Group often tortures prisoners this way), kicked in the genitals, and beaten until their ribs are broken. The group leader often protects the perpetrator and verbally abuses the prisoners for not completing the work quota.

4. According to the Law Enforcement Ministry and the Treasury Ministry's No. 137 document (published in 1995), forced labor camp detainees should be allotted a monthly board expense of 110 yuan. However, in the Handan City Forced Labor Camp, the cost of our food amounts to less than 50 yuan per month. We are fed steamed buns all year round, with six buns per weekday and only four buns on weekends. In the summer, we have squash soup that has way too much salt. In the winter, we have cabbage soup that is way too spicy. That is all we are fed. There are no vegetables in either breakfast or dinner. It is rare to get meat more than once or twice a month. The soup has only a few green leaves floating on top of water. We are starved here. We can buy extra food, but an egg costs one yuan, three small pancakes cost two yuan, and a pack of instant noodles costs one yuan, while the prices outside the camp are about half that. This past winter, many prisoners became sick and had constipation and blood in their stool. Even with such poor nutrition, we are still forced to do heavy manual labor all year long, including on Sundays, without a break. We heard that for the Chinese New Year we will only be allowed a one-day break on New Year's Day because the camp authorities are trying to meet a quota of pirating the New Chinese Dictionary and the Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary. Group 2's leader Xue Peijun once shouted, "Let them resume work on New Year's Day."

5. Families are not allowed to send in food. Because the store inside the camp wants to make money from prisoners, our families are not allowed to send in food. The prices here are double what they would be on the outside and are usually faked brand names. Even if some families can manage to send some food in, it usually gets lost somewhere in the process.

The food is poor, the workload is heavy, the mental pressure is high, and beatings are commonplace. Even in the winter, we have to eat our meals outside because all of the space inside of the building has been allocated for workshops. Due to the financial crisis, Yongnian Printing Company has gone bankrupt and is working with the labor camp authorities to pirate books.

We are living in hell here in the labor camp, and we are treated like pigs and dogs.

Today, we, the prisoners suffering in this forced labor camp, appeal with sincere hearts to government officials at all levels to heed our suffering. We hope to raise awareness about our situation and to have our rights as human beings protected under the rule of the law. Please help us.